The Peacock and the Sparrow

At the end of the road, I've learned, espionage turns into a profession of ghosts. The culmination of actions taken or not taken, ends swallowed by means. A place where, even after you disappear, you can't escape

Jimmy dealt in one of two limitless departments within the CIA - money and suspicion - so he never lacked work or the appearance of importance.

I was free from the tangle of mistakes, promises, and defeats that grips a man's heels, taunts him with flashes of its sinewy strength.

I felt a momentary dull pity for this country that had belonged to so many outsiders and never quite mastered the art of being a homeland — and equal amusements at the outsiders who’d never quite mastered the art of control.

The slums unfurled like a giant moth-eaten quilt as I exited the highway at Al-Maqsha. Qaryah, the villages—a country unto itself, whose backroads had become grossly familiar to me, an unwanted second home. Piles of garbage rose from the streets like dying trees. Layers of houses were crammed into alleys; dingy fast-food restaurants and cold stores pockmarked every corner, the emaciated commerce of poverty. No skyscraping hotels here, only stubby broken-shutter lodgings with misleading wistful names—Riviera Palace, Oriental Retreat. The most noticeable feature, a sprawling tattoo stamped across an already-mutilated body, was the graffiti. Bright protests neutralized by government blackouts then covered with more rallying cries, a laughably unavailing cycle. In the end the blackouts mostly prevailed. Above the graffiti, above the jagged rooftops, black Shiite flags tried to best

A honey-colored moon cut a hole in the sky

For the grand opening the Ministry of Culture had transformed the opera house into a showcase for local artwork, all painstakingly hand-selected by the king.

But the sparrow is angry at the king! You see why? Because the king made him believe he was safe when he was not. The sparrow learned the lesson al-ihtiyatat bedoun faida did al-qadar. How do you translate? Precautions are useless against destiny.

Even now as I look back, I marvel at the perfect pyramid of his logic, nuances that effortlessly filled the cracks, the elegantly simple foundation. His answer made a fool of Occam, had the natural symmetry of algebra.

Nobody in espionage could justify sympathy. Right and wrong existed on paper, but in reality all that existed were the amorphous masses of in-between.