I didn’t want heaven. Heaven is a bore.

And confounding.

5

Ten days after the interrogation with H, I’d finally traveled to south Tehran to arrange that marriage for Nasif who, I assumed, was still fighting in Syria.

And I’d taken Atia along with me.

“Are you taking my family for fools?”

The father of the young widow/bride-to-be had said this immediately and my heart sank even before he’d finished. I looked at Atia, who looked away. By now martyrdom was a way of life. It was the grammar of our everyday lives, not just an appendage to it. In other words, I knew the news of another death was on someone’s lips even before the news had been spoken.

Atia pressed for the sake of appearances, “Haji Aga, our intention is pure.” She said something about Nasif which I didn’t catch. I was waiting for the bad news to drop and . . . then it did.

The bride-to-be’s father set his phone between us, tapped the app that most of the fighters I knew subscribed to, scrolled down to the latest news from Syria, and there it was—the news of Nasif’s martyrdom.

“When?” I asked.

“Yesterday.”

I took the cell phone and scrolled through more photos. Blood-soaked posts and also romantic ones. All of them filled with the claptrap of an “honorable death.” War had turned into a game of telephone tag. What was happening to us? It wasn’t just Nasif who’d died. They’d all died. Moalem was dead. So were several of the Afghans. Khan-T hadn’t fallen, but the red house finally had—a place no one should have fought over in the first place.

You can tell a true war story if you just keep on telling it.

Sensing my disorientation as we stepped out of there, Atia guided me to a smoothie shop nearby. I had been thinking of that opening sentence from the famous Hemingway story: In the fall the war was always there, but we did not go to it anymore. The line kept echoing like a song I’d sooner forget.

Yes, the war was always there, but in fact it always came at us; we couldn’t avoid it. And it wasn’t just one war; it was wars, one blending into the next like an ill canvas. The war never ended.

Atia said, “It’s as good a time as any to tell you something.”

My heart sank for the second time that hour. “What?”

“Remember that talk we had about marriage? I’ve decided to do it. Get married.”

“I’m in mourning, Atia. Do you have to tell me this now?”

“It’s precisely the right time to tell you. We just went to that house to ask for a girl’s hand in marriage. Her husband’s dead. So is her new suitor. Remember that Hebrew poem you once translated but the Censorship Department wouldn’t allow you to publish?”

“Atia, for the love of Imam Husayn! Now is not the time to have a literary discussion.”

“That poem said Ecclesiastes was wrong to tell us we don’t have time for everything. We do. We do! Because it’s the only life we get, Saleh. We most certainly do have seasons enough for every purpose.”