I wrote to H next that I was ready for Erbil and asked him what exactly he wanted me to talk about with the “enemy” scholar once I met her there. He didn’t answer. Two hours later, when the weather went from chilly to downright cold, I was still sitting there waiting.

My Iranian data plan was dwindling fast. I could tell by how slow my phone was getting. I did a sluggish crawl through the Western papers to see how the war was going according to them. As usual, they didn’t disappoint. There were several pieces about the Afghan fighters and how the Iranians were using them as mercenaries and giving them citizenship in return for their services. I thought about my Afghans in Syria, especially of that moment when they all ran back into the red house to support us, afterward kissing me and Moalem like we’d been their long-lost fathers. Later still that night: how we all stood in two rows at a special prayer with Moalem leading, speaking the same mother tongue, and later somebody opening a page of Hafez and reading it out loud, then someone reciting a verse by Rūmī, and finally calling it a night with something from Khwaja Abdullah of Herat. I wanted to shout through the ether of the Milky Way and set the record straight. I wanted to explain about Hafez and Rūmī and Khwaja Abdullah and ask the world: What the fuck do you know about Khan-T and the Afghans and the red house? What do you know about the Arab warriors still standing there by Khaled’s old house, warming their hands on this chilly night in Mesopotamia with little more than the shirts on their backs and their ancient Kalashnikovs?

I wrote to the enemy scholar: Madam, I can meet you in Erbil exactly two weeks from now.

I had created a new e-mail address for myself and apologized to her for having to take extra precautions. I asked her not to write to the old e-mail again. I gave her a precise location at the Lengeh Souk in Erbil’s old town, where resourceful Syrian Kurd refugees had ended up running small businesses. They also ran excellent coffeehouses, better than anything the local Iraqi Kurds in Erbil could manage.

By early the next morning, when she still hadn’t written back, I knew she wasn’t coming to the coffeehouse I had designated. This had been another case of “chasing after black peas,” as the Persians say, and I had no idea what H had meant to do in Erbil with this enemy scholar. But I had wanted to go there anyway. If for nothing else, just to get away from the mokeb for a while—to go to a hotel bar and order a shot of anything and drink it without dread and without anyone’s judgment.