His studies...

What meant more, whatever?Politics? Nay. Wealth? Pah. Love and all that? Leave it to poets. Hard, stern facts wove the stories he liked. Dreams? He lived in one. Or two, considering a career alternating between Istanbul (he still called it Constantinople) and Cairo, which saw commencement in a bid to ascertain the Finlavian chronological tracery of the fabled iconoclast controversy, in hopes of purging the past of his home of veiled political schema which inevitably passes as the 'history' of a place riddled with ideological pitfalls. Facts must be. Only facts.

Nightmares, then? Well, his aunt, Naveed Hyder Quraishi, boasted a few. She was dear to him, too dear to ignore or laugh off without precipitating disaster. There was something of this kind that she was nagging him endlessly about. But well he did have work in Cairo, especially with the ubiqitous book and scroll keepers who comprised his life in that city, chiefly Omar Ali-

And, if he was just about lucky, with his excellent record at preservation and curatorial tasks, Pierre Lacau, the Museum Chief himself-



Not to forget his dearest friend and scholar Sami Gabra, newly made Curator at the Museum, and his chief link to Lacau. And Rashid-ul-Haq, recently back from England. Also bearing mention would be Dr. Ali Khafour, the accomplished occult expert at Antiquities.