I wished I could return to my village, where I had chores of my own and knew how to earn a bowl from the goatherd’s stew pot.

An old goatherd imparts sage advice, telling Damien that “time shifts for the grieving. Our bodies change; things don’t quite appear the same anymore.”

“Well, have a nice day,” I repeated as I waved at the little goatherd.

His father, a goatherd, added to his income with railroad construction work.

Hama Soor wore the standard outfit of a Zagros goatherd: wide trousers, a broad waistband and a tasseled brown head scarf whose pattern was so typically Kurdish it sometimes got wearers in trouble in Turkey.