From current reading

[riontel]

We laughed. We were not testing each other; more like feeling the ground for how to improvise a tentative pontoon bridge.
"Perfect accent," he commented, "even if it is Egyptian Arabic."
"Yours is difficult to place."
"I seldom speak Arabic," he said, then asked, "Jewish?"
"Moslem?" I replied
"Just like a Jew: always answers with a question."
"Just like a Moslem: always answers the wrong question."

--Harvard Square: A Novel, Andre Aciman