Part 3: The Flight and the Fire
Jake Monroe hadn’t flown overseas in fifteen years.
The last time he boarded a military plane in full gear, everything smelled like oil, gunpowder, and nervous sweat. Now, in a civilian terminal, he sat in jeans and an old denim jacket, a worn duffel bag at his feet, and the buzz of airport announcements humming in the background like static in his bones.
Melissa dropped him off at the curb without much to say.
“You have your meds?” she asked.
Jake nodded.
“Cash?”
“Only enough.”
She reached out, her fingers grazing his forearm. “Jake, you don’t have to save anyone this time.”
He gave her a tired smile. “I’m not going to save. I’m going to remember.”
She didn’t kiss him goodbye. But she watched until he disappeared through the sliding doors.
The flight was long and quiet.
Jake dozed in short, haunted bursts. In one dream, he was back in the smoke-choked hallway. In another, he saw a boy’s face — dirt-streaked, wide-eyed — then nothing but dust and fire.
He clutched the duffel tighter and shifted in his seat.
Three rows ahead, a father held a toddler, bouncing her gently. Jake watched them — the way the man leaned close, whispered something that made the girl laugh — and felt a cold ache behind his ribs. He’d never learned how to hold Ben like that. Not really.
War teaches you how to let go of things fast. But it never teaches you how to pick them back up.
He landed in Baghdad just after dawn.
The airport had changed. There were still armed guards, still concrete barriers, but now the signs were bilingual. Construction cranes dotted the skyline. The air smelled less of fear and more of dust baked into sunburned pavement.
A thin teenager stood near the exit holding a piece of cardboard that read:
“Mr. Jake Monroe — Welcome”
Jake approached slowly.
“You Karim?” he asked.
The boy smiled wide. His English was lightly accented, precise. “Yes, sir. My father sends his respects. He is preparing the house.”
Karim looked like his father must have at that age — skinny, serious eyes, but with a sharpness behind them that felt American somehow. A worldlier kid than Jake expected.
They shook hands.
Karim’s grip was firm.
“You look taller in my father’s story,” he said with a grin.
Jake laughed, genuinely, for the first time in weeks.
The car ride to Fallujah took hours.
Jake watched the land roll by: dry riverbeds, rusting tank carcasses still half-buried off the shoulder, school buses full of kids in pressed white shirts.
He asked about the area, about the family, and Karim answered patiently.
“My father teaches now,” he said. “Primary school. After the war, he worked with UN reconstruction. Then local government. He says the most powerful weapon is chalk.”
Jake smiled. “He’s right.”
“We lost our old house in the fighting,” Karim added. “But the foundation remained. He rebuilt on it.”
That line struck Jake harder than he expected.
When they arrived, Jake’s throat caught.
The house stood where the wreckage once was — modern now, squared off with whitewashed walls and solar panels clinging to the roof. But the lot still bore scars. A chunk of street was sunken near the gate. The sidewalk bore spiderweb cracks.
And under the tamarisk tree beside the garden wall, a small stone plaque read:
“In memory of what was not lost.”
Karim helped with his bag. Inside, the air was cool, the tile floors clean. The smell of cumin and roasted garlic drifted from the kitchen. Jake’s stomach growled.
Omar stepped out from a doorway, slower than Jake expected. The boy he once saved was now a man of thirty, with deep lines around his mouth and a permanent limp in his right leg.
For a moment, they just looked at each other.
Then Omar opened his arms.
Jake moved first.
The hug was awkward — one strong arm, one weaker shoulder, but it held decades of silence. Omar’s voice trembled as he said, “I always remembered your face.”
Jake pulled back. “You were a kid. Scared out of your mind. I didn’t think you saw anything.”
“I saw you run into fire,” Omar said. “That stays with a person.”
Over lunch, they spoke more.
Karim hovered like a translator and bridge. Jake talked about his son, his work, the price of concrete back in Texas. Omar spoke about teaching, about rebuilding, about what had been lost and what survived.
When dessert came — a small tray of dates and black coffee — Omar leaned back and looked at Jake more seriously.
“I buried something in the ground that day,” he said. “Not just fear. I think I buried hope. But you… you left behind proof that someone cared. That memory has kept me upright.”
Jake didn’t know how to answer that.
So he reached into his pocket and laid the dog tag on the table.
Omar smiled.
Karim looked at it, then at Jake. “Why did you wear that?”
Jake shrugged. “In case they had to ID the body.”
Karim nodded slowly. “So this… was to help someone else find you.”
Jake’s throat tightened.
He hadn’t thought about it like that in years.
After dinner, Karim brought out an old photograph.
Black and white. Faded. It showed a boy — soot-streaked, standing barefoot in rubble. And in the background, just barely visible, a man in a U.S. uniform.
Jake.
The photo had been taken by a local journalist, later smuggled out.
“My father kept this,” Karim said. “He said it proved that war didn’t take everything.”
Jake studied the photo in silence.
