On the road, Jasim stayed silent for too long. It was unlike him to be so subdued. He meant to put me on one of the buses near Baghdad Airport heading for Najaf. We drove and after a while the sea of people walking, sitting, eating, crying, beating their chests, mourning and celebrating and loving Imam Husayn, got to be overwhelming. They were all heading in the same general direction so they could get on with their walking pilgrimage. There is something beautiful and unlikely about the “walking pilgrim,” the kind who just walks and walks—the entirety of her purpose to prove to herself, through pain, a love of the martyr. I had come across walkers as far north as Samarra who were lost and searching for the Askari shrine while there were still reports of enemy snipers two kilometers away. A busload of Iranians had gone up in smoke in a suicide attack just the other day on the way to Karbala and still they came. They came no matter what. They walked like there was no tomorrow. And truly, that was the point; there may not be a tomorrow because our Messiah, the Mahdi, might suddenly appear after all. One had to do the walking while there was still time. I’d been to two previous Arbaeen pilgrimages, but all of a sudden this sea of humanity—which would only become a thousand times worse as I got closer to Karbala—appeared impossible to wade through.

“I can’t do it, my friend.”

“You cannot do what?”

“Go to Karbala. I’m sure Imam Husayn understands. I cannot face these crowds. I’m no good. I have been no good for a while now.”

I reached over and held Jasim’s wrist as it went to shift gears.

He looked at me. “Are you all right, Saleh?”

“I’m not. I’ve been seeing things lately. I was in the metro in Tehran and I imagined the train pulling into the station. It was a tank. I was sure of it. I had to run out of that station. I haven’t been able to go inside the metro ever since. Have you ever stared down at the barrel of an American tank, my brother?”

“Saleh, you know I have. More than once.”

As if on cue, the phone buzzed and there was another call from Atia.

When I still didn’t answer, she wrote: You must call me. Much news.

Bad? I replied.

She did not answer. I turned the phone off. Thought about it, then turned it back on.