11. First Step Along an Inauspicious Path
It was only two weeks following my graduation, around mid-July, at the climax of the blistery weather in Iraq. ‘General Summer’ was ruthlessly invading the Iraqi soil from north to south, mellowing the proudly hanging clusters on towering date-palm trees, quenching his thirst with the Mesopotamian immortals, the Tigris and Euphrates, shoaling their waters and disgracefully baring their banks, and proclaiming his elemental scorching dominance through the obdurate and relentless bronzing of bodies, thrown into relief by the pale rims emerging from underneath watches, rings, and clothing. I was too deeply immersed the night before in a novel to notice the hour verging upon three. A habitual late night sleeper on holidays and weekends, I would never turn in earlier than two or three in the morning, and therefore woke up only when the sun was amply high in the sky. The long nights went mostly in devouring a book whilst enwrapped in the tranquillity and peacefulness of the deep hours of the