Sometime later two rattling armored vehicles went right up to the enemy nest and blew it to pieces. The whole thing was so anticlimactic and unheroic that I didn’t bother to go over for a look while everyone went on shouting Li beyk ya Husayn. But as I continued to scroll through useless e-mails on the cell, a text message came from H.

H: O Channel says you haven’t sent anything in the past week for the Abbas show.

Me: A little busy at the moment.

Maysam was shouting for everyone to come over to where the nest had been. We all got up and walked dutifully that way. We were tired of the enemy. Tired of their clever bunkers and their tenacity. Most of our Hashd forces could have been home this evening for dinner. Instead they were here in this camel’s ass of a no-man’s-land trying to smoke out remnants of a dwindling war. Maysam pointed to a hole in the ground where the enemy had scuttled back and forth over the past few weeks. Cleric J was on the phone, hearing it again from a commander—exactly what was the reason that the people of the mokeb had to be out here engaging the enemy? Cleric J gave his usual beautiful and dubious lecture about the burden of those who were living, and that we’d really come so far out because we’d heard there were villages that needed feeding. It was untrue, of course—no villages here. Cleric J had been itching for a fight and the men at the mokeb were depressed from the previous two days and nights of rain. Nothing like getting shot at to remind you of the blood running through your veins. Cleric J was a therapist at heart.

H: Are you still there?

Me: Please transmit the following to O Channel: Abbas falls in love.

H: How?

Me: He meets his match in a woman sniper near Hawija. He stalks her for days and finally has her in his sights as she is drawing water from a spring. He does not pull the trigger. She is . . .

H: Beautiful?

Me: Majestic. O Channel will have to find a suitable woman for the part.

H: They won’t go for it.

Me: The writers, Ajooj and Majooj, will have to deal with the Censorship Department. That’s not my concern.

H: Ajooj and Majooj?

Me: The cowriters. It’s my name for them. You’ll know who they are.