Names. Everywhere there were names, so many combatants and hangers-on and lost souls treading the dying misfortune of Mesopotamia that one got lost in the maze of titles and martyrs and those waiting in line. I had developed a fear of returning to the places where war was at a respite or nonexistent. Though dangerous, Tal Abta was still a few kilometers too far away from the action; I would rather go back to our mokeb and wait for the enemy to strike again. It would have been suicide on their part to hit us once more, but suicide was their stuff of life. And somehow I held the unreasonable faith that if only I stayed at the mokeb long enough, all the dead would return as if they were ghosts on a catwalk.

* * *

In the designated gas station just south of Tal Abta, a row of men sat looking like they had just been refused their mothers’ milk.

Cleric J said to me in Persian, “Saleh, today is another day of justice.”

I faltered. “But I have that ride to catch to Baghdad.” I reminded Cleric J that the roads were clogged with refugees. I had been assuming that my new ride would be another Hashd truck with its flags, bullhorns, and general mania. But now I was told I’d be going with a “civilian” vehicle. This meant long waits at roadblocks where any car ahead or behind might turn out to be a final call.

“Turn on your camera,” Cleric J commanded. “Record everything.”

Maysam and Haji Yusuf and the rest of the men fanned out through the gas station. When a car tried to enter one of the platforms, they directed the driver away. I sat in a corner and trained the lens on the men who had been sitting there before we arrived.

Cleric J went into a lengthy monologue about the nature of justice. After a while I lost the thread of the words, as the convoluted Arabic became enmeshed with my own thoughts of home and my mother and Atia and more martyrdom.

Cleric J stopped talking. There was a long, awkward pause, and then one of the men began his turn. He was a big man, maybe as big as Maysam, and spoke with the deference and I-eat-dirt voice of someone who has known shame. It became apparent he was the oldest brother among the men sitting with him. He spoke of the blight in their family, the disgrace, and that whatever Cleric J decided, his word would be law.

“Your brother took ten thousand American dollars to buy sheep for a brother of ours in Samarra. Instead, well, you already know what happened. In times like this, when we all should be as one, is this the correct path or the path of the devil?”

The man’s voice shook. “I wish I could kill him myself.”

“No need for that. When does he get out of prison?”