The caption read: Abu Ghraib Prison, Iraq, 2004. After that, he arrived at the year he found himself in now, the year of our Lord 2008, that is, he found himself in sync, that’s what he thought even if he didn’t know with what, but in sync. He couldn’t tell what image he was in sync with, but he didn’t turn the page, and meanwhile the plane was finally landing, the landing strip was running beneath him with the intermittent white bands blurring to a single band. He’d arrived.

Venizelos Airport looked brand new, surely they’d built it for the Olympic Games. He was happy with himself for being able to reach the boarding gate for Crete without reading the signs in English, the Greek he’d learned at school was still useful, curiously. When he landed at the Hania airport at first he didn’t realize he’d reached his destination: during the brief flight from Athens to Crete, a little less than an hour, he’d fallen fast asleep, forgetting everything, it seemed, even himself. To such a degree that when he came down the airplane’s staircase into that African light, he asked himself where he was, and why he was there and even who he was, and in that amazement at nothing he even felt happy. His suitcase wasn’t long in arriving on the conveyor belt, just beyond the boarding gates were the car-rental offices, he couldn’t remember the instructions, Hertz or Avis? It was one or the other, fortunately he guessed right, along with the car keys, they gave him a road map of Crete, a copy of the programme of the convention, his hotel reservation and the route to the tourist village where the convention-goers were lodged. Which by now he knew by heart, because he’d studied and restudied it in his guide, nicely furnished with road maps: from the airport you went straight down to the coast, you had to go that way unless you wanted to reach the Marathi beaches, then you turned left, otherwise you wound up west and he was going east, towards Iraklion, you passed in front of the Hotel Doma, went along Venizelos, and followed the green signs that meant highway, though it was actually a coastal freeway, you exited shortly after Georgopolis, a tourist spot to avoid, and followed the directions for the hotel, Beach Resort, it was easy.