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sameness of this routine.
    Always Issaq taunted us. He’d hold his head back, asking the sky, or perhaps God, how we’d be ready to fight Gazan’s men in the spring. How will I convince a fierce commander like Sabir that these darwankee are soldiers, he’d mutter to himself, spitting in the dirt, as if in the cold muck he’d found our faces. When Issaq got bored, he made us run laps inside the HESCO walls of the perimeter. The feral dogs trotted alongside us, as if in solidarity.
    Once Issaq tired of this, he lined us up in formation. We stood covered in mud as he brought over his beloved motorbike, a small red thing with tan stuffing that bulged from its duct-taped seat. Tawas later told me the bike had been confiscated on a raid two summers past. A man had tried to escape on it. He’d driven right in front of Issaq, and Issaq had shot him in the face with his pistol. Issaq insisted this made the bike his. After the raid, and against Commander Sabir’s wishes, he’d driven it eight hours back to the firebase.
    From the formation’s front Issaq shouted: Right turn, march! Forward, march! Double quick, march! His motorcycle puttered into gear. We ran after him, out the candy-striped gate and down the dusty hilltop that wore our firebase like a crown. We set out on the north road, a pounded ribbon of gravel cut into the mountains, wide enough for one truck. The road took traffic in both directions, but the locals called it the north road because nothing of value or good traveled to the south.
    We climbed and descended the road’s narrow switchbacks. We passed over endless ridges and found ourselves standing in the shadowof a long valley. We stopped here, heaving and sweating from our journey. This was our rifle range.
    Naseeb drove a white binjo ahead of us. He parked next to a shipping container that had been left on the range. He now worked at a large combination lock bolted to its front. The metal shackle popped loose. He walked inside.
    Issaq shouted: What are you waiting for! Get in line! Get in line!
    We lined up. Naseeb handed each of us an old bolt-action rifle, British Lee-Enfields and German Mausers. The weapons were in poor condition. Their wood hand guards had petrified, their stocks were chipped and some of their barrels bent. The best rifles, Kalashnikovs, were saved for the soldiers, not us recruits. And a man, even a recruit, cannot separate his worth from his rifle’s.
    All morning we shot from the valley floor, our targets the rocks and the trees. We grasped the steel globe on the bolt handle’s end. We levered it up, sliding the bolt back, opening the rifle’s breech. Into it, we placed fat, old bullets, their cartridges dented, their once sharp slugs worn down to lead nubs. We fired from every position—sitting, kneeling, lying down, walking, running. Whether or not our bullets hit anything appeared to be of little interest to Issaq. He seemed to care only that we followed his instructions. Most of the time I was too frightened to fire in case I missed badly. I only pretended to shoot.
    At midday Naseeb brought us lunch. We could hear the wheels on his white binjo scrape its chassis every time he hit a bump. He parked next to our firing line and stepped outside. I smiled at him and he at me, but when Issaq marched toward him, he turned quickly to his duties.
    What have you brought for me today, my fat friend? Issaq asked.
    Naseeb nodded toward the passenger seat.
    Issaq lifted a thermos from the binjo and inhaled its steaming contents. Ah! Excellent! And for them? he asked.
    Yes, yes, the usual, said Naseeb.
    Serve it up, Issaq told him. Then he sat with his lunch in the shade of the trees and forgot us. Naseeb pulled two black trash bags from the trunk. Our squad formed a broken line next to him. Inside one bag was leftover naanfrom the soldier’s mess, in the other raw white onions. The cursing began, just soft enough so Issaq couldn’t hear it.
    Not again.
    Bowli , Piss.
    How can we fight