The crewmen, swabbing the deck, stowing ropes, taking turns at the wheel, understood: he had come through the stinging ferocity of a sandstorm. He had talked quietly into his telephone and none of them could hear his words in the several minutes the call had taken. It would be late afternoon before he would see the raised outline of the city's buildings, the mosque minarets and the angled, idle cranes of the port. They did not know his name, but they could recognize his importance because they had sailed with their hold half empty, at night, to bring him home.

He wore the torn, dirtied clothes of a tribesman, he smelt of camels' filth, but the crewmen and the owner simple, devout men who had sailed through the worst gale storms of the Gulf waters -would have said that they held this quiet man in fear.

Later, when they had a good view of the buildings, minarets and cranes of Bandar Abbas, a fast speed boat of the pasdaran intercepted them, took him off and ferried him towards the closed military section of the port used by the Revolutionary Guards.

They felt then as if a chill winter shadow was no longer on their dhow, and they tried to forget his face, his eyes.

"The last time I did what I was told to do."

"For your own good. You were sensible, Mr. Perry."

"I had only two suitcases of clothes. I even cleared out the dirty washing from the bathroom basket and took that with me."

"Self-pity is always degrading."

"The men in bloody raincoats, they packed all my work papers, said I wouldn't need them again, said they'd lose them. Where did my work life go into a landfill?"

"Dredging history rarely helps."

"I had six hours to pack. The men in raincoats were crawling all through my house. My wife-' "As I understand, about to divorce you, and with a "friend" to comfort her."

"There was my son. He's seventeen now. I haven't seen him since – I don't know what exams he's passed and failed, where he's going, what he's doing…"