“Maybe you want to do yours.”

“I haven’t a prayer left in me.”

“And I am running at least ten thousand prayers behind. I’ll never catch up.”

“Do you think the Middle East will ever find peace?”

“No. We should rather learn to live in it without peace but with civility.”

“How is that possible?”

“Just like this, here and now. If a few weeks ago someone had told me an Abu Faranci was coming here to join our humble mokeb, I would have laughed at them. I might have even been insulted. But here you are. And we’re talking. This is called civility, even if half of what we suffer here is because of you guys.”

“Only half?”

“Yes. The other half is our own bad behavior.”

The generators cut out and dark enveloped everything. Men’s voices shouted in Arabic. It would be awhile before they got the electricity going again.

I said, “Claude, you’ve come here to die, haven’t you?”

The dark allowed me to ask the question that was impossible to ask while looking into the man’s eyes.

“Yes.”

“Do you not think this is irresponsible of you? We cannot be the assisted-suicide headquarters of all the men who are tired of life.”

“Why not?”

I’d never considered it like that. So it took a few moments for me to answer. “Because this is a real fight. Not a game. Our holy places mean something to us. What do they mean to you? Nothing!”

“It is all right if you wish to insult me.”

The angry hum of the generators was already starting back up but there was no electricity yet. In that dark, with the sound of distant big guns walloping the ends of our minds, it was as if we were at the end of history too. There were at least three times in the past year I had felt this way: once when I buried that Proust book right here at the Eye of the Horse; another time when our positions were attacked at Tuz Khurma while Zahra the Beheader and I stood there holding her fresh bread, talking of Baghdad; and a last instance at Khaled’s old place across the mokeb, watching the beautiful people of Hollywood on television.

Abu Faranci said, “Have you ever been married, Saleh?” He did not wait for me to answer but went on: “It is a beautiful thing, marriage. It is like an illumination. But, you know, betrayal changes the very atoms in your body. I know, in this darkness you are thinking, This Frenchman has gone crazy and is giving me life lessons. But I’m not here to give anyone any lesson. You wanted to know why I’m here and I am telling you.”

“I am sorry if you felt insulted before,” I offered.

“This is your world, your fight, your geography. I know I am an intruder. But I need an ear.”

“Why?”