Part 7: Echoes in the Stone
Jake stood at the edge of the schoolyard, watching Omar teach.
The children sat on woven mats under a canopy of patched tarps. Some balanced notebooks on their knees. Others leaned in, eyes wide, as Omar chalked numbers onto a weather-warped blackboard. There was no air conditioning, no ceiling fans — only the breeze and the rhythm of a man who believed in rebuilding minds.
Jake leaned against the low perimeter wall, feeling the warmth of the stone seep into his back.
Karim joined him, a notebook in hand.
“He’s different when he teaches,” the boy said. “Lighter.”
Jake nodded. “That’s how you know he loves it.”
A small girl — maybe seven — ran up with a shy smile. She pressed a fig into Jake’s palm, then darted back to her classmates without a word.
Jake stared at the fruit. He hadn’t eaten a fig since childhood. His mother used to slice them open and sprinkle them with sugar when money was tight.
He bit into it slowly. Sweet. Sun-warmed. A strange comfort.
Karim noticed his expression.
“You miss home?”
Jake wiped juice from his chin. “I miss parts of it. Some parts I don’t.”
The boy nodded thoughtfully, then asked, “What do you see when you look at this place?”
Jake took a breath. “I used to see what we broke. Now I see what you’ve built.”
That afternoon, Omar took Jake to the local cemetery.
It wasn’t formal — just rows of stone markers on a dry slope beyond the edge of town. Some markers were wooden, others no more than hand-painted bricks. The wind carried silence across the earth like an old hymn.
They stopped at a cluster of older graves.
“This one,” Omar said, placing his hand gently on a headstone, “was my cousin, Sami. He died during the occupation — not from a bomb, but from an infection. No medicine reached us in time.”
Jake lowered his eyes.
“I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
Omar looked over at him. “You weren’t the war. You were a moment in it.”
They walked on.
At one point, Jake paused beside a blank stone — no name, no date, just a smooth gray slab set apart from the rest.
“Who’s this?”
Omar hesitated.
“No one knows. Found after a shelling. No family claimed him.”
Jake reached down, brushed the surface with his fingers.
Karim stepped forward, surprising them both. “May I carve something?”
Omar blinked. “What do you mean?”
“Something small. Not a name — just a sign that he mattered.”
Jake swallowed. “That’s a good idea.”
They knelt together.
Karim pulled out his pocketknife and carefully etched a single line into the bottom corner of the stone:
“Remembered.”
No more. No less.
Back at the house, Jake sat in the courtyard as the sky dimmed into orange. He thought about that nameless grave. About Martinez. About Layla Hassan. About all the names that never got written down.
He pulled out his old wallet.
Inside was a folded scrap of paper — the back of an old ration list, yellowed and torn. It had followed him through deployments, crumpled in his sock drawer, stuck behind family photos. On it were just four names — buddies who didn’t make it back.
He never showed it to Melissa. Never showed it to Ben.
But tonight, he unfolded it, laid it flat on the garden table, and wrote a fifth name:
Unknown. Fallujah. 2007.
Then he added a sixth:
Layla Hassan.
That night, dinner was quieter.
Not heavy — just peaceful. Omar hummed while ladling soup into bowls. Karim asked questions about Texas: do they really ride horses to school? Are tumbleweeds real? Is the food spicy?
Jake answered them all with patience.
Afterward, as they shared tea, Omar set a small box on the table.
“This,” he said, “was hers.”
Jake opened it.
Inside lay a delicate silver necklace — a hamsa pendant etched with floral patterns, aged and darkened by time. He looked up.
“I can’t take this.”
“It’s not a gift,” Omar said. “It’s a loan. Just until you know what to do with it.”
Jake held the necklace like it might vanish.
That night, unable to sleep, he walked the courtyard in silence.
The stars above Iraq looked the same as they did in Texas — wide and close and untouchable.
He sat beneath the tamarisk tree and closed his eyes.
He didn’t dream of fire this time.
He dreamed of stone walls, steady hands, and the word remembered echoing quietly under his ribs.
Part 8: The Bridge That Holds
The next morning, Omar took Jake on a walk through the oldest part of Fallujah.
