I had been living in Brazil for two years when soldiers came to my home and ordered me to come with them. It was 1973, and the country was under a military dictatorship. As the jeep rumbled through the darkness I felt sick with fear; I thought I was being arrested as a spy.

At a police station in Porto Alegre I learnt that it was the CIA who had had me picked up. They showed me photographs of me going about my business and said they had been following me for some time. They wanted to know why a 20-year-old from Lebanon was fluent in Russian and Chinese and, more importantly, who was I working for? I wasn’t working for anyone, not in their sense – I was just really good at languages.