The Girl From the Golden Horn

“And this ‘i,’ Fraulein Anbari?”
Asiadeh looked up, her gray eyes thoughtful and earnest. “This ‘i’?” she repeated in
her soft, gentle voice. She thought for a little while and then said decidedly and
desperately: “This ‘i’ is the Yakut gerund, similar to the Khirgiz ‘barisi.’ ”
Professor Bang rubbed his long, hooked nose. Behind the steel-rimmed glasses his
eyes looked like those of a wise owl. He wheezed softly and disapprovingly.
“Yes,” he said. “But I still cannot really understand why the ‘a’ should be missing
in the Yakut form.” And he sadly leafed through the dictionary.
Goetz, another of his students, whose speciality was the Chinese language,
proposed to explain the mysterious “a” form as being a petrified Mongol instrumental.
“When I was young,” said Professor Bang severely, “I too tried to explain everything as
being a petrified Mongol instrumental. Courage is a young man’s privilege.”