In moments, when a keen eyesight could see sufficiently to distinguish a white thread from a black one, his muezzin would call the faithful to prayer with the traditional cry, the shahada: god is most great.
He swung through corridors that had been strung with tinsel and decorated with first- second- and third-grade christmas pictures, his crutches thump-thumping along, sometimes in time to the carols spilling merrily from the overhead speakers. Waves of emotions pounded against me as all around me soldiers and raiders fought to the death.