He sits with his his towel wrapped around his head, in a truck, one of many, a convoy, shuddering and jolting on trusty springs. Here in the desert or some other wilderness, because if you think of a desert it usually means sand, and this place was only full of dirt, grime and smoke.

Belching from an Arab’s mouth or maybe another European, hiding beneath his towel with has badger eyes and sleeplessness, black eyes, brown iris looking at nothing in particular, maybe at his hands on the steering wheel, or the brown paper cigarette in his hand.

Sometime soon, they would stop to hide from the noon, it was always much cooler to travel by the light of the moon, by the way of the deserted roads, or ancient paths to some distant and continuums mirage, some moment of beauty, an oasis amongst all this dirt.

He would scratch his freshly grown beard, perhaps they would think that he was thinking, dreaming of nothing, for what harm was twice, if only to test that the cargo they were carrying was indeed wholly pure.

The West is the Best, and they were taking him to the crossing point, the Castle guarding the Bosporus, the Capital of the East, the ancient home of the Greeks, and that blessed fleece, and he guesses he could swim the damn thing, for what choice did they have, he could not even shave for some incipient fear.

Everyone wore an AK47

Deeper into the Desert, with all these drugs, the government, his government, his paymaster of powerful influence, had told him that he should not really let this trouble his conscience, or some other thing, he had not really been listening, he was very aware that there was not an element of choice in this bargain he had signed.

It did not really trouble his conscience, it was like they said, this may cause some underlying problems in the modern free market liberal economy, however, the system being as it was, did not benefit everyone, because everyone did not try, because stealing did not really count, against the bloody rules, generally malinger, and for all intensive purposes are quite indolent and useless, and furthermore, demand all sorts of unreasonable things considering their lowly place. This thing gave these people a purpose, and it kept them fucking quiet, and paid us back all the cash they had stolen back to our representatives and H.M Government. They reimbursed the State for service rendered protecting them out here in fucking Afghanistan.

Into the setting sun, twelve lorries packed with opium, he had only checked one or two, just enough to keep him comfortable, he had been checked, no more roughly than he usually was, searched, his supplies did not really seem to concern him, perhaps they were looking for bugs, he had a little bunny in his tooth, he did not think that they would smash them out, guns in his ribs, he was made aware of the balance of power, made aware of the humanity here, they smiled at him with their rotten teeth, and saying to him over and over again in pigeon English

“Be careful, do not speak”

It was essential that he should be silent and he could speak in many tongues. He would not utter a word on the long road to Istanbul in order that this deed could not be traced back to the infernal occupation of Afghanistan.

He journey’s onwards through the land of the Ayatollah, through the heart of Persia, the pearl of Isfahan, the high trails to the unforgiving peaks of the Medes. He was classically educated, he had known of the exploits of Alexander as his wandering band of thieves and Thugs plundered the riches of the East until they bathed in pearls and ivory trinkets, nutmeg for the soul to flavour indescribable flavour ice cool elixirs of purifying wine, and the hordes of Babylon was like endless fields of Bushels of Corn beside a crystalline river where men first cried out loud at the beauty of licentiousness. Those men had feasted upon voluptuousness, at last safe from the harsh elementals.

Some thing insider of him marvelled at this opportunity to see all this again, yet his senses were heightened by danger, or was the murk leaving his bloodstream, in all this territory any Man would have the right to execute him if he was truly revealed as the insidious spy he was.

It is getting near dawn now, there is a dim light amongst the night, and he can see mountain tops silhouetted against the sky. They stop to eat at another deserted roadside, Iran looks like Afghanistan, it has the same dirt, and he runs his finger through the soil as he sits.

The Arabs light fires and cook some goat meat, and they give him his portion. At times like this he feels more accepted by them, more like a human being, rather than some dangerous and devious piece of unwanted luggage, some extra weight atop their heavy burden.

There is always some form of common humanitarianism and they offer him a bottle of scotch whiskey to help him sleep through the day

Weeks passed like the roadside, like the same drab routines practiced, his moods coming to him in waves, high’s and low’s, melancholy and redemption. He would look up into the night sky, the stars more numerous here, the natural light of a nuclear holocaust looking absolutely extraordinary. He knows not how the ancients managed to find some underlying pattern in amongst its scintillation and chaos, and like a child he reached up with hand to cup some unknown constellation.

Onwards to Iraq, travelling now by day, his beard is much thicker now, his skin, and his clothes more covered with dirt now. The traffic is heavier, hundreds of trucks painted like whirling dervishes are racketing past on the other side of the road, their drivers smiling and tooting their horns as they pass in a cloud of dust. He noticed the defences, he was looking for the preparations, they had to be somewhere, there were a lot of satellites scanning the length of the border and they had an indication, but things could be hidden.

Their was a camera in the lenses of his sunglasses, he could see the occasional tank dug into the ground, covered by trees and in other case what seemed like the roofs of barns propped up on stilts from prying eyes in the sky. They met roadblock after roadblock, it all seemed quite lax, and it seemed to him that the Iranians had been too successful in infiltrating Iraq. Religion was more powerful than any borders H M Government had negotiated to draw on the map but that did not prevent making some effort to check and he felt as white as a peachy cream new born baby under their eyes, they did not often look to hard. He was not really surprised, these people were not professional soldiers, and they did not have the example of Prussian military to follow only their own ideas of half-baked attempts at total militarism.

They had always been deeply concerned about the pernicious effect of Iran following the formation of their client government. They had bribed the top officials by offering them their share of the oil money, they could be trusted, but what of the people, the whole stinking mass of people, what could we distract them with when they hated any product associated with the West? It was decided that they should be drawn in a sectarian religious blood feud, and that has succeeded to some extent. However, they were worried that there was a danger that they could unite under a Shia Fundamentalist government.

Our culture could not be denied that easily, it was our most effective weapon, broadcasting images of our consummate and unbelievable wealth all around the world. Surely these people would soon forget our relatively bloodless war and like a fish take the hook of our sumptuous dream. It tantalizes all the nations and all the tribes, yet at this border this commerce of our kleptomania is halted, not by the weapons that guard this illusory border, but by a people who pray the desiccated day shall never come when they too shall have to suffer under the cold unflinching staring metal of our indiscriminate explosives

The landscape of Iraq is very much similar to Iran, and the people are the same all the way to fucking Afghanistan, three old crones toothlessly watching this convoy and it winds away into the distance like a slithering black mambo, fast, deadly and terrified of the giant shadow of a human standing over it with all its animosity, the thing it must strike to kill to save its own precious skin.