"Be seated against the wall." The teacher opened his mouth, a ferocious anathema forming on hollow air. Ghaith cocked his head forward ever so slightly and the hot air dribbled into silence. The teacher had so often told himself and his students that death was nothing to fear in a good cause that he had come to believe it. But Ghaith's expression clearly indicated that death was a prize he only reluctantly awarded after a long and horrifying expiration. The teacher sat against the wall. Ghaith turned to the boys. They had rolled up their makeshift bedrolls after being awakened by the pre-dawn explosions rolling in from the city's outskirts. The Americans had blown up the berms in synchronized blasts that violently shook every wall in Fallujah. But only a few of the boys had whimpered. The rest stiffened with eager resolve to do their duty. Aching for the proverbial Paradise of Virgins, Ghaith thought. And not a one of them would know what to do with a virgin if you threw one on top of him.
