“No. It took awhile. First the divorce. Then the man’s former wife creating some kind of trouble. Something about custody and things of that nature. All the little things that can make life unbearable. But in the end, it all worked out. I put my life in order. I quit the monotonous reporting job. I did my research about where to go. And, well, here I am tonight speaking to you.”

I wanted to ask him about his child. For a second I even resented him for his child’s sake. But it wasn’t my business to push him. Plenty of the men who came here to die were fathers and even grandfathers. I had known more than my share of them. I’d just never thought I would see a man so far from our world wanting the same exact thing. Never considered it a possibility. Abu Faranci may not have been typical in that way, but he wasn’t an impossible character either. His road to the Eye of the Horse was just a bit different than the other men out here. And I understood that anything I said to him now would be preposterous. Therefore I kept my mouth shut. And together we headed out into the evening.

Chapter Twelve

12

The next morning we went south. A caravan of usual suspects, plus Abu Faranci, heading first to Tal Abta. There was a gas station there where Cleric J had business. After which I assumed I’d be passed on to another Hashd convoy heading to the capital on my way to link up with Miss Homa and Proust. The countryside was a flat nothingness. Occasionally on parallel dirt roads a dot moved and we didn’t know if the thing was ours or not. Nothing was taken for granted in victory. Because victory had been here before. And it always managed to slip away. Like fish. Or happiness.

We drove in three trucks, hardened men who breathed retribution and the diesel stench of war and loved it. I sat in front next to the cleric, taking in the murderous smoke of cigarettes that only he and I seemed to not care for, the vehicles putrid with a staleness that is indescribable. If I survived, I would live out my life remembering hours such as this, when breathing seemed pointless. My eyes tried, and failed, to catch the distances where a drone, a plane, a gunship, an enemy suicide truck, a friendly, or really any motherfucker at all who could spook you out of your melancholy might suddenly emerge. But my eyes were lemons, God-given failures that mostly just guessed at the things men spoke of when they pointed into distances and felt for the placement of their weapons.