RANSVESTIA

even cheaper. I suppose in olden days they didn't but we are used to the brilliancy of the diamond cut with its sparkle and fire and you just don't get it with the old-fashioned cabachon cutting.

Iran Airlines is a very independent type operation. They won't make reservations and hold them so you never quite know whether you are going to go or not. Our tour leader could not be sure of any transpor- tation from Abadan to Kuwait in advance but we took off anyway for Abadan. A long, weary ride over hundreds of miles of barren moun- tains and plains with an occasional hamlet someplace. Finally the Euphrates appeared, meandering its way on the horizon and we started down for Ahadan. Nothing much to talk about here except that it is the base of one of Iran's principle refineries. From the air you could see it, the shipping on the river and the orderly rows of date palms on the plantations. The Garden of Eden was reputed to be around here someplace but it wasn't visible from my side of the plane. The reason for there being nothing much else to report about Abadan was that it was 120 degrees F. and that tends to discourage exploration.

Somehow our leader managed to promote some seats on Kuwaiti Air and we took off for Kuwait at about 10 at night. They fly at night because hot air is thin air and sometimes the big planes can't make it off the ground safely. At Kuwait International Airport we were all piled into Lincoln and Cadillac taxis nothing cheap about these Kuwaitis and took off for the Hilton. The airport is quite a way from town and the intervening desert is criss-crossed by north-south and east-west highways. The various drivers of the cars had a big race to see who would get to the Hilton first but they didn't all choose the same roads to travel on so we would be following and then turn away from one of the others and at the next signal a mile or so along we'd meet one of the others coming on one of the other streets. It was kind of exciting and slightly hair-raising in the middle of the night.

The Kuwait Hilton is very posh as you would expect and it was here that I had my "big moment" of the trip. There were a couple of Arabs in their white robes and little black rope crowns on their heads who struck up acquaintance with some of the women in our group. I was one of them. It seemed that one of them wanted to marry an American woman and he didn't take more than seven minutes getting around to the proposal. The other was his uncle and he was playing John Alden all the while. They wanted me to come out and be shown the town, to see his villa (same old story anywhere in the world), etc. He wanted to

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