Explore "Friends in Strange Garments" by Anna Milo Upjohn on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
‘If I could write like that,' thought Omar enviously, ‘I'd send a letter to my brother in America, telling him how I went out on the Bosphorus in a boat and caught seven fish.'
He was watching the spectacled old Turk, who sat all day in the court of the Pigeon Mosque, writing for those who did not know how. Omar had been to school, where, sitting on straw mats with the other boys, weaving his body to and fro as they recited in unison, he had learned parts of the Koran by heart; but he had never learned to write. If the fat merchant who was dictating to the scribe could not write his own letters, why should Omar? And if every one knew this art, how would the old man earn his living?