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up, “for one last time,” and she intended to say no but actually said yes, and the sex they had was
passionate farewell sex, and it was, not unsurprisingly, surprisingly good.
Later in life she would sometimes wonder what became of him, and she would never know.
• • •
THE FOLLOWING EVENING helicopters filled the sky like birds startled by a gunshot, or by the blow of
an axe at the base of their tree. They rose, singly and in pairs, and fanned out above the city in the
reddening dusk, as the sun slipped below the horizon, and the whir of their rotors echoed through
windows and down alleys, seemingly compressing the air beneath them, as though each were mounted
atop an invisible column, an invisible breathable cylinder, these odd, hawkish, mobile sculptures,
some thin, with tandem canopies, pilot and gunner at different heights, and some fat, full of personnel,
chopping, chopping through the heavens.
Saeed watched them with his parents from their balcony. Nadia watched them from her rooftop,
alone.
Through an open door, a young soldier looked down upon their city, a city not overly familiar to
him, for he had grown up in the countryside, and was struck by how big it was, how grand its towers
and lush its parks. The din around him was incredible, and his belly lurched as he swerved.