David’s Preface

For a while I was keen to call this book The Garden of Eden, but my sensible co-author talked me out of it.

The idea came up when we were flying east from Istanbul and I was studying a map of our destination—the town of Gaziantep near the Syrian border. I said to Somer: ‘This river that’s labelled Fırat—is that the Euphrates?’ He replied: ‘Yes, that’s the old name for it.’