The eighth session of the World Heritage Committee — consisting of representatives from Algeria, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Cyprus, France, Germany, Guinea, Italy, Lebanon, Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Senegal, Switzerland and Turkey, and auditors from sixteen additional nations, among them Yugoslavia, where he was later to claim citizenship — met in Buenos Aires over the five days from 29 October to 2 November 1984 to discuss the preservation of culture and the designation of certain national landmarks as Historically and Aesthetically Important. He was born Patrick Nicholas Sebastian Stephen Milutin on 1 November of that year, appropriately enough, while his parents Nicholas and Adrijana Milutin malingered in the B.A. aeroport, detained by the customs officials. He was never told why they were detained, nor why Nicholas spent the next ten years in an Argentinian prison, but the arrest of his father and the meeting of the United Nations committee were forever linked in his mind, muddled together in the same piece of prehistory that included all of his childhood.

Adrijana and he lived in Brasilia while Nicholas languished in durance vile. Brasilia was the dream of another saint, and so here again he was haunted by his nativity. He loathed the sterility of the city, came to despise the people and the language and the climate, and was in general a miserable boy.