Expatriate Blues

Small satisfaction in a cold quick clear voice of terrible insight that he, like so many others had desperately underestimated the passion, greed, bitterness and explicit angry religious attitudes playing sad songs as teams of boy soldiers leveled marble and glass skyscrapers with rocket launchers, systematically exploded distant oil refineries and detonated poison gas cylinders at major intersections in the city.

A city he helped build.

First light broke over the desert as premediated violence and destruction compressed distance. He turned to his wife and daughter.

"Pack all the food and water you can carry, put together a bag of clothing, get the gas masks and maps. Load everything into the car. It's time to rock and roll."

Every road out of the burning city was blocked. They diverted to the coast where they gave away their car and paid premimum rates to stow away on a dhow taking tea and carpets to a country at the southern end of the Gulf.

The rest is history.