In return, the machine-gunner’s volley lifted the man off his feet and pounded him back into the building. It was like he had been trying to catch a ball just beyond his reach that went right into the next world. I watched Cleric J and Proust slowly crawl toward Abu Faranci. A pool of blood had already formed around him. I didn’t move. There were more random shots, but it seemed to be clear. Maysam and his men stormed the building belatedly and a few minutes later they came back out carrying only the upside-down black flag of the enemy. Uncharacteristically, since it had God’s name on it, they threw the black flag to the side of the road, and not without some disgust on their faces.

Men came from the north side. Our guys. Clearing buildings one and two at a time. The engines and Maysam’s men moved to join them but I still didn’t move. Haji Yusuf, excited as always, was shouting things I only half heard.

Proust didn’t have a scratch on him. I stood back and watched him staring at Abu Faranci’s dead body. Cleric J was murmuring something; perhaps he was saying a fatiha for the dead Christian.

* * *

Later, when we were situated just as Cleric J wanted in the quartermaster’s place, Proust came up to me while I was cooking the Iraqi rice noodle dish the men loved so much.

“They buried him like a Muslim.”

“The man was righteous,” I said noncommittally without looking up.

“Saleh, I don’t know what to do next.”

“You were counting on being dead. I know.”

“But I’m alive.”

“Seems that way.”

“When then?”

“I’m not the angel of death, you know! Besides, you made a good try. You ran right alongside Abu Faranci. No one will take you for a coward here. I can’t say the same about myself. It could have easily been you instead of him.”

“Do you not feel his absence?”

I glanced up at him finally. I had expected, when the time came, a more intense battle. Something at least mildly heroic. Something that would earn Abu Faranci the gold standard martyr status. But it didn’t really matter, because they were calling him a martyr anyway. And that was all he had wanted. Or maybe he didn’t even want that.