All right, he said, jump on. The whole world is awake now. What will we do? I said.
Well, he said, we'll either take him back or hide him until tomorrow morning.
He didn't sound worried and I knew he'd hide him and not take him back. Not for a while, at any rate.
Where will we hide him? I said. I know a place, he said.
How long ago did you steal this horse? I said.
It suddenly dawned on me that he had been taking these early morning rides for some time and had come for me this morning only because he knew how much I longed to ride. Who said anything about stealing a horse? he said.
Anyhow. I said, how long ago did you begin riding; every morning?
Not until this morning, he said. Are you telling the truth? I said.
Of course not, he said, but if we are found out. that's what you're to say. I don't want both of us to be liars. All you know is that we started riding this morning.
All right, I said.
He walked the horse quietly to the barn of a deserted vineyard which at one time had been the pride of a farmer named Ali.
There were some oats and dry alfalfa in the barn. We began walking home.
It wasn't easy, he said, to get the horse to behave so nicely. At first it wanted to run wild, but, as I've told you, I have a way with a horse. I can get it to want to do anything I want it to do. Horses understand me. is
How do you do it? I said.
I have an understanding with a horse, he said. Yes, but what sort of an understanding? I said. A simple and honest one, he said.
Well. I said, I wish I knew how to reach an understanding like that with a horse.
You're still a small boy, he said. When you get to be thirteen you'll know how to do it.
I went home and ate a hearty breakfast.
That afternoon my uncle Khosrove came to our house for coffee and cigarettes. He sat in the parlour, sipping and smoking and remembering the old country. Then another visitor arrived, a farmer named John Byro, an Assyrian who, out of loneliness, had learned to speak Armenian.
My mother brought the lonely visitor coffee and tobacco and he rolled a cigarette and sipped and smoked, and then at last, sighing sadly, he said, My white horse which was stolen last month is still gone—I cannot understand it.