“I HAVE TO GET OFF!” I ANNOUNCED TO ANYONE who would listen. But nobody batted an eye. I peered through the crowd of passengers, looking for the emergency brake, but there was none. “Hello! I’m not dead!” I yelled.

Harry checked his watch and gave it a shake. “Seems to have stopped.”

Out the windows all I saw was darkness—deep, deep eternal darkness. “Okay, I am officially freaking out.”

How had I ended up here? A few minutes ago, I’d been on the street, talking to Belet. As far as I knew, I hadn’t been run over. Unless I’d blacked out…

Had I caught a disease from Nergal or one of his demons? But I felt fine.…

This had to be a big mistake. A huge mistake!

”I am not dead! Not anymore!” I kicked the train door hard. “Let me out!”

Equally alarming, the other passengers began to fade away, one after the other. The two boys who’d fallen through the ice disappeared together.

There were only a few of us left. “What’s happening? Where is everyone going?”

Harry straightened his tie and adjusted his sleeve cuffs. “To their own personal afterlives, I suspect. Whatever was deepest in their hearts’ desire, whether they knew it or not. What else could heaven be, Sik?”

“I thought being dead would be less complicated than this.”

Harry started combing the few strands of his wispy white hair.

“You look great, Harry.”

“I want to look my best for Betty.”

More and more people faded away, silently, without care or worry. Eventually it was just me and Harry.

“So much for my so-called immortality,” I said.

The train began to slow.

The darkness gradually gave way to light. Instead of an underground tunnel, we were moving through a desert landscape.

The train stopped, and the car door opened to scintillating colors. I squinted against the brightness. “I guess this is my stop.”

Harry patted my shoulder. “It’ll be fine.”

“How do you know?”

“Do you know anybody who’s ever come back?”

I faced the exit. Whatever else the afterlife might be, it was warm and breezy.

I stepped out.

The train didn’t roll away—it dispersed into the air like smoke. I heard the distant rattle of wheels on rails, felt the air rush past, and then there was silence.

“Hello? Asalaamu alaikum? Namasté? Guten Tag?” I cast around for the welcoming committee. “Shalom?”

A vast, empty desert stretched out before me, all under a night sky filled with wild splashes of color. Great smears of orange, blue, red, and green covered the black canvas above, as though a divine painter had attacked it with wild fury. Even as I watched, a pinprick of light near the horizon erupted silently, pulsed with soft blue light, then spread outward.

The sand was grayish blue, though the weird illumination made it difficult to judge its true color. The landscape was dotted by mounds. At first I thought they were hills, but they were too uniform; nature wasn’t so neat.

I realized they were tells. Mo had bored me stupid with a million photos of them. They covered Iraq like freckles. Ancient cities that had decayed, leaving massive sandy lumps over the flat desert.

“This is it?” If this was the afterlife, it was pretty disappointing. I remember someone at the masjid telling me there’d be seventy heavenly companions waiting.…

The train wasn’t coming back, and standing there was achieving nothing, so I struck out toward the biggest mound. It seemed as good a plan as any.

The tell grew before me. Its steep slopes still bore the marks of humanity. Steps, sagging with the weight of countless centuries, crisscrossed the sides, and there were paths too straight and angular to be anything but the work of stonemasons. I followed one of the walkways and explored the skeletal remains of a forgotten civilization. The buildings sagged like molten candles. Statues lay broken on the ground—whether they were supposed to be beasts or gods I couldn’t tell anymore. I saw a few tall stone slabs—steles—engraved with cuneiform and other unintelligible markings.

I stubbed my toe against something half-buried in the hard-packed sand. I hunched down and pulled it out. I brushed off the encrusted grit and ran my fingers over the smooth wooden shape of a lion. Someone had taken a lot of care in carving it. The mane had been delicately cut, as had the wide-open roaring mouth and the wrinkles in the folds of fur. The eyes were inlaid obsidian. I put it in my net shopping bag.

“Beauty must be preserved, eh?” someone said.

I spun at the voice, and a figure rose out of the shadows of the ruins. His face was hidden under a black-checkered keffiyeh, and his kaftan was dusty. Pebbles crunched under his heavy hiking boots as he climbed over a wall. The leather satchel he carried looked familiar, worn and oily dark with handling, the edges frayed and repaired with duct tape.

The way he looked at me made my heart ache. “Do I know you?”

He laughed.

It was a laugh I thought I’d never hear again.

“Alhamdulillah.” He reached up and pulled his keffiyeh loose. “So, what brings you here, Yakhi?”

My heart surged as he revealed his face. I swallowed hard. “I’ve missed you so much.”

“And I you,” said Mo.