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I went down to the pub, and there was Dad playing darts with Harry Burke. I said, "How do, Dad," and he said, "How do, Tom," and I told him I'd been home, and he told the barman to give me a pint, and went on with his game. The barman said, "Been out in the sun?" and I said, "Persian Gulf," and he said, "Uh-huh," and I sat and watched Dad going for the double at the finish of the game. It was just as if I'd never been away at all, as if Bahrein and Gujar Singh, and Sharjah, and Yas Island were places and people I'd read about in a book.

I walked home with Dad when he'd finished the game, and told him something about what I'd been doing on the way. Back home when we sat down to the light supper that they had before going to bed, Ma asked me, "What's it like out where you're working, Tom? What does it all look like?" She paused. "Is it all palm trees and dates and that?"

"Not in the country," I said. "Nothing grows outside the towns, because of the water. There's no water at all. The land is desert--great flat stretches of sandy sort of earth, with maybe rocky hills or mountains here and there. All yellow and dried up under the sun. You get groves of date palms and greenery outside Bahrein and outside most towns, where they irrigate with water from wells."