I wrote to H: Tell O Channel that they must end the Abbas show with his falling for the enemy sniper woman. Abbas and the woman begin a cat-and-mouse chase that is their version of a flirtation. The flirtation of the best two snipers in Iraq. But in the end, one of them has to kill the other. This is the law of this land. And it is not the man who kills the woman. It cannot be.

Men dispersed for sleep now and I saw that light was seeping from underneath the room already thick with the breath and snores of those who’d been on first night watch. I went outside. Across the road the mokeb had come to life. Haji Yusuf, Maysam, Cleric J—everybody was out front serving tea and dates and calling out, Shabab, shabab, hala-bikum, hala-bikum. The machinery of combat was unwrapping itself for the day. The morning freeze of northern Iraq chilled the bones and men jumped off personnel carriers with cold faces, rubbing their hands together to take their bitter tea with mountains of sugar. There was nowhere else I wanted to be on this earth. The big guns aiming for Syria still hadn’t quit. They were annoying, like dogs when they go on too long.

I went back to Khaled’s and into the kitchen where it was still too early for anyone to barge in except for two men who went back and forth catching up to their short morning prayers. I wrote quietly for the next hour, drawing out the contours of the Abbas tragedy for the TV show’s finale back in Tehran. I was filled with doubt again. The writing life in my corner of the world, except for brief interludes of good, had turned out to be not just a disappointment but a tectonic lie. This realization was so all-encompassing that little could be salvaged from the rubble.