This was a peaceful interlude that I didn’t want to violate by calling north to see how the war was going. The war was not going anywhere. I’d get back to it soon enough.

I tried to get Miss Homa to eat, but she would not budge about her fasting. Proust retired into himself, and would only occasionally take up the slack for the barber. The barber had a name but I cannot remember it now. Sometimes it seems that it is only the names of the dead I can recall. The living being immaterial. Miss Homa wasted to nothing by the hour and the barber appeared to understand perfectly why we were here. He asked no questions. We were his pilgrims. He would not deny us. A woman had come to die in Samarra. This to him was as good a reason as any to be in Samarra.

“I have put all my affairs in order, Saleh.”

“I know. You have already told me these things.”

“My paintings. Everything. After I am gone, you will give notice that I have departed. Then they can dig each other’s eyes out over the prices of my works.”

Proust came back from a visit to the shrine sometime on the second day. He had a book in his hand. It was Spanish poetry that had been translated into Arabic. I knew he could not understand enough Arabic to read with ease, but it appeared to have been the closest thing to his heart that he could dig up in this place. So I left him with his poetry and his sulking and waited for Miss Homa to die.

She died on the third day around noon. Three hours before, we had been chatting about the martyrdom of Imam Husayn and she had told me of her special love for Imam Husayn’s brother, Abu al-Fazl. This was the man who had given up his life for the imam and his thirsty companions while trying to fetch water through enemy lines.

“Do you think it’s wrong to love Abu al-Fazl as much as Imam Husayn, Saleh?”

She was descending into a state of semiconsciousness and delirium. She had not had a religious bone in her body most of her life. Now she was comparing her love of Imam Husayn and Abu al-Fazl; it was the kind of transformation you don’t know whether to be suspicious of or admire.

I held her hand. “It’s all right to love Abu al-Fazl like you love Imam Husayn.”

She smiled and did not say another word after that.

It was a Wednesday, I think. Proust was cutting hair next to the barber. His knack for the job was impressive. His book of Spanish poems lay by the sink, dog-eared on a page with a poem titled “Y Nada Importa.”

And Nothing Matters.