Grady opened the proceedings on a gracious note of tribute, a demonstration of esteem for Abdul’s father and of gratitude for being allowed entry into Assama. What would he like? he asked Abdul. What do you think? as if the gesture were prompted by pure generosity rather than what I was certain motivated it: an attempt to narcotize the man’s well-founded xenophobia, in case it flared up again.

Abdul was rather disinterested in gifts and tokens—he seemed to consider them frivolous—but he did suggest the movie star. Other stratagems, most of them introduced by Grady, were immediately ratified: toothpaste and a washing machine driven by a portable, hand-cranked, compact, state-of-the-art generator. Valerie thought tennis gear might be a good idea. She also recommended a nice, even-tempered puppy, and volunteered to research the project. And then Abdul nominated the most cumbersome piece of baggage imaginable: Derek.

Derek? Grady demurred. Valerie said, “That’s fucking ridiculous,” but Abdul was unbudgeable.

“He is my good friend,” he insisted. “When my allowance was slow in arriving from the government, Derek kept me solvent.”

Derek? Was he capable of keeping anyone solvent?

“He’d peel off instruments from his father’s mortuary and hock them. And anyway, I promised.”

Promised? Promised him what?

“That when I went back to Assama, I’d take him with me.”

“Why?”

“To bring Western culture to my people. We often spoke about it.”

“Perhaps he could join us later,” Grady suggested.

“He goes with us,” Abdul said. His jaw was set firmly, his body rigid, signaling no brook of compromise.

Silence ensued, loud with the resonance of pique, dictating a change of subject.

“What about the language?” I asked. “I think we ought to learn it.”

Abdul’s eyes strayed, to hold on mine uncomprehendingly.

“Learn it?” he asked.

“As an expression of respect. If we’re in Iraq, we should speak Arabic.”

“There’s no such thing as ‘it,’” Abdul said. “More than four hundred tribes in Iraq speak more than eighty languages—nobody knows the exact number.” He wasn’t entirely appalled by my ignorance, saddened perhaps. It was simply something he had learned to expect from people who insisted on becoming involved in Middle Eastern affairs, and who knew next to nothing about them. “All of Mesopotamia,” he went on, “is a Tower of Babel, a confusion of six hundred to a thousand spoken languages.”

“But isn’t there one, a kind of lingua franca that…”

“English,” he said. “My father, his court, and his council speak English. It was introduced years ago by the British, who schooled the ruling class—my father went to an English school—and the people had some familiarity with it. Plus its usage was expanded by Dewey Lipgloss when he came to preach.”