Hamza had not spoken to the Doctor for months, the mistrust in which he held his captors at each base constant and unwavering. But one day, the Doctor had told him how his wife had scolded him that morning for snoring. And it had awakened in Hamza a yearning for the ordinary so intense that it had almost broken his heart. After another visit, the Doctor had left him some cake she had made. He’d kept the guard talking long enough that Hamza could eat it. They had begun talking then. Tentatively at first, both skirting the extraordinary circumstances that brought them together, and keeping instead to generalities. Hamza’s former post at the university in Homs. His parents’ pride at his achievements. The Doctor’s life in the nearby village, his visits to the military base made necessary by its size and lack of facilities. And then, in time, when they were surer of each other, they had argued. Hamza challenging the Doctor’s hypocrisy, his earnest insistence that he lived in a country with a natural empathy towards the colonized, his discomfort at being both colonized and colonizer. His infuriating rigidity and adherence to what he called his duties, his ‘oaths’. The papers he had been forced to sign on beginning his work at the base. His refusal to help Hamza, the ease with which he could have sent word to Hamza’s family if he chose to. Their natural liking for each other. Frustrating. Confusing. And in this way, over time, they had forged a fragile, mutual respect. An almost perfect imbalance.

Perhaps, for Hamza, it was knowing he’d decided to end his own life that allowed him to be more open with the Doctor than he had been with all the others. A certain recklessness of feeling that let him speak. And over time, the glimpses the Doctor gave Hamza – of a life lived – made him grieve his own past life so much that it strengthened his resolve, galvanized his decision to retreat.

‘Hamza, listen to me. You don’t have much time left. I … I wouldn’t presume to ask for your friendship, but …’ Hamza felt a hand on his arm. ‘We have grown closer and I have tried to pull you back. But there comes a point when your body … it won’t recover. Your tests, Hamza, they’re not good.’