Where There's a Will by John Mortimer

Author:John Mortimer
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141928029
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2009-02-09T05:00:00+00:00

I was writing this in January, a refugee from an English winter, in a garden where red, yellow and white roses were in bloom and the call to prayer from the mosque in the village echoed across the orange groves. We were in the south of Morocco, where the people are gentle, smiling, anxious to please and many of them speak French. They might be regarded by the American and European tourists who are staying away as part of the Islamic hordes who threaten the very existence of our Western civilization.

We were almost alone in this hotel ten years ago during the Gulf War, and now it was once again a place of peace. Early in the morning an icy wind blew from the desert but by ten o'clock the sun had risen high over the trees and we were sitting by the pool with Roland. He was a Swiss dealer and collector of ancient coins who once had in his hands the first known money, pieces of gold stamped with the sign of King Croesus. Naturally the talk turned to Baghdad – in a country that was once called Mesopotamia, Roland remembered, the birthplace of our civilization, which spread to Egypt, Greece and Rome before being washed up on the shores of our small and distant island.

It was part of the Persian Empire, conquered by Alexander the Great, said Roland, who can track the course of history from the coins that may have changed hands in Babylon. I could remember only that the Hanging Gardens were one of the Seven Wonders of the World and a childhood nursery rhyme which gave the city a feeling of magic.

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