Yet, the work was insufficient to cover the tuition fees for next October. What was I to do? Suddenly, it dawned on me that my sister in Johannesburg, South Africa, was married to a well-off man from the Moukhaiber family in Beit Mery. I barely knew my brother-in-law but thought that I could borrow some money from him and repay him when I would start working after graduation. He responded to my request and a month later, I received a bank transfer for 40 pounds.

And so the fourth year began. I completed the registration and set out to find a roommate in order to save myself some money. Again, I requested the dean to exempt me from attending morning prayers, for I had renewed my contract with the American mission and was committed to teach Arabic to an American physician and his wife, together with a new teacher who was sent to teach at the girls’ school and who later became the principal.

I enrolled in classes of poetry by Al-Mutanabbi, philosophy, William Shakespeare, Islamic sects and pedagogy. I enquired about astrology, by which I was fascinated, and winced at learning that it required knowledge in trigonometry and advanced mathematics.

The academic year was ticking away and I was still clueless about what the future held in store for me. My father believed that teaching was a decent, undemanding profession. “I am about to retire. This way, you could maybe help me out a little,” he would say.

One day, shortly before the graduation ceremony, I received a letter from Mr. Dodge saying “I have some good news for you.”