Read The Sound of Language for Free Online Page B

inside a warm jacket kind of checking. We don't open the colonies or peek in, though we desperately want to. We just walk around the colonies and wish the bees luck and hope they have gotten through the long and cold winter, safe and sound.
    S ince she started working at the language school, Christina had made a sincere effort at maintaining some distance from her students. She had been instructed to do this in her training. There was no point in getting close, beyond the boundaries of teaching Danish. She couldn't help anyone, not the way some of the students in her class needed help. She was not a psychiatrist. She was not a priest. She was just a teacher and her job was to teach these students Danish so they could get on with the business of living and working in Denmark.
    But it wasn't easy. Christina was not prepared for how many of the students worked their way into her heart and into her life.
    It began with Maher and his wife, Ester, a couple from Iran. They had joined the language school the same day Christina started teaching and for some reason she had felt a connection with Maher. He was her age, in his early thirties then, a clean-shaven quiet man who didn't seem to be picking up the language as fast as his wife and classmates. When Christina told the class about her five years as a teacher in Mozambique, he had perked up, and spoke to Christina about his stay in the African country in halting Danish.
    Maher and Ester lived in a small apartment in Skive. They both spoke fairly good English as they were students in Iran before they came to Denmark. Maher had been studying to be an engineer and Ester had been working toward a degree in mathematics. They both wanted to continue their education and they had to learn Danish to do that in Denmark.
    It was during the first summer vacation when her relationship with them changed and she became friends with them. Right before the summer holidays, Maher complained to Christina that he and Ester now had two months with nowhere to go and nothing to do.
    When Christina invited them to her home to help with Ole's bees and the garden, they had jumped at the idea. Every morning Maher and Ester arrived on their bicycles, armed with a lunch box and sunscreen. Over the course of the summer they learned a lot about beekeeping and by the end of August had become amateur beekeepers themselves, starting an apiary with four colonies Ole gave them. But as they grew closer, Christina and Ole found themselves dragged into Maher and Ester's past.
    They were eating lunch one day when Christina and Ole found out about the horrors of Maher's life in Iran. It was a warm summer, and they all complained about the heat and how thirsty everyone was. Christina filled up Maher's water glass and he stared at the glass for a while before drinking the water thirstily.
    “You were thirsty,” Christina said and Maher's eyes filled with tears when she added, “Want me to pour out another glass or should I just give you the jug?”
    “They would tie us up in the heat,” he said quietly. “And leave water in front of us. We would be nearly dying of thirst, not having drunk or eaten for days, and we would watch the water evaporate.”
    Ester looked away while Christina and Ole stared at Maher. He had never talked about his torture but Ester had alluded to it when she and Christina were alone. That afternoon while she and Christina washed up the dishes, Ester told her.
    “He came back with sores all over his body, a thin rail of a man, his spirit beaten,” she said, tears rolling down her eyes. “And since then we … we haven't been together in the same way … you know what I mean?”
    Christina hugged Ester and held her as she cried.
    After they left, Christina insisted to Ole that they had to do something to help.
    “You should talk to Maher,” she said. “Talking man-to-man can sometimes…”
    “No,” Ole said firmly. “I can't talk to him. You can't talk to him. You think a little