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Back Out of Mesopotamia Save as PDF
Chapters (20)
  1. Cover page
  2. Title Page
  3. Chapter One
  4. Chapter Two
  5. Chapter Three
  6. Chapter Four
  7. Chapter Five
  8. Chapter Six
  9. Chapter Seven
  10. Chapter Eight
  11. Chapter Nine
  12. Chapter Ten
  13. Chapter Eleven
  14. Chapter Twelve
  15. Chapter Thirteen
  16. Chapter Fourteen
  17. Chapter Fifteen
  18. About Salar Abdoh
  19. Copyright Page
  20. About Akashic Books

I could not step through that threshold. I couldn’t do it. Instead I backed off until I was standing in the middle of the dusty road where just the other week two lost souls had taken a crack at us by pointing their RPGs toward the right target at the wrong moment. A truckload of men came barreling by, their stone faces tired. I don’t know which sater they were coming from or how long they’d been there or where they were going. In my mind I called them war flies—expendable, solid. Maybe they were heading for Syria. Or home.

Khaled’s place looked like a ruin. It hadn’t been hit. But it had gone unused and smelled foul. I was sure that since the mokeb had moved up the road, men came down here only to use the place as an outhouse. As I stepped through the door I could discern movement. I stopped and waited for my weak eyes to get used to the dim light inside.

I hadn’t noticed that the guy was already standing, staring me dead in the face—the way men do when they don’t know whether to turn savage or ask for mercy.

He didn’t have a weapon. Or maybe he did but was out of ammo and didn’t care anymore.

In a reversal of the very same situation, I recalled the Quds commando I’d met in Tehran who told me he’d jumped up abruptly with his empty weapon, making himself a perfect target and counting on the enemy shooting first and asking questions later. He hoped to get enough bullets in him to not have to experience the ordeal of a slowly cut-off head. They’d obliged him and still he’d survived. This was called luck.

Sometimes it happens.

The thin-faced man grunted something about being ta’baan, so tired that he was just resting here. I grunted back wordlessly as if to indicate I understood.

I still can’t be sure who he was and to which side he belonged. Maybe he was just a coward, or another poet who wanted some downtime away from the crassness of war. Even as I walked away I had already convinced myself I’d done a good deed that day. It’s amazing how these little fabrications can help you go on.

And I wanted to go on.

Chapter Fifteen

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