Ratfilled Beats Historic

Read his story: The desert-yellow walls of the old City Hall rise rippled and pockmarked to pink domes and narrow minarets. Decorative peaks like tiny staircases top the barrier walls. A pointed pink-and-white archway frames the view down to Ali-Baba Avenue, the main road through a city once called the Baghdad of the South.

Out in the street last week, two big trucks idled by the curb. Ten men loaded office machines and desk chairs, portraits and plaques, the old signs for another year's Budweiser Presents Arabian Nights Festival.

"We're moving," declared the city clerk, Deborah Sheffield Irby. That was all she had to say.