Proust stared back at me with that by now familiar look of frightened disbelief. He was a small cornered animal at that moment. I watched the halo slowly lift and disappear from him. I had perfect vision on him suddenly. It told me he was not going to be a martyr. At least not anytime soon. I was not sure whether to be happy for him or disappointed. I only knew I had to get him back to Iraq before the wrong people discovered him here. Miss Homa in the meantime sat back and watched our exchange.

I repeated my question. “What about Marcel Proust?”

“My favorite writer,” he said hesitantly.

“Does one take this kind of writer to war?”

“I was not technically in war. I was with a film crew. But how do you even know all this?”

“Where do you think you are living, brother? The sixteenth arrondissement of Paris in the late nineteenth century? Don’t worry about how I know all this.”

“It is not a crime to take a book with you to war.”

“It’s not normal to take that book.”

“Why not?” He seemed positively affronted now.

“Well, for one thing, it’s too big. And elegant. And beautiful. And literary. It’s a bloody masterpiece, isn’t it?”

“For all those reasons I took it.”

“And underlined a lot of it.”

“That I did.”

“Why?”

“Sorry, but is this some kind of interrogation?”

“Yes. Maybe.”

“I underlined the book because I was trying to compare the outdated English translation I had on me with the original French that I’d already read.”

“A regular scholar!” I scoffed.

“I’ve never read him,” Miss Homa suddenly cut in. “Mr. Marcel Proust, I mean.”

We both looked at her, surprised for an instant that she was even there.

I asked, “Why did you leave the book at the Eye of the Horse then? What kind of a man leaves a book like that in such a place? Are you mad?”

“There was an attack. We had to leave fast.”

“I figured. But where did you go after that?”

“Karbala.”

“Why Karbala?”

“Because . . . because I wanted to cry at Imam Husayn’s shrine. I’d been spared certain death and I wanted to join him.”

“You wanted to join Imam Husayn?”

“Yes, Imam Husayn. The greatest martyr of all time.”

“You are lying. A man who reads these kinds of books doesn’t go crying to Imam Husayn.”

“Anything is possible, sir.”

He was right. Anything is possible. Somewhere in the warped line of time, Imam Husayn and a European masterwork had come together. That was all there was to it.

I asked, “Did you go to Karbala instead of heading home because you knew they’d already made you a hero back in Iran? A martyr?”

“There was that too. I could not go back, could I?”

“So why are you here now? Why did you come back to Tehran?”