'Because in most parts of Christendom – or Europe – tallow-chandlers' sons do not go to grammar school. It is a peculiarity of . . . your people.' Enoch almost let slip the word Puritans .Back in England, where Puritans are a memory of a bygone age, or at worst streetcorner nuisances, the term serves well enough to lampoon the backwoodsmen of Massachusetts Bay Colony. But as he keeps being reminded here, the truth of the matter is more complex. From a coffeehouse in London, one may speak blithely of Islam and the Mussulman, but in Cairo such terms are void. Here Enoch is in the Puritans' Cairo. 'I shall answer your question,' Enoch says before Ben can let fly with any more. 'What do people in other parts call the place I am from? Well, Islam – a larger, richer, and in most ways more sophisticated civilization that hems in the Christians of Europe to the east and the south – divides all the world into only three parts: their part, which is the dar al-Islam ; the part with which they are friendly, which is the dar as-sulh, or House of Peace; and everything else, which is the dar al-harb , or House of War. The latter is, I'm sorry to say, a far more apt name than Christendom for the part of the world where most of the Christians live.'