Khaled said, “Let’s go to their billet and find out.”

We went. Ali-Akbar’s Iranian mates, the Three Magi, weren’t there. A young Iraqi sniper, all of sixteen, pointed to a white Toyota with two men inside. Iranians. Intel men. One could distinguish them from regular soldiers by their jadedness and general lack of enthusiasm.

Khaled asked the question—where was Ali-Akbar?

There are some words you never want to hear if you can help it. Yet after you hear the word, you just have to rearrange your brain and tap deep into your drying well of stoicism or else you’ll lose your mind: “Istashada. Martyred.”

* * *

The mokeb became my Ferris wheel. Cleric J and his team had done their stint for the month and were ready to head back south to their wives and children. It was night and we lay in a filthy room the enemy had booby-trapped four previous times. The only thing that never changed about the room was the framed picture of some old European fairy-tale gingerbread house on the pock-marked wall; no matter how many times this place switched hands, neither side took the framed picture down to smash it to pieces. I could not figure it out. Maybe in the hearts of all of us, a light burned for Hansel and Gretel and cease-fires.

And probably this had been the room of a child once.

Outside that room was even filthier, the mokeb a monstrous trash heap with the drying and despicable turds of good-natured, often lazy men who seldom bothered to take their business elsewhere.

On more than one occasion I’d watched Cleric J turn combat into a dance. His business was faith and supply lines. In war he turned into a kid in a candy shop. Saeed and I had discovered him when the war first began. Somehow he always got himself into the thick of the fray. And there he stayed, directing bumbling tank traffic as if he were General Rommel, and killing time in no-man’s-land so that enemy snipers could casually take a crack at him. I didn’t understand him, but I loved him. He was also useful. I could hide behind his clerical robe and avoid Iranian Intel who’d sooner shoo me home and back to writing pointless art reviews.

“Saleh, if you stay here too long you will become like me. War will get into your skin and bones and you will forget your duties.”

Cleric J’s Persian was singsong. He had spent most of the years of Saddam’s dictatorship in Iran and learned our language. After losing three brothers and a leg he was still fighting. The boyish good nature in his voice didn’t let up even when men were trying to stuff their oozing guts back into their split bellies. I wondered if he’d ever had nightmares. Whenever he quoted from the Koran a mischievous twinkle came into his eyes, as if to say, I really do know this stuff and I am firm in my faith, but it’s not where my heart is. My heart lies with the men at the sater.