On: Middle East: Iran says it targeted US bases in Gulf

The muleteer tightens the strap on his beast’s harness, the leather creaking like the joints of an old man, and I think - here we go again, another day of men adjusting straps, men who do not ask why the strap must be tight, why the beast must pull, why the road must lead to the same dusty plain where other men in other uniforms adjust their own straps and tighten their own belts. The drone falls from the sky like a sick crow, its wings torn by the iron beak of an American missile, and the muleteer does not look up because he is counting his coins, because he is hungry, because he has learned to ignore the sound of wings breaking. The air-raid siren in Bahrain wails like a woman in childbirth, a sound that has echoed through every generation since the first city was built on the backs of those who tilled the soil and those who dug the ditches, and the woman in childbirth does not stop to ask why the child must be born into a world where men still believe in borders drawn with blood and ink.

The generals call it deterrence. The economists call it risk management. The mullahs call it divine justice. The muleteer calls it Tuesday. I see the boot in the mud, the same boot that has marched from the Euphrates to the Nile, from the Indus to the Danube, always claiming to bring order, always leaving the same pattern of crushed grass and broken men. The radar site burns, a pyre of silicon and steel, and the men who manned it are now corpses or prisoners, their faces painted with the same ash that covers the faces of the soldiers who shot them, the same ash that will soon cover the faces of the children who wake to find their schools reduced to rubble. The children do not ask why the sky is full of fire. They only learn to run.

Is it right that the earth should be carved into pieces, each piece guarded by men with guns, each gun pointed at a man in a different uniform who is also only trying to feed his family? The strap is tight. The beast pulls. The road is long. The siren wails. And the muleteer walks on, because what else is there to do?