of miles and see nothing but sand dunes. Called The Empty Quarter, this inland sea of sand was so barren that the borders of Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Oman were not distinguishable. From Aden all the way up to Baghdad, the terrain, and everything on it, was a light shade of sand marked with occasional patches of tan. Even the towns were tan; the only things not tan or sand were the black asphalt roads and the blue gulf along the coast. Flying over Arabia was like flying over a giant horizon-to-horizon
sandbox, which is what three generations of American military personnel called the U.S. Central Command Area of Responsibility.
As he surveyed Iran in the distance, Wilson reflected on the times he was high over the Persian Gulf at night. To the south and west, the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council were illuminated with bright clusters of lights in the cities and settlements. Natural gas flare stacks flickered and burned off at the well heads at oil fields ashore and on platforms dotting the Gulf. Desert roads in the middle of nowhere were lighted as if the roads were in a large city. Far to the south the modern metropolises of Dubai and Abu Dhabi shone brightly, and further up the Gulf, the cities of Doha, Manama, Dhahran and Kuwait City glowed — evidence not only of life but of prosperity. In this part of the world, light meant money, and under the sandy desert of the Arabian Peninsula, the former nomadic peoples of the region sat on a pile of it.
To the east and north it was another matter. Aided by the fact that the Iranian coastline was mountainous, and to a great extent devoid of humans for some 400 miles — from Bandar Abbas to the Bushier/Kharg Island complex — Iran gave the impression of being dark and foreboding. Even well inland, there were few lights to signify settlements. Basra in Iraq seemed to have a greater degree of lighting than a comparable Iranian town. Wilson found the Iraq/Iran comparison a perplexing metaphor — free enterprise on one side and essentially a command economy on the other, with both dominated by a religion that oversaw every aspect of its believers’ lives. Despite their similarities, the two peoples regarded each other with deep suspicion, and in the case of the sheikdoms, fear of their powerful and populous Shiite neighbor to the north. They disagreed about much, even the name of the body of water that separated them.
