"We should kill him," said Kinza. "But not in any orthodox manner." Silence followed. A kind of derisive, stifling silence expanding to fill the room, crowding out the detritus of previous conversations, leaving two black-marketeers drinking in a darkened space, at the back of a battered house, with nothing much to say. The room was dark because they had used foil paper to blacken the windows. The lights were off because outside, the JAM militia, known as the Mahdi Army, had just torn through 13th street — which was rare, because 13th street in Ghazaliya was a dead end suburban thoroughfare.
The JAM normally preferred 14th street as it allowed them access to the northern Shi'a neighborhood of Shulla, but in this excursion they had run into the South Ghazaliya Defense Brigade, sworn to defend South Ghazaliya.
