The Abyssinian Proof Read Online Free PDF

write,” Avi said softly. “But I’m not anybody.”
    Kamil stooped down and told him, “Well, come in and show me what you’ve learned.” He walked up the stairs. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Avi trailing behind, awestruck.
    Kamil greeted the burly doorkeeper. “Good morning, Ibrahim.”
    “Günaydin, pasha.” Ibrahim held open the door and bowed low as Kamil passed through.
    Kamil suddenly heard a commotion and turned. The doorkeeper had lifted Avi by his sweater like a mother cat lifting her kitten and was hoisting him out of the door.
    “Ibrahim, let him go,” Kamil called out. “He’s here to see me.”
    Ibrahim shrugged and dropped the boy, who scuttled to Kamil’s side. Kamil saw that he was crying but trying to hide it. They walked a short way over the tiled floor, past the small room behind the doorkeeper’s station, in which a teakettle was steaming over a brazier. Ibrahim followed with a lamp. At the end of the corridor, the door to the courtroom, still locked at this hour, loomed in the half light. It was a massive double door, carved with swags of gilded roses, as if justice were a pleasure garden. Beyond was a horseshoe-shaped room that always reminded Kamil of a theater, with magistrates and solicitors striding across the stage beneath the box that held the presiding judge. The audience would sit behind a waist-high partition, fidgeting and rumbling as if bored by the play.
    They entered the suite of rooms that made up the magistrate’s offices and waited while Ibrahim lit the lamps. The outer office was still empty of scribes at this hour. During the day, all manner of the empire’s subjects sat, patiently waiting to pour their story into the ear of a scribe, who would then translate it into the stilted, self-aggrandizing language of bureaucracy in the form of a petition. At the back were two doors to smaller rooms in which Kamil’s legal assistants met with solicitors and their clients. A heavy gilded door, mercifully without a garden motif, opened onto Kamil’s private office.
    The light picked out Abdullah, Kamil’s head clerk, snoring on a divan in the outer office. The soles of his feet showed brownish yellow through holes in his socks.
    “Abdullah,” Kamil called testily. “Get up.”
    The clerk woke, startled, and rolled to his feet. “You’re here early, Magistrate.” Seeing Avi, he said, “How did this street dog get in here?”
    “He’s here to see me.”
    Abdullah shrugged. “I’ll get the tea, in that case,” he said and, shoving his feet into leather slippers, shuffled toward the corridor.
    “Bring two glasses and two plates,” Kamil called after him. He invited Avi into his office and pulled over a chair. When Avi didn’t move, Kamil realized he was unfamiliar with chairs and the high tables that accompanied them, alien European contraptions. Kamil fetched a small portable writing desk and placed it on the carpet. Avi folded himself into a sitting position before it.
    While they waited, Kamil handed Avi his pen, showed him where the ink was, then placed a piece of paper before him. He moved the lamp nearer as the light from the window was still only a pale wash.
    Avi touched the white paper reverently. “I can write on something less good, bey.”
    “If you want to be a scribe, this is what scribes write on.” Nonetheless, he was impressed by the boy’s frugality and modesty. He noticed that the boy’s hands were blistered.
    “What happened to your hands?” he asked.
    “An accident, bey.” Avi tucked his hands under the desk.
    “Someone should take a look at them.”
    The boy stubbornly shook his head.
    “Can you write?”
    “Yes, bey,” Avi responded eagerly.
    Kamil stopped, unsure what to tell the boy to write and unwilling to give him a task that he couldn’t do and thus shame him.
    “Write the alphabet.” Thinking this would buy him some time, Kamil sat at his desk and began to go over his notes on the thefts.
    “I’m finished,