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in the foot—literally—to get leave as a wounded soldier so he could reunite
with the village girl he’d fallen in love with. He lost his toe, but felt the wound
was a minor trade-off.
    He had many stories. But my favourite one was this:
    It was operation night, and Adnan was squeezed inside the hole he’d dug into the
side of a hill. His eyes fixed on a star that had been winking at him all evening
through the cloudless sky. He winked back at it, wondering if the hole was about to be his grave—this tiny space, a world away from the world he understood.
    He was in the Tank-Diffusion Unit, the TDU, a commando corps of nut jobs who got
off on the thought of suicide.
    Their mission was simple: curtail trample damage from Iraqi tank fire before they
penetrated Iran’s front line. When the hordes of Iraqi tanks had overcome the landmines,
that was when the TDU clocked on for work.
    They planted live bombs, by hand, under moving enemy tanks—which they secured in
one slippery socket underneath the tank. Lose concentration for a hair’s-breadth
of a second and you were simply dead: the bomb would go off too late, alerting your
enemies to your presence. They worked in groups of five or six, so that if one commando
screwed up, only a small number of men would go down with him. If someone fumbled,
his best bet was to grab on to the tank and let it drag him so the explosion would
go off as far away as possible, and not give away the positions of the rabbit holes.
    Now, Adnan heard the enemy tanks beginning to rumble through the desert. The winking
star winked out for good, vanishing in the dust cloud stirred up by the approaching
tanks, but Adnan thought the star was frightened, that it had no wish to witness
what was about to come.
    He closed his eyes, trying to focus. But all that he could picture was the face of
the Iranian girl he’d met in the village a few weeks ago. His Iraqi origins made
him a priceless asset to the Iranians; he could speak the language, knew how the
Iraqis designed their attacks and, more importantly, he knew how they thought, how
their brains worked. But even though he’d fought endlessly for the Iranians, he would
always be seen as an Iraqi. How would he convince her father to let her marry him,
an Arab?
    The earth began to vibrate—a tank was barrelling up the hill. He pushed the girl
from his mind, and spoke his oath out loud: ‘Martyrdom first, all else last. Martyrdom
first, all else last.’
    In seconds, the tank was on him. He reached up with the mine, trying to find the
socket. His hands shook. His fingers were cold. The mine wouldn’t go in.
    It would self-activate in seconds. He had little choice. He lifted his body and grabbed
the rails for one final joyride. He spoke his last prayers silently. Out loud, he
just said, ‘Shit.’
    His teeth chattered as the tank dragged him. He clutched the bomb in one hand. The
tank neared the top of the hill. Still, the bomb didn’t explode. Once the tank passed
the hill, it would hurtle down at a thousand miles an hour. There was no way he could
keep hanging on at that speed.
    Still gripping the rail with one hand, he shoved the bomb under his helmet and hauled
himself to the ladder that ran down the side of the tank. He dragged himself up the
rungs and sat astride the vehicle, took three deep breaths and grabbed a grenade
from his utility bag. He lifted the latch, yanked it open.
    He jumped inside the tank.
    It was dark inside, but he’d been in the dark night a long time. It smelled of metal,
sweat and gunpowder. Four soldiers, all caught off guard.
    He waved the grenade at the soldiers and started shouting in Arabic. ‘I have a grenade
and we’re all going to hell!’
    One of the Iraqis put his hands over his head, dropping a flask of alcohol, which
spilled across the floor. The driver was too shocked to stop. The third soldier pointed
his rifle directly at Uncle Adnan. Uncle Adnan prepared himself to pull the pin on
the grenade. He caught