Aziz crouched. Antar was trying to poke his knife into a man’s throat, but the man kept saying, “No, no,” and ran away. Someone had jumped on another leather-jacketed one’s back and was straddling his head, hacking at the man’s eyes and forehead with a knife too dull to kill but sharp enough to get one ear halfway off. Aziz fired his shotgun over a wall. Nothing happened; the scenery of carnage was untouched, the participants neither paused nor turned nor exclaimed. The one Aziz had just run into continued streaking down the alley. Antar was firing his rifle at a pack of villagers running toward him. Some fell, but most kept coming. Aziz realized too late that he too was about to be overtaken by this mob.

He heard huffing. He could smell the metal of their hoes and shovels, and for a moment he was confused by the zagging beams of flashlights. One said, as if in pleasant conversation, “They are there.” Then they were gone. He saw them jogging away along the alley. He had been invisible to them. Then he knew. He was dressed as they were. They had the same drawstring pants and lank djellabas as he. Antar’s men, in their alabaster sneakers and bat-black jackets, were who they wanted. The defenders had mistaken Aziz for one of their own. In this chaos, this was his chance.

He looked for Antar one last time. All he saw was a man aiming his knife for the legs of the man on his shoulders, while another was stabbing him in the chest. Brown blood on all of them made a glint in the low light. Antar was missing. Had they mowed him down? Aziz looked for signs of him, but there were none. He began to walk quickly, and in his excitement he fell against a broken tree. As it gave way from his weight, he dropped his gun and fitted himself into a passageway, compressing himself into its meanderings until it opened out onto a road.

The night heaved past him in gulping breaths. On his right and left he saw the mud houses, the mules, a few women and girls at windows with candles. The air sped into his eyes. He tripped, fell partway, twisted into running again. Then there were houses but no lights in them. His feet slapped, slapped, slapped on the dirt, down a street, into a courtyard, over dirt again, until the one brief braying of a horse was louder than the cries of pain and shoutings of killing. He stopped. He turned. Left. Right. He even looked up. The back of his throat was raw. He was alone.

He dropped to the ground and gasped. When his breath was back he could smell the smoke. Behind him, the sky was orange. Antar was setting the village on fire.