The day after the conference ended, we took a trip to Niswa. The highlight was Misfat a beautiful town of stone and mud-brick buidlings on the side of a hill, with a lovely plunging system of channels for distributing water, groves of date palms, and views over a wadi to the neighboring barren and rocky ridge. This is Mohamed, the local organizer of the conference, and friend of Lotfi. The fort at Niswa was a disappointment—it has been annihilated in a coating of Portland cement. We stopped at a store in Niswa and bought bread, olives, cheese, and ayran (a salty, cumin-flavored olive drink), then repaired to a park by the main wadi, with a channel of cold clear water running through it, and sunbirds singing in the trees.