Part 5: The Letter Home
Jake dropped the envelope into the village mailbox just after dawn.
It was taped closed twice and addressed to Ben Monroe, scrawled in the shaky handwriting of a man who hadn’t written a real letter in years. No one else was awake yet. The sky was lavender and pale orange, with dust clouds drifting low across the rooftops.
He stood there for a moment after letting go of the letter — like it was heavier than it should be.
Then he turned and walked back through the narrow alleys, past a black cat stretched across a doorstep, past two old men sipping tea and not speaking. It felt like the kind of morning that remembered things.
Back at the house, Karim was already stirring.
He sat cross-legged on the patio, polishing what looked like a piece of carved wood.
“What’s that?” Jake asked.
“A gift,” Karim said without looking up. “For your son.”
Jake crouched beside him. It was a small wooden dog — hand-carved, its body stiff and alert. The detail was incredible: even the grain of the fur was etched with care. On the underside, carved in Arabic and English, was the phrase: May you always return.
“He likes animals,” Jake said. “Ben. Always asking for a dog.”
“Then he will know what this means,” Karim replied.
Over breakfast, Omar joined them with two cups of thick, dark coffee. No sugar.
“Today, I want to show you the classroom,” he said.
“You still teach?” Jake asked.
“I teach because someone once taught me not to give up.”
Jake smiled. “That someone wouldn’t be me, would it?”
“No,” Omar said. “It was my mother. But you ran into fire, and that reminded her I might be worth saving.”
The classroom was simple — clay walls, open windows with no glass, wooden desks lined in neat rows.
Children chattered and ran outside as Omar opened the door. A chalkboard bore yesterday’s math lesson. In the corner, taped with yellowing cellophane, was the same faded photo Karim had shown Jake: the image of a soot-covered boy and a soldier carrying him out of the rubble.
Jake stood in the doorway longer than he meant to.
“Sometimes I think that photo doesn’t show the truth,” he said. “It only shows the best second of a very bad day.”
Omar looked over.
“It shows that one second mattered.”
Later, while Karim helped distribute notebooks, Jake sat under the tamarisk tree near the old wall. He found himself running his fingers over the mortar lines, brushing sand away without thinking.
It was the same motion he used back home, smoothing concrete. But here, the work felt different — like tending to bones.
A woman in a headscarf passed by and nodded politely. A small boy peeked from behind her skirts. Jake smiled, gave a tiny wave. The boy giggled and disappeared.
The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was full.
Full of peace. Of memory. Of things finally settling where they belonged.
That night, Karim pulled Jake aside.
“I want to ask you something,” he said, eyes earnest. “May I come to visit you? In America?”
Jake was taken aback.
“Of course,” he said, after a pause. “Why?”
“I want to see the place that shaped the man who shaped my father.”
Jake chuckled. “You might be disappointed. There’s not much to see.”
Karim tilted his head. “Do you live near horses?”
Jake laughed outright. “Yeah. A few towns over.”
“Then I will not be disappointed.”
Before bed, Jake opened his email for the first time since arriving. There were thirty-seven unread messages.
The top one was from Melissa.
Ben got your letter.
He read it out loud at the kitchen table. Three times.
He wants to know what the wall looked like. He wants to know if it’s still standing. He asked if you cried.
I told him yes.
Thank you for sending it, Jake.
And for being the man I knew was still there.
— M.
Jake stared at the screen.
Then quietly shut the laptop.
Outside, the moon hung low over the rooftops, golden and round.
And inside Jake Monroe’s chest, something shifted.
Not everything broken needs to be rebuilt.
Some things just need to be seen.
Part 6: A Grave Beneath the Garden
The sun was just climbing when Omar led Jake to the far end of the courtyard.
They passed through a narrow iron gate into a quiet strip of earth behind the house — a shaded garden hemmed by stone walls. Bougainvillea spilled over one corner. In the middle stood a single olive tree, its branches thick and gnarled, roots breaking through the soil like tired hands reaching up from the past.
“This is where she’s buried,” Omar said, his voice softer than usual.
Jake didn’t have to ask who.
He followed as Omar stepped to a modest headstone — gray, smoothed by wind, with an inscription in Arabic. Beneath it, in English, read:
Layla Hassan
1959 – 2008
She held the roof up, even as it fell
Jake bowed his head. “Your mother?”
Omar nodded. “The day you pulled me out, she was in the next room. I didn’t know until I was already outside that… she didn’t make it.”
He crouched down, pulling weeds gently from the base of the stone. “They said the ceiling gave way too fast. I believed them. I had to.”
Jake stood still. Guilt crept over him like dust settling in his lungs.
“I should’ve gone back,” he murmured.
“No,” Omar said, looking up. “You saved who you could. And because of that, I got to grow up. I got to rebuild her house. I got to name my son after her father.”
Jake sank to a squat beside him.
“I never stopped wondering who made it,” he said. “Every time I shut my eyes. Fifteen years. You replay moments. Choices.”
Omar plucked a dying flower from the soil and set it aside.
“She would’ve forgiven you,” he said. “She’d say: do not carry what was not yours to hold.”
Back in the house, Jake sat with Karim in the kitchen while Omar prepared tea.
Karim passed him a folder of sketches — detailed charcoal drawings. One was of the garden. One was of a boy standing beneath rubble. And one was of Jake, drawn from the photograph: shoulders squared, a child in his arms, surrounded by smoke.
“You drew these?” Jake asked.
Karim nodded. “My father says memory fades. So I try to catch it before it’s gone.”
Jake flipped to the last page — a blank sheet, except for a caption written in careful block letters:
“The man returns with the silence he left behind.”
Jake looked at Karim.
“That what you see when you look at me?”
Karim shrugged. “Not anymore.”
That afternoon, Jake asked to visit the market.
He wanted to walk alone.
Omar insisted Karim go with him, just in case. Jake didn’t argue.
They moved through the crowded stalls: bags of saffron, heaps of dates, crates of old boots and new radios. Jake bought a small wooden comb for Melissa, and a leather bracelet for Ben.
As they passed an alley near the edge of the bazaar, Jake froze.
There, scrawled on the brick wall in red paint, was a crude drawing:
An American soldier in flames. A child behind him, untouched.
Below it: Death Brings Freedom.
Karim turned. Saw it. Waited.
Jake stepped forward, staring at it.
His voice came low. “Some people still hate.”
“Yes,” Karim said. “But not all.”
Jake pulled a small penknife from his pocket. With the back of the blade, he scratched out just one word.
Death.
Then stepped back.
The wall now read: Brings Freedom.
Karim looked at him. “You can’t change everything.”
“No,” Jake said. “But sometimes you can change a word.”
That night, Omar showed him something he hadn’t expected.
A box.
Inside: burned photo albums, fragments of old ceramic tiles, and a small American field dressing pouch, faded tan.
“This was yours,” Omar said. “The medic kit you dropped that day.”
Jake opened it. Inside was a torn bandage, a cracked plastic vial, and something else:
A photograph. Folded. Half-burnt.
Jake unfolded it carefully.
It was him and a fellow soldier — Martinez — taken days before the mortar attack. They were laughing, arms draped over each other, helmets crooked.
Jake blinked. “I didn’t even know this survived.”
Omar nodded. “Not everything disappears. Some things just wait.”
Later, in his room, Jake laid the photo beside the dog tag.
He stared at both under the soft yellow light, unsure which one felt heavier.
Then he took out the drawing Karim had made — the man returns with the silence he left behind — and turned it over.
On the back, he began to write.
