Arsheesh

Arsheesh was a Calormene father figure for the boy Shasta in The Horse and His Boy. During the time when Arsheesh was a fisherman who lived by the sea in a small hut in the empire of Calormen. One night, he couldn't sleep and went down to the shore, where he found a small boat with a dead man and a baby boy inside; the man had apparently starved himself to feed the child, and had died within sight of land. Arsheesh took the child and named him Shasta. Arsheesh was not a nice parent to Shasta, making him do most of the work in the house and beating him whenever he was angry. One day, when a Tarkaan was staying at Arsheesh's house, the nobleman, who could tell that Shasta is not Arsheesh's son (as Arsheesh was a Calormene, while Shasta was clearly a Northerner), offered to buy the boy as a slave. Shasta, who was listening in on the two adults, had by this point not known that Arsheesh was not his father, but felt a bit relieved, as he knew that he didn't love Arsheesh the way a son should love his father. When the Tarkaan's horse, Bree — actually a Talking beast from Narnia — told Shasta that the Tarkaan would be a very cruel master, the two agreed to escape together to Narnia.