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afterlife more comfortable in every possible way. But Voltaire turns down the offer, and speaks a stern rebuke to Satan, saying that this isn’t the time to make enemies, thank you!”
    In a fit of pique, maybe because he had no idea what to make of the parable or why the driver had recounted it, the Major barked a command. “Stop the car!” he shouted.
    No sooner had the vehicle come to an abrupt halt than the armed youths leapt from the roof, fanning out, their guns at the ready. But the youths inside did not move at all. On edge, the Major got out.
    â€œWhy this unplanned stop?” the driver asked.
    Miffed, the Major said, “I’ll return shortly!” He went around to the driver’s side, and told him, “You’re a volunteer, and I’m in charge of this outfit, and you take orders from me. Keep in mind that we’re at war, and I’ll have you come before the disciplinary commission of the movement if you disobey my orders.” Then he swayed off down a dusty road, along with two youths detailed to escort him, their weapons poised menacingly.
    â€œWhat’s eating him?” asked one of the youths in the vehicle.
    The handsome youth with his leg in a cast speculated that the Major was due to go on a dangerous mission, and was living on his nerves.
    Everyone retreated into the disarray of an imposed silence, embarrassed. Jeebleh sat unmoving, like a candle just blown out, smoking its last moments darkly.
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    OUTSIDE, THERE WAS A FAINT WHIRLING OF SAND. AND THERE WAS LIFE AS Jeebleh might have imagined it in its continuous rebirth, earth to dust, dust to earth, wherein death was avenged.
    With the vehicle parked by the side of the road and the Major and his young militiamen off on some mysterious mission, Jeebleh felt increasingly like a sitting target. His heart beating faster from fear, it occurred to him that they could all be dead at the pull of a trigger. The dead would be mourned and buried—Marabou would see to that—but the militia would regret the loss of the vehicle more. In the mid-eighties, before the collapse, corruption having reached unprecedented levels, poems had circulated on cassette about the ill-gotten money that had brought many Land Cruisers into the country. Jeebleh wished he could remember the words. Nowadays, many of these four-wheel-drive vehicles had ended up in the hands of the fighting militiamen, who mounted their weapons on them, turning them into the battlewagons that became a staple of the civil war footage shown on CNN and the BBC. He kept a wary eye on what was happening outside, in the dusty alleys. Two of the armed youths who had climbed down from the roof of the vehicle stood with their backs to each other, in imitation of what they must have seen in American movies. They nursed immense bulges in their cheeks, great wads of chewed-up qaat, a moderately mild stimulant. They might have been cattle ruminating.
    The driver spoke: “Once again, I feel I must apologize for the behavior of our countrymen, who do not know what is good for them, or how to say thank you to those who mean them well. Our moods swing from one extreme to another, but we haven’t the courage to admit that we’ve strayed from the course of moral behavior. I suppose that is why the civil war goes on and on, because of this lack in us, our inability to appreciate what the international community has tried to do for us: feed the starving and bring about peace in our homeland.”
    Jeebleh wanted to know more about Af-Laawe. “What is Marabou’s story?” he asked.
    Thunderclouds of worry gathered on the driver’s forehead; readying to speak, he made throaty noises similar in intensity to the rumble before a lightning bolt splits the heavens. “Marabou, for a start,” he finally said, “has many aliases, and he changes them as often as we change our shirts.”
    Jeebleh wondered to himself whether