I left him to that thought for a minute and stepped outside. A man without legs was perched on top of the shell of an old white Toyota which itself was perched on top of several other car shells next to a garage full of broken wheels. There was no way to explain how this legless man had gotten up there, but there he was, as surely as I was here now watching him watch the makeshift mosque. He was the illness and hope of this land. I knew that as a reporter I’d never be able to quite convey what I saw here. Yet I didn’t want to take a picture of him either, as easy as that would have been. For the same reason I could no longer go south to the Karbala pilgrimage. I was tired of photos and photographers capturing pilgrims as if they were coins in a piggy bank. Miss Homa must have taken one look at that landscape and seen the same thing. Death would have diminished returns alongside several million walkers having their pictures taken all the time.

Smoking a cigarette, Jasim joined me outside. Our eyes rested on the legless man.

I said, “Look at me and my partner Saeed, we worked for all kinds of people. In fact, you were the one who brought a lot of those jobs for us. But no one’s threatening us with death for working with infidels, are they? None of it matters now, Jasim. Someone is playing with you. That’s all.”

“And I should take it easy because it is only a joke? Would you take it easy? I have a family. You just saw my little ones.”

He had a point.

He went on: “By the way, what happened between you and Saeed? Why do you no longer work with him?”

“Never trust a man with a camera, Jasim. His loyalty is always to his contract.”

“You are telling me this now? It is my job to work with men of that sort. It’s how I make my living in this terrible land.”

“And look at where it got you today!”

He turned and stared at me. “Thank you for making me feel so much better.” He spat and walked to his car.

“You’re welcome—and I’m sorry!”

I closed my good eye and the world was soft again. I was back in Khan-T in Syria in a pothole with Nasif waiting for the enemy to make a move. I was with Moalem writing in his tedious diary. I was with the Afghans coming back to the red house to show they were not just fair-weather friends. I was with Atia going to a widow’s house in the Abdulabad District of Tehran to ask for the widow’s hand on behalf of a comrade who had already been killed a day earlier.

Atia picked up on the second ring.