You go to distant lands hoping to find something entirely different from what you had at home, never suspecting that you will return a changed person. Arthur cannot say exactly when it happened, at what crossroads, but he is not the same man anymore. Mesopotamia keeps calling him. In dream after dream, he is walking on liquid deserts, or sailing on shifting sands, only to wake up with a feeling of emptiness. He is worried that he has left something behind, a part of him that was fragile but genuine, mislaid in that region whose customs he does not always understand and whose myriad faiths and
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