There was a mosque, with a long-bearded preacher on the minaret, fist in the air, and written underneath, “Infidels in our Holy Places!”

“It’s a bit cartoonish,” Gillem said. “But I’m trying to find a newer, more immediate way of drawing. I can’t decide if the words work or not. Perhaps one doesn’t need them.”

There was a drawing of a palace, with giant soldiers posted on either side. The palace had lots of steps. Coming down the steps were an ant’s trail of people. Each of them was carrying an object disproportionately larger than himself—a vase, a statue of a dog-headed man.

There was a picture of more soldiers toppling a statue of a mustachioed general.

There was an entire series of drawings based on the magazine clippings of the naked prisoners being tortured. In Gillem’s version, the guard dogs were giant wolves, with bared teeth and great lolling tongues, and the prisoners looked even more noticeably like the damned in Hell.

But the strangest picture of all, Rat’s favorite, was of a deep hole, an underground tunnel, from which a man was being dragged. The man looked like a crazy hermit, with waist-length black hair and beard, and wild rolling eyes. That was the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein being captured, Gillem explained.

All these ink drawings, he explained, were to be embroidered in rich colors on a long cream linen panel.

“There’s going to be lots of plants and animals—strange birds and date palms—floating over the space, too,” Gillem said. “You know the Garden of Eden was in Iraq. That’s the part I still have to do.”

“How long is it going to be?”

“About a third of the length of the original, I reckon. Fifty feet?”

“And you know how to embroider? Won’t it take you years to finish?”

“No, I wish I did. The actual embroidery part I’m getting done by some women I found in northern India, who do very beautiful work in the most outlandish colors. I draw it, and they copy.”

“It’s a nice idea. How did you get the idea?” Rat asked.