Dominique remembered dreaming of the birth of a new world, in that hospital bed in Pittsburgh. What it would be like? Would it end the violence and hatred? Would she be part of a transformation? Or would humanity descend into a dark, cold night, alone, and forever? She’d lived in these pitch-black questions a long time. The desert changed that.

Every moment required a choice. She realized that as much as she’d pursued a life of truth on a razor’s edge, the drug of comfort and doubt had always been breathing at her back, too, would always be there, desperate to not have another life elude its Stygian grasp. So, she understood Julian’s dark night.

She breathed what she first breathed in the warehouse after the bomb hit. What she breathed in the catacombs when they made their way toward the light at the end of the tunnel, and stood before the translucent wall.

That language was in the pulse of this night. The same pulse that came from the tablet.

Dominique had been running away from something—from the truth of who she was. And now she found it—belonging to a tribe. She’d dreamed of living among nomads in deserts with abilities to heal. Now, she lived in the deeper truth of that.

It was a lifetime from sitting in her usual place, by the metal-shuttered windows, inside the never-closed American Bar in the Green Zone, Mosul, Iraq, waiting to make her next move.

What happened from here would take her to places beyond any she knew. She wanted Julian to be with her.

The air swelled with a vibration.

She surrendered to that trembling, and an invisible fire emanated from within her, through Julian, and into the night.

She reached for him.

He took her hand.

100

100

Thursday, October 29

Graced by the morning sun, the air swam with golden dust through Catherine’s front hall.

Isabel, Jhana-Merise, Vincente, and Arama were there.

Dominique and Julian came down the stairs and saw them.

Dominique knew this part of their journey was done. She also knew she was part of a nervous system—with a heart and soul that experienced the same love—the same fear.

“Pneuma,” Jhana-Merise said, as if reading Dominique’s mind.

Vincente smiled. He’d stopped being surprised at the deep well of wisdom his daughter possessed.

Arama and Isabel were learning to be sisters again—theirs would be a longer journey to each other.

But all were at the center of this force now—at the core of that which is breathed.

101

101

Sunday, November 1

Nazir stood in the skintight kitchen of his Mosul home with its bullet holes and battered concrete walls.

A delicate silence passed between he and his grandmother.

The nutmeg colored headscarf she wore still softened the wrinkles on her skin toughened by the sun, the desert wind, and life.

She didn’t seem surprised that her grandson had returned to her.