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Summary: Chapters 3 & 4

Chapter 3

Robin and Lovell share an awkward goodbye at Oxford. Robin explores his dormitory at Number 4, Magpie Lane and meets a student from India named Ramiz "Ramy" Rafi Mirza. The boys quickly forge a meaningful bond. As outsiders forced to acclimate to a society that will only ever see them as foreigners, Robin and Ramy are kindred spirits. They spend a few days getting to know one another, and Robin learns that Ramy likes to stand out and “dazzle,” a contrast to Robin’s strategy of attempting to blend in. Robin tells Ramy he is a ward to Lovell, Professor of East Asian Languages, and Ramy immediately deduces that Lovell is Robin's father. 

One day, the boys return home to meet newly arrived residents Colin Thornhill, Bill Jameson, and Edgar and Edward Sharp. After the other boys make various racist comments, Robin and Ramy realize that there is going to be a "them and us.”

Robin and Ramy explore the city and visit the Bodleian library. On their way home, they come across a rowdy group of students who hurl racist insults at them. Ramy wants to fight, but Robin runs off, knowing Ramy will follow him, to avoid trouble. Back at their lodgings, Ramy realizes that he left his notebook at the library and Robin, who awkwardly understands that he is more likely to blend in as white than Ramy, offers to retrieve it. At the library, he overhears the Chinese word wúxíng, meaning “invisible” or “incorporeal." Robin observes three people surrounded by a pile of stolen silver bars. With alarm, he realizes that one of the three figures looks exactly like him. His doppelgänger asks for help and Robin agrees without thinking. Using the silver, Robin turns himself and the group invisible just as policemen arrive. Once the police have left, his doppelgänger tells Robin to find him at the Twisted Root pub. Robin returns to Ramy, and the two share an unspoken understanding that they will never truly belong at Oxford.

Chapter 4

Disturbed by the encounter with his doppelgänger, Robin oversleeps the next morning, and he and Ramy must rush to their first day at Babel, the Translation Institute. There, they meet the two other students in their year's cohort: Victoire Desgraves, a Black woman, and Letitia "Letty" Price, who is white. The students also meet postgraduate student Anthony Ribben, who gives them a tour of Babel, explaining that it is because of the tower's name that translation students are referred to as “Babblers.”

Anthony notes that the tower's most important division is the silver-working department on the eighth floor, which is where Anthony himself works. Silver-working makes Babel one of the richest places in England. On the eighth floor, the new students meet Professor Jerome Playfair, who notes that Babel is the only Oxford institution that admits non-European students. Playfair speaks about the importance of translation and how silver bars help fill in the gaps between languages. He demonstrates an example of a match-pair, or words in two different languages with similar meanings, which are engraved on either side of a silver bar. The bar captures the slight difference in their meanings, producing magical effects. He also tells the famous story of the Egyptian King Psammetichus, who sent Egyptian boys to live with the Ionians so that they could learn Greek and become interpreters. Though Robin is slightly uncomfortable when he remembers that the Egyptian boys were slaves, he nonetheless feels like his foreign origin could make him special here. The four students are then asked to give their blood so that the tower will distinguish them from thieves and grant them entry. 

Afterwards, the four students eat lunch together. Though their relationship starts off slightly strained, an unmistakable camaraderie quickly grows between them. As outsiders, they are connected by the shared truth that Babel is the only place in England where any of them have a future. The girls are not allowed to live on campus so the boys walk them home. Robin departs, telling Ramy he's going to visit Mrs. Piper; in actuality, he sets off in search of  his doppelgänger at the Twisted Root. The doppelgänger remarks upon Robin's arrival that he has been waiting for Robin.

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