He felt the old guilt — the ones he didn’t save, the homes that collapsed too soon, the orders he gave that cost lives.
But in this photo, just this once, something had gone right.
Later, alone in the small guest room, Jake sat by the window.
The air smelled like dust and warm stone. Somewhere in the distance, a call to prayer echoed through the evening.
He held the photo in one hand and the dog tag in the other.
And for the first time since coming home…
he didn’t feel like a ghost.
Part 4: The Wall and the Weight
Jake woke to the sound of chickens.
The morning sun poured in through the open shutters, warm and bright, laying soft shadows across the tile floor. For a moment, he thought he was back home in Texas, maybe on someone’s ranch job site. But then came the call to prayer — clear, melodic, reverent — and he remembered exactly where he was.
Fallujah.
Iraq.
And just outside, the boy he’d saved was now a man.
He washed his face in the basin, dressed in clean clothes Melissa had folded for him before the trip, and stepped into the courtyard. The scent of cardamom and baking bread greeted him.
Omar was sitting on a low bench beneath a fig tree, a cup of coffee steaming in his hand. Karim knelt nearby, brushing sand off an old brick wall with a wire brush.
“Morning,” Jake said.
Omar smiled. “Welcome to another day.”
Jake pointed at Karim. “What’s he working on?”
Karim looked up, his hands dusty. “We’re restoring what’s left of the old foundation. The house that stood here before the war.”
Jake stepped closer. The wall was barely waist-high — old stones, chipped and scorched, but still clinging together. Some bore black soot stains. Others were etched with small symbols: crescent moons, initials, a child’s chalk drawing fossilized by time.
“I thought you built a new house?” Jake asked.
“We did,” Omar said. “But I told Karim: don’t bury the bones. Honor them. The house stands here because that wall stayed standing.”
Jake crouched beside Karim. He touched one of the blackened bricks.
“I think I ran past this,” he said. “That day.”
“You did,” Omar said. “And right here, where you’re kneeling… is where you dropped the tag.”
Jake swallowed. Something clenched behind his ribs.
After breakfast, Omar gave him a tour of the neighborhood.
They walked slowly. Jake’s limp matched Omar’s, though each man tried to hide it for the other. The streets buzzed with life: fruit vendors calling out prices, schoolgirls skipping stones, stray dogs sleeping under mopeds.
“Not what you remember, is it?” Omar said, gesturing to the street.
“No,” Jake replied. “It’s better.”
They stopped in front of a crumbling wall with a spray-painted mural — two hands meeting across barbed wire. One wore a U.S. Army sleeve. The other, a keffiyeh.
Jake stared.
“That new?”
“Two years ago. Painted by veterans — American and Iraqi — who now work in a trauma recovery project. We call it al-jisr. ‘The bridge.’”
Jake didn’t speak.
He just stood there, breathing in dust, diesel, and something like healing.
That afternoon, while Karim napped in the shade, Omar took Jake to a rooftop overlooking the city. They drank strong tea and shared a cigarette. The sun beat down on the concrete, but neither man flinched.
Omar said quietly, “I’ve been waiting to ask something.”
Jake turned to him.
“Did you mean to save me? That day?”
Jake looked down at his boots.
“No,” he said honestly. “I just heard screaming. Didn’t know who. Didn’t know if anyone was alive. Just ran.”
Omar nodded slowly. “Good.”
Jake blinked. “Good?”
“I didn’t want to be saved because I was a child. Or Iraqi. I wanted to believe someone did it because it was the right thing.”
Jake exhaled, long and slow. “It was.”
They sat in silence, two men linked by war and memory, the way only those who’ve lived through fire can be.
That evening, Jake offered to help Karim with his project.
The boy handed him a brush and a bucket of sealant. “We need to preserve the mortar between the bricks,” he explained. “Sun and sand eat it away.”
Jake dipped the brush and began painting the invisible layer that would hold everything together.
Brick by brick.
Omar watched from the doorway.
And for the first time in years, Jake felt like his hands were building something that wouldn’t collapse.
That night, back in his room, Jake pulled out his wallet. Inside was a folded school photo of Ben — gap-toothed, sunburned, arms crossed like a little cowboy.
He hadn’t told Ben much about the trip.
Just said: “Dad’s going to visit someone he helped once.”
He unfolded a sheet of paper and began to write.
Ben,
You asked me once why I don’t talk about the war.
I didn’t have a good answer then. I might now.
Sometimes we bury things because we’re afraid they’ll hurt too much if we dig them up. But I met a boy who found something I lost. And when he gave it back to me, it didn’t hurt. It healed.
Maybe one day I’ll show you that wall. Maybe we’ll build one of our own.
Love,
Dad
Just before sleep, Jake opened the window.
The desert wind carried in dust, night birds, and the scent of something baked into the soil — something old, but still alive.
And for the first time in a long time, Jake didn’t dream of war.
He dreamed of bricks.
Stacked. Steady. Holding fast.