Karim stayed behind to prepare for a local art exhibit at the school — his drawings would be on display for the first time, and he was both nervous and proud. Jake promised to come see it later.
The streets narrowed as they walked. Market stalls thinned. Here, buildings stood in tired silence — cracked walls, faded paint, bullet scars turned soft by sand and time.
Jake trailed his fingers along one wall, feeling the roughness beneath his skin.
“I remember this road,” he said. “We cleared rubble here. Pulled a body out from under a washing machine.”
Omar didn’t flinch. “We’ve buried many under ordinary things.”
They stopped at a footbridge crossing a dry canal. It was simple — concrete poured over rusted rebar, flanked by low railings. Faded graffiti on one side read: Life wants to go on.
“I helped build this,” Omar said. “Not with tools — with a petition.”
Jake raised an eyebrow.
“After the war,” Omar continued, “the city didn’t want to waste funds rebuilding here. Too many dead. Too few voters. But people still lived on both sides of this canal. We fought for it. Got a grant. And built it.”
He stepped onto the bridge, turned, and extended his hand.
Jake hesitated.
Then stepped forward.
Their footsteps echoed faintly as they met in the middle.
“You saved me once,” Omar said. “This time, I wanted to return the favor.”
Jake looked at him, confused. “By showing me a bridge?”
Omar smiled. “By reminding you that not everything falls apart. Some things — even here — get put back together.”
Jake stared down into the empty canal. Where once there was water, now only stone and silence.
But the bridge held.
And maybe that was enough.
Back at the school, the courtyard buzzed with laughter and color.
The art exhibit was underway. Children darted between easels propped up along the walls. Homemade clay sculptures balanced on tabletops. Parents stood chatting, sipping tea from plastic cups.
Karim’s sketches hung on one long strip of canvas. At the center: The Fire and the Wall — a drawing of the boy and the soldier beneath a collapsing building, ash swirling like stars.
Next to it: The Bridge That Holds. A perfect rendering of the footbridge Jake and Omar had just walked, with two shadowed figures standing at its center.
Jake stared at it for a long time.
Karim appeared beside him. “You see the rope?”
Jake squinted. In the sketch, a thin rope stretched between the two men’s hands — barely visible, but there.
“I didn’t see that on the bridge,” Jake said.
“You weren’t meant to,” Karim replied. “It’s not there in the world. Just in the drawing. Just in memory.”
That night, after the exhibit, Jake and Omar sat on the roof again.
This time, they drank something stronger than tea — a local date wine, dark and warm, sipped from ceramic cups.
“I’ve been thinking,” Jake said. “Maybe I bring Ben here someday. Show him where the world cracked. Let him see what it looks like when people glue it back together.”
Omar nodded slowly. “Let him walk the bridge.”
They clinked their cups.
The wind carried the sounds of distant music, a wedding maybe. Somewhere in the dark, two dogs barked at nothing.
“I never thought I’d come back,” Jake admitted.
“And now?”
Jake looked up at the stars. “Now I’m wondering why I ever left this part of me behind.”
Omar reached into his pocket and pulled out a small box — the kind a man keeps for something important.
He opened it, revealing a simple iron nail — old, weathered, twisted slightly at the tip.
“This,” he said, “was pulled from our house after the bombing. Karim found it buried near where your tag was.”
Jake stared at the nail.
“Why are you giving me this?”
“I’m not,” Omar said. “I’m asking you to bring it home.”
Jake took it with both hands, like receiving communion.
Later that night, Jake sat by the garden wall with a blank sheet of paper.
He began writing again. This time, not to Melissa, not to Ben.
But to Martinez.
You didn’t make it home. But I think part of you did. It stayed here, in the dust, in the bones, in the boy we didn’t know would grow into a man with something worth saving.
I never said goodbye. But maybe we weren’t supposed to.
Maybe we were supposed to leave something behind. So someone else could find it.
If that’s the case — brother — we did okay.
He folded the letter, slid it into the drawing Karim had given him — the man who returned with the silence — and tucked them both into his duffel bag.
In the distance, a lone muezzin called out under the stars.
Jake Monroe listened.
And for once, didn’t feel like he had to answer.
