She had said yes to that, not even bothering to ask why she would need to come to Kurdistan to meet me before I did some basic research work that anyone could do in Tehran. The e-mails had gone on for another several rounds and she had given some dates she could get away from teaching. I sat there, in my little mokeb room in Iraq, reading e-mail exchanges of Interrogator H pretending to be me. I did not know what H’s madness entailed for him to do this. And one can throw the word “madness” around too easily. But there was something most definitely reckless in H’s behavior.

* * *

Proust and Abu Faranci were outside my room; I could hear Abu Faranci teaching Proust a French poem. Others had joined their duo and everybody was trying to imitate Abu Faranci’s French. It was heartbreaking, and sublime. And I wrote to H: What is this Erbil business? What do you mean to get from it?

H: Out.

Me: You are mad.

He quoted again: A woman who you love rarely satisfies you completely. So you betray her with a woman you don’t love.

Me: What in Imam Husayn’s name does this mean?

He did not answer and I didn’t press it.

Outside, I heard a blast. It was deafening, and while the window to my room with Cleric J remained intact, the rest of the windows nearer the mokeb entrance were shattered.

I ran outside, following Proust, Abu Faranci, and the others toward the thoroughfare to see the damage.

What had happened was that the old man with the sheep who’d pass by the mokeb at least once a day, sometimes twice, had finally blown himself up. The only casualties were him and his sheep. He had been a good hundred meters off before the vest he was wearing detonated. For an hour sheep entrails lay about the road while convoys squashed it all into a diminishing soup. There was not much left of the old man. We didn’t know who had put him up to it. It appeared he may have detonated early on purpose or there was a malfunction. It put you at a stinging unease, this. The Eye of the Horse was mostly a militarized town. For someone to come right up to your doorstep and blow himself up like that made every precaution seem worthless.

I walked back to the mokeb to busy myself with feeding the men. I had to shut off my mind. For the next few hours I did nothing but cut frozen chicken and make rice to feed a thousand boots.

Before the call for evening prayer I finally looked up to see Abu Faranci standing there watching me. Apparently he’d been there for some time.

My arms were exhausted from negotiating pots you could cook a whole goat in.

“What?”