Hakim sat on the banks of the Euphrates, his discarded newspaper lifting, page by page, on the warm wind.
He had been reading of the countless dead.
Of course, his mind played first over those he had known. An uncle, two brothers, his mother and a grandfather of ninety six.
All of them, definitely gone.
But according to the paper, atop the official body count some twenty thousand souls may or may not have survived the conflict, and his head swam with this crowded limbo and the knowledge that no-one knew.
Enough people to populate a small town, possibly dead. Not important enough for anyone to be sure. And Hakim, eyes glazed in the dusty sunshine, began to wonder whether he was one of them, the uncounted, the unacknowledged, wandering vacantly through his outstayed welcome,