David Martinez

The first thing you notice is the silence. An unnerving, horrible quiet without the sound of voices, car engines, children playing, or televisions. Even the birds are wise enough to have gone elsewhere. And yet we are in a small city in the middle of the day.

We passed the last mujaheedin patrol two blocks ago, and they waved us through when our escort told them what we were there for. To evacuate wounded, and to collect the dead.

We drop out of the truck and start walking, our passports held high in our otherwise empty hands. We leave our Iraqi driver and guide and enter the crushing quiet of the Kill Zone, the no man’s land between the rebels and the American forces, somewhere inside the town of Fallujah.

The team is made up of myself, a British woman, and an Iraqi woman. On the way in, I grab the Brit’s hand and squeeze it. “For luck,” I say, and I think I will remember the wink she gives me for the rest of my life.