Three o'clock in the afternoon the next day, forty kilometers south of the Iraq-Turkey border.
Song Heping sat in the passenger seat of the truck, staring blankly at the scenery outside the window.
Outside the window, Northern Illigo was a stretch of undulating hills in grayish yellow, with the occasional clump of withered shrubs and scattered stones.
The road wound forward along the mountains, the surface full of potholes, making the truck rattle like a sieve as it drove.
In the distance there were villages, houses of packed earth crowded together, clothes drying on the roofs, a few kids kicking a ball by the roadside; when they saw the convoy pass, they stopped and stared.
The sun hung in the sky, glaring white, making people's eyes ache.
Song Heping pulled the brim of his cap down and squinted at the road ahead.
This was his second day since leaving Mosul.
