There is only the never-ending road and my desire to get to the end of this particular one. We come to a fork near Basra. I say right. Jessie says left. She wins. (For a change.) We drive into what seems to be an old battlefield. Concrete lookout posts, derelict tanks, even the craters of military aircraft, just lying there, abandoned.

It is silent. It is creepy. Without saying a word, Jessie does a jumpy three-point turn.

‘Whose idea was that?’ she says, once we’ve left it behind.

‘Yours,’ I reply. I notice her hands are shaking on the wheel. Now that’s a first.

‘You’re right,’ she says. ‘You see, I’m not afraid to admit when I’m in the wrong.’

As we approach Iraq’s border with Kuwait at Safwan, I’m shocked to see it’s occupied by a no man’s land, people camped within its perimeter in makeshift tents, fenced off from both countries, perhaps for years. No way forward. No way back. For them, at least.

Night is getting ready to overtake us.

Here the border guards are more circumspect, spend some time studying our documents, poking about in the car, looking for contraband, such as alcohol. We stand to one side. Jessie has donned a headscarf that actually makes her look her age, or rather like a middle-aged housewife circa 1960. I’m tempted to tell her. Needless to say her cleavage hasn’t been on show since we left Ankara. For the first time, she has to let me do the talking. This is my fiancée, I am applying for a teaching position after a long sabbatical spent touring Europe and Turkey. How exciting to be visiting your wonderful country for the first time. I do an excellent job of bullshitting. She, on the other hand, has affected a ridiculous hang-dog expression, accompanied by what can only be described as drippy sighs. I sidle up to tell her to ease up on the simpering. ‘Bugger off! Know what I’m doing,’ she mutters. ‘As always,’ I bat back.

Matilda is our sleeping chamber in the desert with two single beds. It’s freezing, but our backs eye each other warily all night long. In the morning I get to see the amazing golden sands, and even the tail-end of a posse of wild camels disappearing over the dunes as if they’ve stepped out of a Lawrence of Arabia fantasy. Now that’s one for a postcard. I’m looking forward to sending them again.

Kuwait City is introduced by functional tower blocks that I guess house the migrant workers who keep the wheels of this fabulously wealthy kingdom turning. Closer to the centre we encounter a vision of sun-struck marble houses that look like palaces. Coming out of the desert, out of Iraq, coming out of the eastern fields of Turkey, I find them surreal, untouchable, heavenly.

Jessie and I are grubby itinerants. Boy, must we stink.