Common shells include frog-shells, distorsios, volutes, tulips, murex, cones, olives, marginellas, cowries, augers and the Florida horse conch, the state's official shell, which can grow up to 24in (6 1 cm) long.

'Why bother with the daily grind when you can go to Mosul, get paid $400 a month, get a wife – and live an Islamic way,' went an exchange between two men overheard by a fellow passenger in a taxi. Rumour has it that a woman whose husband died fighting with Isis now receives a generous widow's pension from jihadi coffers.

The grave site, humble as it is, reflects something more than a hometown’s determination to honor a fallen son, something that seems irreducible in the politics of Iraq: the refusal of the Sunni minority, who ruled Iraq for centuries until Mr. Hussein’s overthrow, to reconcile themselves to the assumption of power by the Shiite majority who won elections godfathered by the American occupation authority.

In this way, the new state had birth, and the new quincolor national flag was hoisted at Changchun, now renamed Hsinching (New Capital) where the central government was removed from Mukden, long the capital of Chang Hsueh-liang’s administration.