“Shouldn’t you be mad at the Marine Corps for being so slow to get it figured out? Or at the president and the long line of men in gray suits who put your son where he was when he got taken? What about the newspapers that wrote editorials in support? That might be a way to channel your rage. Another way might be to see that those that died, in fact died for something, even if it was only to become part of a countersniper database, which ultimately saved a lot of mothers from feeling what Tom’s mom feels. It meant something. It was a sacrifice not for nothing but for the betterment of all those who came after.”

“I suppose I could feel that. But I don’t. There’s that ‘but’ again.”

“All right. Tell me about this particular ‘but.’”

“But it wasn’t a part of the war. But it wasn’t another kid who wanted to be at the mall. But it wasn’t even an Iraqi. But he’s not dead. But I know who he is and where he is.”

It was a tale full of sound and fury. What it signified was as yet unknown. Only one thing was clear: it was told by a woman who was either insanely brave or insanely insane—maybe both.

She had been to Baghdad seven times. She had been raped four times and beaten three, once severely, which explained the somewhat odd shape of her face.

“The bones didn’t heal properly,” she said. “Big deal. Who cares?”

Three times she’d been bilked by fast operators. She’d used up the money she’d made selling her house on those. She borrowed money from her brother to pay for a six-month immersion course in Arabic.

“It’s not like I can follow the nuances, because you know it’s very fast, and so much depends on context or prior knowledge. But I can pretty much stay with it, I can negotiate, I can double-check, I can follow. Oh, and I became Moslem.”

“You became Moslem?”

“I had to understand him. You can’t do that from the outside, not really. So I gave myself another six months to convert, to really try and become Islamic, to understand it in history and culture and ideology and fervor of faith. I even experimented with the idea of blowing up some infidels just to see how it felt, but, crazy as I am, even I saw how wrong that would have been.”