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the village occupants. The still- alive ones anyway.
    I find myself holding out my hand to the fly-infested cow as if to tell her to calm down. What’s done is done.
    In the near distance now, I can see the smoke that rises up from the bombing.
    I can see just a hint of orange-red flame dripping up towards the brilliant blue sky. I sense a slight commotion coming from sandaled feet against a gravel floor, and the occasional high-pitched cry of the wounded. Some of the chickens and dogs are running around in confusion. A saddled horse is bucking and trotting a crazy circle inside a small wood corral. I also make out something else. A gut-wrenching wailing. It sings of grief and breakdown.
    Then a gunshot breaks the plate-glass tension. It’s followed by a solid thud, like a big old tree falling in the forest. I look over my right shoulder to see that the cow has dropped to the earth, her big head propped up by the chain around her neck, her fleshy tongue hanging out of her black mouth. I about-face and observe one of my men lower his M4 carbine just as the brass casing catches air, rapidly spins end over end, then makes a slow arcing descent to the ground, the sound of brass against rock making a somehow pleasant but infinitely sad ping.
    â€œYou. Stupid. Bastard.” I say, turning back to the dead cow.
    â€œI’m gonna eat good tonight, Cap,” the kid chuckles.
    I shake my head, step on through the already open gates. That’s when I spot the village center and the same fresh water well where I met the elders only yesterday morning after prayers.
    There are a few bodies lying on the ground by the well.
    One of the bodies belongs to a little boy.

Chapter 9
    WHEN I WAKE, I’M no longer in bed. Instead, I find myself perched four stories above the feeder canal. The roof beneath me is shingled with clay tiles, some of which have been crushed under my dead weight.
    The good news is that my sight has returned, however briefly.
    The bad news: I’m up on a roof, dressed in nothing but a pair of pea green US Army issue boxer shorts, barely a few inches from dropping some sixty or seventy feet into a filthy feeder canal. That is, if I don’t hit the narrow stone pavement that runs along its opposite side.
    The obvious question is screaming inside my head.
    How the hell did I get up here?
    The answer is that I must be sleepwalking.
    I’ve never been known to sleepwalk. I can’t ever remember waking up somewhere other than where I laid my head prior to falling asleep. Be it the solid ground of an Afghan hillside or my queen-sized mattress back in Troy. So why should it start now at forty-three years old? The ultimate reason behind it must be the ultimate cause behind the blindness.
    Post-traumatic stress the doctors call it.
    But I’m supposed to be improving. Forgetting the war. Forgetting that little boy. I’m supposed to be making progress. Instead I’m up on a roof and I have no idea how to get down.
    Then a voice.
    Grace.
    â€œOh dear God!” she shouts. “Oh. Christ. Oh God. Don’t move, Nick. Please don’t move. Don’t. Move.”
    â€œGood idea,” I say.
    She’s standing on the small stone terrace that’s perched against the side of this old building directly outside the open French doors.
    â€œHow in the world…?” she begs.
    â€œI’ve been asking myself the same thing, my love.”
    Off in the distance, the view is spectacular. I see the Grand Canal, the early morning delivery barges coming and going from the different docking points all along the main water artery. Beyond that, and beyond the tile roofs of the buildings, I see the wide open basin and the sea and the outlying islands and a rare winter sun rising brilliant orange and warm. I see the birds. I see the sun. And it feels wonderful.
    â€œNick, do your eyes work?”
    â€œFleetingly, my dear.”
    â€œGreat. Keep joking. You’re about to end up