In Damascus we were given plenty of rope, even though there were entire neighborhoods that remained off-limits. Two wrong turns could still be fatal. This put us on slight edge. And Nasif suggested that we go to the Zaynab shrine first, then he’d drop me off to catch a ride to Beirut. I’d first been to the Zaynab just before the war began. With a woman whose love bled us both. When she took my photograph by the citadel, I knew I was going to leave. The realization came at a moment of perfect beauty, as the Damascene sky shifted at sunset to a deeper shade of blood orange that made partings not just possible but necessary.

It was this same Damascene sky that I now glimpsed again after so long. I looked to the side of the road that lead to the Zaynab, not nearly as crowded as that first time, and saw a group of young men, Iranians, sharing some bread and cheese next to one of the shrine’s many trinket stands. I knew their kind. They were me. And Nasif. They’d sold the shirts off their backs and somehow made it way out here to be Defenders of the Faith and Protectors of the Holy Places. But nobody let them into the inner sanctum of bloodletting. They didn’t have the right connections with the Guards, or lacked the skills, or were just plain unlucky. They’d come here because they had nothing else going on. They came because there was something to be said about defending the faith even if, like me, you haven’t much faith to begin with. I wanted to go over and kiss them. Martyrs by default, martyrs because of the poverty of their options, they were here to be immortalized as heroes. They wanted to enter the chronicles of sacrifice.

There’s a passage in his book where Marcel Proust calls such men fictions in the midst of daily life.

Pointing at them, I said to Nasif, “Can’t you take them to Khan-T with you?”

Without even looking their way, he dropped the Afghan accent and spoke soberly: “I don’t have the authority.”

“Who gave us the authority to be here in Syria? We’re trespassers and you know it.”

“Don’t talk like that. This is war.”

“That hasn’t escaped me. Which is why we need the boots and the bodies.”

We had become brothers of sorts, but he knew that I knew he was powerless to take those boys in. If he did, he’d have to do it for every caravan of lost souls coming here to have a go at the enemy. He didn’t have the logistics for it, never mind the authority.

“I am tired of this war, Saleh. I want to go home, get married, settle down. I don’t get paid nearly enough to do this. And even if I did, money isn’t the reason I came here.”

I was shocked. I’d thought he was counting down his days on earth.

“Why did you come then?”