“The Mesopotamians of the fertile crescent were truly the cradle of civilization,” he would say earnestly, “but the history you’ve been taught is not the entire story.”

Muhammad, once a curator for the National Museum of Iraq, was a gentle, introspective soul, who occasionally shared cryptic insights over evening tea—memories of ancient artifacts and lost civilizations, always tinged with quiet sorrow. On slow afternoons, when Erik had nowhere urgent to be, Muhammad would open up about his past life, speaking of Mesopotamian relics and the fragility of history as if offering fragments of a deeper truth the world had chosen to forget. “The Mesopotamians of the fertile crescent were truly the cradle of civilization,” he would say earnestly, “but the history you’ve been taught is not the entire story.”