“No one tells me anything.”

“Well, actually my father is not a king. More of a tribal chief. But he prefers the title ‘King.’”

“Isn’t there kind of a big difference?”

“From the time the Europeans first arrived bearing gifts, hoping for any kind of concession that would give them a foothold to hunt for treasure, they called him ‘king,’ and he liked it. He also liked the stuff they gave him. The French gave him a wad of Patek Philippes. I got a couple of them.”

“But still I can’t…”

“Will you just take it?”

I hesitated, said, “Thanks,” and strapped it on.

“Want to play checkers?”

“I’m supposed to be working.”

“The old man knows you’re not working. He knows I’m here. I think,” he added, “he has Grady spying on me.”

Another revelation. Just as he defined Derek as an ape and a celebrity, so he exposed himself as a faux prince and a genuine paranoid. Such was the taint of this vile house that everyone who crossed its tilted threshold was certifiably bonkers.

THIRTEEN
FAT CHANCE

Through the slit of my window I look out on the feculent buildings around the square. Many of them are multistoried like the jail. At first glance they seem to be made of sun-dried bricks splashed blue or green or red or yellow. The bricks are made not of mud but of shit, plus that unidentified substance that solidifies them.

For six thousand years Mesopotamia has adorned its urban centers like Jarmo and Tel Halaf with brilliant, unexpected structures. Elaborate. Fantastical. The walls of city gates, mosques, and towers throb with bolting, slab-chested bulls prodigiously hung and scaly, fire-breathing dragons prodigiously hung.

Little remains, but in full bloom are the excremental ingenuities of Coproliabad.

Walking toward the jailhouse is the provincial secretary of commerce, fatso Hashim Pachachi, whose life from an early age has been dedicated to finance. He had served an eager but unremarkable apprenticeship to a Baghdad branch (long abandoned) of a bin Laden family consortium.

Hashim never got over it. He drifted from one unfulfilling enterprise to another, emerging as Assama’s secretary of commerce, a job that lacked substance in the real world. But he went on trying mulishly to rack up a big score.

With Hashim is Shakir bin Zaki, resident intellectual and poet laureate. He is steeped in the works of William McGonagall and Edgar Guest—he loves them both and is known to quote them on solemn state occasions, although nobody seems to know why.

The guard outside my cell door stops snoring long enough to let them in. I offer them a range of salutations, in accordance with custom. No response, which is unusual. Most of the time we signify in a kind of Choctaw, a simplistic and infelicitous mix of English and the regional misspeak of Persian, although Hashim has been known on occasion to drop a precise zinger of a construct into the otherwise loopy dialogue.