Language a labour of love

"The best way to learn a language is in bed," said Khaled.

"But then you'll just learn words you can't use in public," I argued.

"Get a polite boyfriend," he advised.

I hasten to add, reader, that we had met just two days before, and were in a car, hurtling through the dark night toward the far-flung Cairo suburb of 6 October on a work assignment.

(BTW: 6 October is the start date of the 1973 Six Day War between Egypt and Syria and Israel and then, in 1981, in the subsequent annual victory celebrations, the Egyptian president Sadat was assasinated).

So I'm sitting in bed with my language books, listening to the warm wind puff around the rooftops. Perhaps that's not quite what Khaled meant...don't you think ;)