It was inevitable. An Abbas sequel. This was the brainchild of Saeed, who ended up collaborating on it with State TV. I didn’t begrudge him that. And the series became an even bigger hit when Dodonge, because of his so-called war expertise on the enemy in Syria-Iraq, was taken on as a “consultant” to the show. The show, however, was really a prequel—the life of Abbas before he became known. A young Abbas, in other words, showing the precociousness of his early years growing up in Basra before becoming the tragic sniper superhero of Mesopotamia.

The war for me was over—even though it continued in pockets and in fits and starts and promised to move on to other frontiers with other volunteers. I am back to writing occasional art reviews for my beloved Atia’s new magazine. I do it for her, not because I have to. It is as if all of us had somehow found our rhythm through the martyrdom of distant others. Mafiha, for one, did another tour of the major cities of Europe with his peace poems; by the time he came back, he had already made good on the tip I gave him about Miss Homa’s remaining works and scored a killing on flipping two paintings. With the profit, he now runs a gallery on the recently fashionable-again Sanai Street, where they have literary evenings and workshops on the second floor. I have an open invitation.

Atia will be a mother soon. My own mother I visited just once at the Behesht-e Zahra cemetery. I laid flowers on her grave and played five minutes of an episode of a Turkish soap through my cell phone for her. I would not visit her again.

Yet the dead howl to be remembered and the living accommodate them. Perhaps once a week I search online and see old friends—Haji Yusuf, Maysam, Cleric J—posting what now seem like ancient images of a recent war that is already threatened with oblivion. Once in a while in these posts I run across someone I have known who has been newly martyred. Maybe their vehicle went off road and hit an unexploded device; maybe they were taken down by the few remnants of the enemy who still lurk in the shadows. It’s these fresh ends that really rub one the wrong way. They grate against the reality of everyday peace and make you suspect that what you did was of absolutely no consequence. The only thing worse than losing a comrade is losing them dumbly postcombat. This is what I told Interrogator H the other day over a cup of coffee. He is back at his station and in fact never left it.

I asked him, “Why did you want me in Erbil? What did you expect to happen there?”

“The ocean is big and one tries one’s hands at everything.”

“Are you a philosopher now?”

“I always was.”

Then he asked about Proust.