"Do you take me for an idiot? Sancho was my best friend. I can remember clearly that he was one of the twelve wounded who were left in Beit Jalal!"
Fini loses his patience. "Take a hammer and knock this into your skull: Sancho was buried! We prepared a nice grave for him. We even put an inscription on it."
"That is deception!"
He shrugs his shoulders. "If you like. If you are volunteering to tell them that Sancho was left on the battlefield ... you’ll get your chance. His parents are coming in half an hour." I shut up. It had never occurred to me that Sancho had parents.
"Listen carefully, my friend." Fini lectures me. "For you and me, it may be enough to know that Sancho is dead. Of course the Egyptians buried him somewhere. But that is not enough for the parents. Parents need a grave."
"Then take them to some pile of dirt and let them cry there."
"I am a psychologist," Fini explains. "The most important thing is belief. The parents will be consoled by the belief that their son is buried there. It will help them to get over the trauma, until they get used to the idea of losing their son."
"Take someone else for this theater."
"Be a nice boy," he said, slapping me on the shoulder. "One friend should help the other. I promise you: if, by God’s grace, you are among the next to die, I will make your parents a nice grave with an inscription."
"Thanks a lot."
We drive off. A fresh grave has been built on the little hill. An inscribed panel stands among flowers. None of the comrades knew Sancho’s real name. After I had baptized him with this name, on the first day in recruitment camp, it was the only name he had in the whole battalion.
A grave. Strange how our relationship to graves has changed since the first battles. The first to fall were buried with full military honors. The company commander gave a speech and we fired a three-shot salute. In the following months we risked our lives to recover the bodies of fallen comrades. But with the passing of time we began to think that that was stupid. You are not helping a dead man by laying him down next to another. We lost any connection with the graves of