I urged the men to pack their belongings and abandon the village. But the boy who had become a man laughed and said that he had never met anyone who, when a fire began to burn, advised to walk towards it instead of running away. So, as we lay in the quiet of the lake, I sang them a song of endurance, taught to me by the warriors of the desert, to whom I would unfailingly go every year carrying letters from their families, smudged in tears.