 The moment one became a student at [ Victoria College ] , one was given the student handbook , a series of regulations governing every aspect of school life — the kind of uniform we were to wear , what equipment was needed for sports , the dates of school holidays , bus schedules , and so on . But the school 's first rule , emblazoned on the opening page of the handbook , read : " English is the language of the school ; students caught speaking any other language will be punished . " Yet , there were no native speakers of English among the students . Whereas the masters were all British , we were a motley crew of Arabs of various kinds , Armenians , Greeks , Italians , Jews , and Turks , each of whom had a native language that the school had explicitly outlawed . Yet all , or nearly all , of us spoke Arabic — many spoke Arabic and French — and so we were able to take refuge in a common language , in defiance of what we perceived as an unjust colonial stricture . 
