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next to the reception of an Erich von Däniken that I had never seen before: white hair and eyebrows, beard stubble, dried out skin which looked like red leather, dry and broken lips and a shirt stained by filth and sweat. Marc was dog-tired and went straight to bed. I didn’t feel much better, but I wanted to talk to Tomy about the future. He, being thirty years younger than me, had coped with the strain considerably better.
    After a luxurious shower, I felt reborn and dressed and went down to wait for Tomy in the foyer. He called down on the telephone to tell me that he had nothing to put on except for Marc’s clothes. I told him to come down as he was, as I needed his ability to speak Arabic to go shopping. I changed some money at the hotel reception and asked where we might find shops that were still open. Although it was eight-thirty in the evening, we found quite a few. In no time at all, Tomy was kitted out. He looked good—like the young Erich thirty years ago.
    Sitting at a freshly laid table with a bottle of chilled white wine bearing the label Omar Khayyam—after the Persian poet—I told Tomy about my worries. What did these military types want with him? What could he even do? What would happen if we refused? I knew that the Iranian secret service had had a brutal reputation during the Shah’s reign and now, under the mullahs, nothing had changed. What would they do if we didn’t follow their orders? Or if we tried to flee? Would we be able to keep Marc out of it all? Maybe put him on a plane out of Teheran and fly him home? In my naivety, I thought that the commandant only knew my and Tomy’s names, but Tomy reminded me that Marc’s passport had probably been registered as we entered the country. So, I suggested that Tomy should take over the commandant again and convince him that it had all been a dream.
    However, Tomy insisted that he was incapable of lying. It was enough to make you mad! I suddenly remembered the line from “Hotel California” by the Eagles: “You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave!”
    I can hardly recall the abstruse ideas that I bombarded Tomy with that evening. Couldn’t he fetch help from his home planet? Was it possible for him to split himself and take over two people at once? Tomy waved them all aside; which was particularly frustrating for me, because I prided myself on always being able to find a solution for every problem and because Tomy was, so to speak, my younger brother. Only cleverer than me. This thirty-year younger and yet obviously infinitely older young whippersnapper laid his hand—or was it my hand?—comfortingly on mine. Then he suddenly asked what the name of the president and prime minister were; and wanted pictures, too. I went to the reception and feigned admiration of the Iranian system of government—which, in reality, I held in very low regard. The receptionist, who was luckily fairly fluent in English, brought me a brochure with names and pictures. Unfortunately, it was in Arabic, but this turned out to be no problem for Tomy. Then I began to suspect what he was up to.
    The next day, I didn’t wake up until ten o’clock—I had slept eleven hours solid. Marc was lying next to the swimming pool, and Tomy was sitting at a table studying the Iranian newspapers—after all, he had no problem reading them. I paid the hotel bill and stowed the luggage in the Rover. Two cars were blocking the entrance to the parking lot. They were parked so that nobody could drive past them, however they might try. Two large motorbikes were stationed at the end of the street. I went back inside and the man on the reception told me that a table had been reserved for us for lunch. I had him show it to me: it was set for seven people.
    I tried to use the hotel telephone to contact my wife in Switzerland. After countless failed attempts, I finally got through.
    Ebet was overjoyed to