It wasn’t long afterward that one day I woke up back in my house across from the synagogue in Tehran and realized my computer and all that was in it had died—like Abu Faranci at the Eye of the Horse, or like my lost cell phone before it. All those photographs and videos taken by a half-blind man—gone!

I could reach out to the living (and I did) to retrieve some of the images—photos others had taken of us at places like Khaled’s billet. Shots taken with cell phones through cracked, battle-beaten screens. Certainly many of these images were circulating around. The ether didn’t let it all go up in smoke. But my own images, the ones I’d taken with my own hands, they had disappeared for good from one day to the next.

This didn’t make me question what we did and if any of it was real. It was. All of it. The proof is in the everlasting posters of the martyrs. Or at least as long as the martyrs are still honored in posters and photographs. Because they too may one day go up in smoke. In memory, just as they did in body. Then what? At nights I lie awake and watch the synagogue chandeliers and think about such things. Because I haven’t even a war to keep me busy now and away from the demons of peace.

* * *

Abu Faranci’s death put a damper on us all. Cleric J gave us a variation of a sermon on loss. He said that it was debatable whether we could call Abu Faranci a martyr. Who knew why he had really come to us? But come he had, and he’d done more than his share. Therefore we had to honor the man, but only in our memories and taking it no further than that. There was a practical reason for this, Cleric J reminded us again. If we brought news of his death beyond Iraq, somebody would surely make a case against us. They’d say that we had murdered him. Because this was what they always said about us. How could we explain (and who would do the explaining?) that Abu Faranci had been among the best of the righteous. He had served and fought valiantly. And when the call came, he had given his life. Abu Faranci was one of us. And we would recall him the way men recall those who have taken a bullet for their brothers: we’d keep him in our prayers.

Nevertheless, his death was the closing of another chapter. The enemy had tried, desperately, to make another “last push” in these parts and failed. It had been a ridiculously low-level fight and when it was over we’d sat around wondering what the point of it was.