This is a pink and gray town which sits very small on the North edge of Africa. The coast is bone white and the sirocco comes through any time it wants to blow through. The town is dry with heat and sand.

The sirocco changes its character later, once it has crossed the Mediterranean, so that in Sicily, for example, the wind is much slower, much more moist and depressing. But over Okar it is still a very sharp wind. It does not blow all the time but it is always expected, fierce with heat and very gritty. The sand bites and the heat bites, and on one side the desert stops the town and on the other the sea shines like metal.

None of this harshness has made the inhabitants fierce. Some things you don’t fight. There are the Arabs there and there are the French. Once, briefly, there were the Germans, the Italians and the English, and a few of these remained. The people move slowly or quietly, sometimes moving only their eyes. This looks like a cautious, subdued way of living, and it is. Anything else would be waste.

There were not so long ago five in Okar who moved differently, perhaps because they forgot where they were, or maybe they could not help what happened; none of them is there any more. They were Remal, the mayor, who also did other things, and Bea, who did nothing much because she was waiting, and Whitfield, who was done waiting for anything, and Turk, who was so greedy he couldn’t possibly have made it. And Quinn, of course. Put simply, he came and went. But that’s leaving out almost everything…

“You got me out of my bath, you know,” said the clerk.

“Mister Whitfield,” said the captain, “this is your pier.”

“Because of this bleedin’ box you got me out of my bath.”

“Mister Whitfield. I’m tied up at your company’s pier, and in order to lower the box I need your permission.”