"Okay, let's start with the basics. Can you at least recite some of the alphabet by now?"

Talia met Zaid with a stone-faced stare, wiping away some of his hopes that this second teaching session would have a smoother start than the first. Following a disastrous fifteen minutes of trying to get her to remember how to write her name, they had reconvened fresh off dinner and a three-hour phone break, meaning it was nearing ten, and she had yet to utter a single letter in Arabic.

She racked her brain for the last tutoring session à la her mother, but all she remembered was that it had ended in a yelling session over her atrocious pronunciation of the letter ق—since apparently, it didn't sound the same as the English letter K.

Sue me for not knowing, I guess.

"I can try," she said, trying not to meet Zaid's calculated gaze. He sat in a chair across from her on the kitchen table, arms folded over his Patagonia zip-up, clicking and un-clicking a ballpoint pen. "Alif, ba..."

"Good," he hummed, nodding. After a pause, he added, "Then?"

"Then?" Gosh, two letters were impressive enough. "Shouldn't there be like a C now or something?"

A small puff of air escaped his nose, but otherwise, he was used to her antics. "Ta, Talia. As in the letter your name starts with. Then comes tha."

"And then jim right," she shot back, a metaphorical light bulb beaming over her head. "It's the letter that looks like an eye and eyebrow. That one I remember."

He blinked, not mirroring her enthusiasm. "It looks like a what?"

"No, really," she began, plucking the pen from his fingers and drawing it from memory. 'If you turn your head about twenty degrees to the right and squint, you can kind of see the pupil in the middle of the eye. It's really cool."

He followed her instructions, letting the flat line on his lips morph into the most reluctant smile. Glancing at her stupid elation, he dragged a palm down his stubble-covered cheek and shook his head, releasing a sputtering sigh. "You are definitely something, Talia. Now, we have five letters so far. Luckily, the next two look the same as jim, only distinguished by their dots or lack thereof—which aren't optional, by the way."

"Duly noted," she mumbled. She'd already transformed her name into Nalia and Balia from her sheer aversion to putting them in the proper place. "It doesn't get that much more complicated from here, does it?"

"Sure," he lied through his teeth, pausing in the middle of writing a dal. "We'll go with that for now."

As he continued rattling off the rest of the alphabet to her, her memory became less fuzzy, repopulating with letters she'd all seen before—especially one particularly foreign one.

"Okay, repeat after me," he said, looking her dead in the eyes. "Qaf."

"Absolutely not."

He dropped a palm to the wooden table, eyes narrowing. "Oh, come on, Talia. You can at least try."

"So you can laugh at me? Not a chance, Zaid."

He pushed the notebook and pen between them aside and leaned forward, elbows meeting his knees. "What is there to laugh about? Someone humbling themselves enough to let me teach them the alphabet?" For a second, his soft tone assuaged her slight unease, but then it came. "That I learned at two, by the way."

"There it is," she snapped, jabbing him in the chest. "You secretly find this hilarious. I know you do."

"Hilarious is a stretch," he said, shrugging. "But I can't be too encouraging, or you'll lose the necessary humility for this process."

"The humility that applies to everyone but you, right?"

"Bravo," he praised, like a true teacher. "I'm amazed at how fast you catch on."

"Fine, I'll give it a shot," she grumbled, looking away, "...qaf."

The awkward silence prepared her for another "humbling" remark, but it never came. Instead, Zaid nodded to himself and shot her a small smile.

"Honestly, not too bad. Next time try saying it a little deeper in your throat."

She tried again, but the sound that left her lips was more akin to polite choking. Wincing, she grabbed the water pitcher from the middle of the table and poured herself a full glass.

Once she finished drinking, Zaid spoke again. "Maybe I didn't explain that well enough. Imagine you're saying the letter K and then swallow it—but not all the way."

She snorted into her sleeve, sending some water back up her nose. Feeling the burn in her sinuses, she groaned and shut her eyes. God, serves me right for those thoughts.

Zaid rose from his seat and hovered over her, eyes running down her face. "Hey, are you alright? Did I say something?"

"Not at all," Talia said, wiping her mouth on a napkin. "I'm just being a little ridiculous."

"Okay, well, we can move on to writing once we get these next last seven letters down, if that helps."

Ignoring the uncontrollable smirk on her face, he continued reciting the last of the alphabet, writing every letter in his perfect calligraphic handwriting. He went over the page one last time with her before he steeled himself.

"Should I be worried?" she asked, watching his lips press into a flat line. The sounds of the kitchen had reduced to the rhythmic taps of his metal pen on the cover of his notebook.

"I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there's still a second and third part to this alphabet lecture," he said, "so, technically, we've only made a dent."

"Oh God, there're more dots, right?" The letters did look suspiciously bare. "I knew we were missing something."

"Technically, not dots. Tashkil. They're sort of like marks or signs used to represent the pronunciation of each word since Arabic has no vowels in the traditional sense." With the growing horror on her face, he added the cherry on top, "But we can't even get to those without first covering the initial, medial, and final form of each letter."

"Oh, hell no." She rose from her seat and walked to the kitchen island, eyeing the fruit basket. Turning around, she added, "I will gladly be monolingual for the rest of my life if you're going to tell me the language is that complicated."

She expected him to give her some long-winded response shading her American-ness, but he sighed and closed the notebook.

"Well, there's no rush to learn now. I'll let you come back to it if you ever wish to."

She grabbed an apple and turned around. "There's no 'but' clause this time?"

"Contrary to popular belief, I can be nice, Talia." She remained unconvinced, so she stood there, back to the counter, eyebrows slightly raised. "It's just more fun to be rude."

She smirked, hating that she'd come to love the latter version of him more.