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us, upended on its side. The linen, brown with dried blood, was torn half away. Abdelkarim got on his knees by the body and placed the lamp on the sand. I stepped closer. The man’s throat had been ripped open, his innards were missing, and his face was chewed to pieces. It was an ugly sight, one I didn’t want to look at for long.
    At least there aren’t any flies
, I thought, kneeling down next to Abdelkarim. I’ve always had difficulty stomaching corpses that were swarming with vermin.
    “It was really a big dog,” said the imam, pointing to the prints in the dirt by the body. They were as big as an adult fist. The animal must have been two hundred pounds at least. “It fed here. It fed on the flesh, and the rest was just for play.”
    “What makes you think so?”
    “There are lots of prints here. I bet if you look over the bodies, you’ll see that it just tore up the linen. This is big trouble.”
    “Why?”
    “Because it got a taste of human flesh. It needs to be shot, because now it knows God created man full of nutrients, something we forget from time to time.”
    “Will the shepherds shoot it?”
    “Yes. That is how it will be,” said Abdelkarim, who then, from a pocket in his robe, extracted a stapler. He wrapped the linen around the man again and stapled it together. The snapping sound echoed throughout the chamber.
    “Later, if the convoys return, we can rebury them with more respect. The Shura will designate a place in the city for a new cemetery; this is something we have already discussed. Now come on and let’s get hold of him.”
    The body was stiff and easily lifted into the chamber.
    We found four more bodies lying on the ground, and we moved each one. While we were carrying the last one, I felt something under my foot. I looked down and saw a 9 mm shell casing. After we put the body in its place, I picked the object from the sand.
    “You know, I’m thinking about how Abdul Muhyi said he couldn’t take out the dog with a bullet,” I said, showing Abdelkarim what I’d come across. We gathered all the spent casings we could find.
    “An animal of this size can’t be taken out with pistol ammo,” he said decisively.
    I suddenly had a bad feeling, knowing that we didn’t have a single firearm between us.
    Abdelkarim again stooped over and began to count; and then, with long strides, walked over to the cave wall.
    “Poor Abdul Muhyi never was the best shot in town,” he said and pointed out the chip marks left by the bullets in the stone. The goatherd couldn’t even hit a dog. We shared a smile and got ready to head home.
    The sun was setting when we arrived back in town, and dark fell soon thereafter. The bike turned onto the road that led to the mosque. In front of the iron gate stood a crowd. They parted so we could enter. The women wailed loudly, and the men stood in a circle around where the boy’s mutilated body lay. The shepherd had died clutching the imam’s rifle.
    With fingers numb from the cold I slowly buttoned up my jellabiya. Beyond the window the light of the torches flickered. It was already cold enough to see my breath in the room. The hills cast shadows over the courtyard. Down there the men were talking, though their words were distorted beyond comprehension from the wind. My face burned from shaving. I gazed into the bowl of water on my bed for a moment, and then took off my leather jacket and shirt.
    Abdelkarim insisted that I take part in the assembly of men in the mosque, and he’d loaned me his festive jellabiya for the occasion, the one he had purchased for his pilgrimage to Mecca. It was worth more than my camera and equipment combined.
    “For my greatly esteemed guest,” he’d said, when he laid the robe in my hands. I was slowly getting used to how on certain occasions I couldn’t show up in my Western clothing. Abdelkarim’sfriendship had greatly improved the town’s esteem of me; I got fewer suspicious looks, and even the mujahideen mumbled