“So what was in the book?”

“Wisdom.”

“What did it say?”

“The man writing those words, he’d lived through a war too.”

“Who doesn’t?”

“He wrote that there’s something cruel about the leaves they grant to the men at the front.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you should be in Syria right now. Or Iraq. Here, you don’t belong. You need to be in the fight.”

“From your mouth to God’s ears, Saleh.”

“Inshallah!”

* * *

Back inside Book City I hovered near the exit. I thought I deserved at least five minutes alone with Atia before I took off again for Iraq, not knowing what exactly I wanted to accomplish in those five minutes. I finally spotted her far from the stage they’d set for Mafiha and Dodonge. People were clapping. There seemed to be some sort of intermission. Atia was busy ordering something at the café next to the magazine section. I didn’t have the energy to trek all the way through that crowd. Maybe I’d join Shorty for those two rakats of prayer after all.

Then, as I turned to leave, I saw him. The same Beatles haircut. That astounded boy’s face behind round, wire-rimmed glasses. You couldn’t miss Daliri of Marcel Proust fame if you tried. I went over, grabbed him by the arm, and pushed him toward the door.

He was terrified. Turning around to object, there was an immediate hint of recognition in his face seeing me and so he said nothing.

I forced him to sit on the back of my motorbike and we rode into the night.

I knew exactly where I was going. I was going to Miss Homa’s.

* * *

“Saleh, it’s official. The Citizen has been sold.”

Atia’s voice was back on the line and it echoed on the roof of the mokeb longhouse. For a moment I was discombobulated, unsure where I was. I’d been so deep in my daydreams of recent events in Tehran that I’d completely forgotten I was waiting at the Eye of the Horse for Atia to call back from across the border. A text message had also arrived reporting that my phone had been recharged over in Tehran. It still astonished me that you could get an actual text message from another country while in a combat zone, informing you that your monthly balance was good and that you could even get a week’s worth of free Internet if you punched in a few numbers.

I said, “Well, we already knew that.”

“But it still hurts. So many of us put in a lot of effort into that place.”