We boarded the bus and took off in a fog of asphyxiation. The dashboard radio, beamed into a coalition patch, played loudly that most oedipal of songs, “I Want a Girl Just Like the Girl Who Married Dear Old Dad.” The bus plunged through scrub and sand with a grinding of gears, coughing and clanking. Brown grasslands gave way to desert, silent and menacingly still. Inside the bus the scorchy reek of oil mingled with the stench of the passengers. We were uniformly filthy, the men in need of a shave, Valerie sweat-stained and rumpled, Daphne’s hair a tangle, her bare arms and legs mottled by the heat.

A hot wind fanned the creepers beside the washboard road, and beyond them, as far as the eye could see, stood that immensity of wasteland. Every once in a while appeared a cluster of Mazari palms where ratlike animals, gerbils I think, flew from frond to frond, working without a net. “Are we there yet?” Daphne kept asking, until finally, suddenly, Coproliabad ghosted into an unreal substantiality. Rounded huts clustered here and there like melting scoops of coffee ice cream. Indeed in this land where the desert encroached, enveloped, invaded, and conquered, the fragile designs of man should have been as fleetingly ephemeral as his dreams, but the great, multistoried buildings seemed as permanent as the surrounding wilderness. We staggered off the bus, greeted by Assama’s plenipos, while the plebeians stood on the sidelines and gawped. Hashim Pachachi, Secretary of Commerce, led us to the Square, proudly pointing out the statues of the provincial paragons, himself among them. Draped between two hairy trees was a hand-painted banner that smacked of a press release:

WELCOME TO ASSAMA THE JEWEL OF THE IRAQ AND TO
COPROLIABAD ITS DYNAMIC CAPITAL

We all would have preferred a bath and a bed—by this time we looked as if we had got here on a collier—but protocol had to be served. A man with a mushy paunch and short legs rounded like logs wabbled front and center.

“Permit me to introduce myself: I am Shakir bin Zaki, poet of the people. I am also Minister of Information, Communication, Planning and National Guidance, Popular Education, Pacification, Civil Service, Specialized Organs, Memorializations, Women’s Advancement, and Amenities.”

“He carries a thick portfolio,” Gorelik said in my ear.

“Now I give you some thoughts of my people, your genial hosts. But before I speak,” the fat lips smacked, “I would like to say a few words.”

“Didn’t he say ‘Women’s Advancement’?” Daphne asked. “Outside of Valerie and me, there’re no women around.”