Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
When Zhang Zian and the others entered the shop, the girl from earlier stayed outside the shop to watch the happenings. The old person wearing short sleeves covered the shop door and waved their hands at them, gesturing to them not be in a hurry to ask questions first.
Gao Ke and He He were worried. Although the old man and his sister had kind faces, nobody had the words “I am a bad person” written on their faces. How could they know whether they had just left the wolf’s den only to enter the tiger’s?
Zhang Zian wondered when Fina had come. Just now, when he had gone to rescue He He, he’d acted with Famous, because he knew that Fina could not lower itself to saving a woman who was not related to it and had gotten into trouble all by herself.
He thought that Fina had stayed with Galaxy and Pi. Unexpectedly, Fina, Galaxy, and Pi had all arrived here. He He and Gao Ke and the rest just could not see them.
In fact, the shop was quite close to the accident site, and they could still hear the noise of the accident site. The onlookers seemed to find that they had slipped away, and they were cursing a bit before they scattered.
The door was pushed open, and the girl from before came in with another local boy. She closed the door again, nodded to the old man, took off the robe covering her body, and threw it aside at will.
Under the long robe, her outfit was the same as Zhang Zian’s and everyone else’s, a combination of a polo shirt, sneakers, and jeans.
While they were at the door, Old Time Tea also leaped in. He had not managed to find Fina and the rest just now and had chased them by following their scents. He had found that Zhang Zian and the elfins’ scents combined here.
The old man looked at the crowd with a sigh of relief and a smile. He said in English, “Welcome, you all must be surprised. Take a rest first. I know you must have a lot of questions to ask, but it’s safe now. Don’t worry. I’ll explain to you later. Sit down, please! Black tea, or coffee?”
Their ears were sore because of the loud commotion and speaking in Arabic just now, and now, hearing someone speak English, they felt a sense of closeness. Gao Ke and the others had made it to graduate school, so their English was certainly good. Zhang Zian’s daily conversation in English was not a problem, and then there was Jack, who had traveled to many countries when he was a child.
Zhang Zian and the rest did have a lot of questions to ask, but the guests followed the rules of the host, and, affected by the old man’s calmness, they gradually relaxed.
After going through that mess for so long, they were thirsty, and they found chairs to sit down, asking for the drinks they wanted.
After a few minutes, the young man and woman carried a tray out from inside, black tea and coffee arranged on it, and gave it out to Zhang Zian and the rest.
Zhang Zian had asked for black tea, and after taking a mouthful, he could not help but grin in secret. How sweet! Was the white sugar free of charge here?
Egyptians, men and women alike, were fond of sweets to the point where they did not like things that were not sweet. Most of the food and drinks were especially sweet, presumably because they felt that under the cover of their robes, nothing could be seen, so their figures did not matter, and they could do what they wanted.
After the young man and woman served their drinks, they stood next to the old man. The old man said, “I’m called Lazart. These two are my daughter, Kate, and my son, Chris.”
Zhang Zian and the rest looked at each other. The young brother and sister’s names… They did not sound local at all. They were very common European and American names.
Jack was a mixed-blood who had grown up in a foreign country. His parents’ name choice wasn’t surprising. But all three of them looked like very ordinary local people. Why was it that…
Could it be that they were like Zhang Zian, who had felt that foreigners pronouncing ‘Zian’ was not very accurate and had come up with an English name like ‘Jeff’ for himself?
It wouldn’t be very good for them to ask them straight out, and so they were all randomly wondering, but Lazart’s next sentence made them understand instantly.
Lazart could see their confusion. He smiled and said, “Oh, right. We are Copts.”
Zhang Zian was moved in his heart and looked at Fina, then at Kate and Chris, who were frank and unflinching, and carefully observed their looks. Although they looked roughly like the local people, under careful observation, he could find that their thick eyebrows, deep eyes, and high cheekbones were slightly different from those of the ordinary local people and closer to the characteristics of the Southerners of Egypt.
So it was like that…
That was understandable.
Copts were Egyptian minorities, accounting for about 10% of Egypt’s population. They claimed to be descendants of ancient Egyptians and pharaohs. Most importantly, they were followers of Christianity, so they didn’t care about physical contact between men and women who were strangers.
Lazart took a sip of black tea and said, “I’ll talk about what happened, and perhaps I can answer your questions after I’m done speaking if you have anything you want to ask.”
After He He and the rest got in trouble, Zhang Zian had rushed to help, and Fina and the other elfins had stayed where they were.
On the other side, Lazart had come back from the church with his two children and heard the noise of riots coming from the street ahead. He was nervous about the political instability, so he had his daughter Kate stay beside him and told his son Chris to go ahead and check the situation.
When Lazart interacted with his daughter and son in private, so as not to forget the origins and history of his nation, he normally spoke Coptic, and their conversation was coincidentally heard by Fina.
The origin of the Coptic language was very complex. It was the final form of the ancient Egyptian language and the product of Hellenization of the Egyptian language under the rule of Rome and Byzantium.
This language system was founded in the third century A.D. It was based on Greek and borrowed some letters from the “secular” style of writing that had evolved from ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs to express pronunciations that did not exist in the Greek language, and it was considered a combination of Greek and ancient Egyptian.
At present, the Coptic language was close to extinction. Few people used it. Only a small number of Copts still used it privately, and people did not know how long it would be before the official extinction.
Historically, however, this language had played a great role—Champollion, a French philologist, was proficient in Coptic so he could discover the secrets of the Rosetta Stone and ultimately to crack the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt. Coptic was like Chinese Pinyin, while ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs were like Chinese words. When Pinyin and glyphs corresponded one by one, the secrets of hieroglyphs were revealed.
As Zhang Zian had suspected, Fina was not interested in helping He He, who had gone to make trouble for herself. It sat lazily and yawned. It was still secretly complaining about Zhang Zian being a busybody.
At that moment, however, it heard a pronunciation very similar to that of ancient Egyptian, like hearing the local accent of its home town again after many years. Its whole body suddenly became stiff.
It turned around, alert, and just happened to meet Lazart’s gaze.
