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embassies: Paris, Brussels, London, Mexico City, the consulate in Washington. The Husseini family had lived well, very well, and the ambassador's sons had become perfect cosmopolitans: They had studied at the best European boarding schools, the finest American universities, and learned several languages. Ahmed's three sisters had married Westerners; they couldn't have stood going back to Iraq to live. They had grown up free, in democratic countries. And he, Ahmed, had also drunk deep from the well of democracy in every new destination to which his father had been sent. Now Iraq was asphyxiating to him, despite the fact that when he'd returned, he lived with all the privileges accorded the "sons of the regime."
    He would have preferred to live in the United States, but he'd met Clara, and her grandfather and father had wanted her near them in Iraq. So he went back.
    "So now what do we do?" Clara asked.
    "Nothing. There's nothing we can do. I'll call Ralph tomorrow so he can tell us just how big a disaster this is." "Are we going back to Baghdad?"
    "Do you have any better idea? I thought you'd be happy to reunite with your grandfather."
    "Don't be sarcastic! But of course—I'm dying to see him. I wouldn't be here at all without him. He taught me to love archaeology."
    "He taught you to be obsessed with the Bible of Clay, that's what he taught you."
    Then there was silence. Ahmed finished his drink in one gulp, then closed his eyes. Neither of them had any desire to talk anymore.
    That night, as she often did, Clara got into bed thinking of Shamas. She imagined him bent over his tablet, intent, as he pressed a thin reed into the wet clay, making his marks. . . .
    3
    in the late morning, as he left the house of tablets,
    Shamas had seen Abram herding the goats, seeking green grass in which to pasture them. He had followed Abram, though he knew that his kinsman preferred to be alone and speak to no one. Indeed, for some time Shamas had found his "uncle," as he called him, much changed. He had become a man who sought solitude, who shunned even members of his own family, saying that he needed to think in peace. But with Shamas, Abram showed patience, so the boy had dared to pursue him . . . and now he would dare to draw him out, for indeed he delighted in asking questions that sometimes provoked his uncle, even if he already knew the answers himself.
    "Uncle," cried Shamas, as he ran between the slow-moving goats to reach Abram. "Who made the first goat?" he breathlessly asked.
    Abram slowed and crouched to converse with his nephew. "He did." "And why a goat?"
    "For the same reason He made all the creatures that live on the earth."
    "And us, then—what are we for? To work?"
    "It is God's desire, at least for you, Shamas, that you master your stylus."
    Shamas fell silent. He knew he should still be in the house of
    tablets, completing the work that had been assigned him. His other uncle, the um-mi-a—the master scribe—would complain to Shamas' father, and Shamas would once again be scolded.
    "But I am bored at the house of tablets," the boy said, seeking an excuse.
    "Bored? And what is it that bores you? Do you not find your dub-sar's lessons a welcome opportunity to hone your craft?"
    "Hi the scribe is not a happy man. Probably because he has not yet mastered the stylus as well as the um-mi-a Ur-Nisaba would like him to. And Hi does not like children. He has no patience for us and makes us write the same phrases over and over until, in his judgment, they are perfect. Then, at noon, when he demands that we repeat the lesson aloud, he becomes angry if we stammer, even a little, and he shows no mercy in our mathematical assignments."
    Abram smiled. Shamas was right: The master was too rigid. But Abram dared not feed the boy's rebellious nature by siding with him. Shamas was the most intelligent boy of the tribe, and his mission was to study so that he might become a scribe, or even a priest. The tribe needed wise men to carry out