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smarter than ours. Not hard. Our men were the scum of the army, illiterates off the streets. They lifted the sheets and opened one crate. Builders’ rubble? they asked.
    To decorate a villa in Amman, I said.
    They shrugged and waved us through. Jordan did the same. We were part of the convoy. The troops even made jokes with my companions.
    After that we only stopped to take a leak. Why else would we? That’s a wasteland where nobody lives. Not a tree, not a house. I remember we passed a Bedouin shepherd. There must have been a wadi somewhere about, but God, that land looked as if it had never known rain. Everything the colour of ash. Pebbles like peachstones burned black.
    The shepherd stared down at us from a rise, and I could feel it didn’t matter to him where the border was drawn. Because he was the desert king and his fathers had always been rulers there. They lived in some scrape of the ground. At night they were cold because there was no wood to burn. So they slept in goat skins. Maybe a lammergeyer would take a kid. But what did it matter if it was camels or tankers on the road? Bedouins don’t need roads.
    As far as I was concerned he was welcome to his wilderness. Badiet esh Sham? It means the desert of the left hand. No Babylon there. No astronomy either, though the stars sparked like coals when a pipe is lit. Where would that shepherd find a wife and not a goat? I like houses and automobiles. A city glow spreading out before me, headlights heading home.
    There was petrol where the road forks to Damascus and we reached Amman not long after dawn. It was like a dream, and everything since has been a dream. Amman, the white city out of the black land. Amman on its hills, as I think Athens must be. A big Marlboro sign. People at the roadside offering tea and coffee. We stopped on the outskirts and bought bread from some Palestinians. They had baked thyme into the crust and it tasted good. The first taste of civilisation.
    Looking back, it was so easy. But everything was easy. I was a man of some importance. Sometimes I forget that. We drove to my cousin’s home who lived near the bus station in Abdali. I remember the van drawing up outside his apartment. The streets were busy, people were going to work. It could have been Athens. Or New York, maybe. Buy this chewing gum, a boy was shouting. Buy this chewing gum, he called at us, as if it was the most important thing in the world.
    We took fifteen crates of Mesopotamian history up in the lift to the apartment. Nothing really heavy. My cousin’s wife had a feather duster, trying to brush away the dirt of the left-handed desert. Hey, what’s in the boxes, Mohammed? she asked. I need a food mixer.
    I was exhausted and thought the drivers would want to rest. But no. We gave each a can of Sprite and I paid them in the lobby. Then they went back to the transit and drove off. Just like that. Good business men. They took a risk and were rewarded. I paid them well.
    The leather of my chair is cold. It feels like no one has sat in it before.
    So you live here alone? I ask.
    My wife and I were apart, says Mohammed. It was my son I cared about. But my son was a soldier. He had been admitted to the Imperial Guard. A great honour, some would claim. Others might call it a curse.
    One of his first duties was to patrol the British Embassy. Oh yes, the irony is not lost on me. Exquisite is it not? The unit sergeant at the gate would let me through because of who I am. Or was. But a small consideration smoothed the way, destined for the captain, whose office lay in the embassy itself. After all, gentlemen understand one another. The protocols must be observed.
    I remember those walks up the embassy drive. There were unusual palm trees in the gardens, loaded with dates. The soldiers harvested them and had a good business going. Sometimes they played football on the lawn. Yes, the World Cup had been held in France, and bloody Saudi was part of it. Iran too, for