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driver, an overnight at a hotel in Tadmor, and a reservation for a similar car to return them to Damascus in the morning.
    And since the next day would be Tuesday there was a note handed to them at the desk from the embassy, inviting them to discuss pertinent matters Tuesday morning at eleven o’clock.
    “I wonder what they’d tell us,” mused Mrs. Pollifax, tearing up the note. “I shall retire early with my broken camera and guidebook and catch up on sleep. You can carouse if you’d like,” she kindly told Farrell.
    “Carouse?” he said with amusement. “My dear Duchess, having inched past the age of forty, and following a fourteen-hour flight, I have to confess sleep has enormous appeal to me, too.”
    * * *
    T heir driver the next morning was an affable young man named Khalid. He spoke English “and much French, too,” he announced with a flashing smile, and he had been trained for guiding tour groups, “But not many Americans yet,” he added regretfully. “They say bad things about us that make us very sad. So far only three American groups for me over the summer.” Having divested himself of this he began to fling cheerful comments over his shoulder as they started their drive to Palmyra, while Farrell glanced behind to see if they were being followed.
“Bilad-es-Sham,”
he said, was the Arab name for Syria, and once Damascus was a famous and beautiful oasis—“very green,” he assured them, “very green and sweet in a country so much desert. And please,” he said, “if you wish a picture with camera anytime, I will stop.”
    “Unfortunately,” Mrs. Pollifax told him, “my camera broke in Damascus. No more pictures.”
    “Broke? Is
broken?”
he said in horror, as if a tourist without a camera was unthinkable. “In Tadmor there are Konic shops.” He briefly turned his head to give them a happy smile. “With your permission we stop there, there may be a fresh camera for you.”
    “Gray car,” said Farrell, having just glanced back at the road behind them. “Up to you, Duchess.”
    “If we could … Cyrus knows so much more history than I do that I know he’d appreciate some snapshots of Palmyra,” and to Khalid, “If there is time … yes!”
    “Good,” he said, and continued his over-the-shoulder remarks as they passed through the modest industrial section of the city. “Business!” he said, nodding toward a factory and shaking his head. “Exporting goods no problem, but to import—
ya rabb!
—many snarls and troubles.”
    “Very old cars,” commented Farrell. “But you have oil.”
    Khalid chuckled. “Before 1981 the oil in Syria’s earth was heavy, not rich, but there was an underground earthquake in the eighties that changed it.” He laughed. “We think oil flowed in from Iraq—good light oil suddenly!”
    They were reaching the desert now, flat, tawny sand with tufts of grass, soon turning into pebbles and stones, a barren landscape except for a hazy blue mountain at a distance off to their left, and the great arc of blue sky overhead.
    “Soon Tadmor,” said Khalid.
    “Palmyra or Tadmor?” asked Mrs. Pollifax, puzzled.
    “Ah, the town she has always been Tadmor. Once it was called the City of Dates—you will see. But Palmyra—the Romans named it City of Palms—but no palms,” he added humorously. “Now what is your hotel?”
    “The Zenobia,” said Farrell.
    He nodded vigorously. “Good place, inside the town and inside Palmyra ruins also, you can walk with ease. The town has beautiful dates to sell; on your evening stroll you may find good Bedouin weavings, too, they bring them into Tadmor from the desert, but first we find you camera, yes?”
    Reaching Tadmor, Khalid turned down a cobbled street lined with colorful signs. They passed an open market hung with huge clusters of dates, yellow, dark red, brown and black, and Mrs. Pollifax wished she could take a picture of this, and of the street, which had all the flavor of the Middle East.
    Khalid