The burial of Ali Ayyoub, a rescuer of the Lebanese Civil Defense killed on the evening of April twenty-eighth at Majdal Zoun during the second of the two strikes the Israelis had dropped on the same building eighteen minutes apart from each other, took place the following day at the Islamic cemetery of Tyre, eastern sector, at six in the evening, with the sun still high over the sea and the sand that had warmed during the day and that in the evening retains heat better than concrete and that for this reason (Hassan, Ali's younger brother, told me later) is called in his family "the rest of the earth," an expression that the mother of Ali and Hassan, Souad, had always used also for other things that cooled slowly, like bread just out of the oven or the hands of a relative who had recently stopped working in the fields.

Hassan, thirty-one years old, an employee of the land registry of Tyre, the second of three sons, had come to the cemetery in the gray Toyota Corolla of two thousand seven that had belonged to his father Jamil before being his, a car that everyone in Tyre recognized by the scratch on the right fender and by the cassette holder still mounted on the dashboard, because Jamil had died in two thousand twenty-two and Hassan had not wanted to change anything; and Hassan had arrived at the cemetery forty minutes ahead of the ceremony, and had parked outside the gate beneath the fig tree of the Daher family, a family of which Hassan no longer knew anyone but whom the fig tree knew, because he had eaten its fresh figs in July for fifteen years in a row going to the cemetery to visit grandfather Khaled and then aunt Rania and then two cousins.

The ceremony was brief. The imam of Majdal Zoun, who had also arrived recently because Majdal Zoun is forty minutes by car from Tyre and because the imam of Majdal Zoun had held another funeral at three in the afternoon for one of the two civilians killed in the first of the two raids, read the fatiha. Karim Ayyoub, older brother of Ali and Hassan, father of Mahmoud who is four years old, threw the first handful of earth. The second was Hassan's. The third was Souad's, the mother, who at seventy-two truly bent down at the edge of the grave and poured the earth from her right hand without leaning on her left hand, and this, Hassan told me later, was the moment in which he understood that his mother had decided that Ali would be the last son she would bury.

At ten in the evening Hassan and Karim and Souad were at Karim's house, where Karim's wife Rana had prepared rice with chicken for the guests who were a score, and Mahmoud, who is four, had been sleeping in the children's room since nine forty, and Hassan, who at Karim's house had never felt at ease even before all this because Karim's house was full of the sounds of children and Hassan at thirty-one had none, sat on the living-room sofa and listened to Souad speak with a neighbor of practical things, of who would bring couscous the next day, of who would collect the death certificate at the municipal office, of who would speak with the Civil Defense for the paperwork.

At eleven forty Hassan told his mother he had to go home, and the mother said go. Hassan went out. He went to the Toyota Corolla parked beneath the fig tree (the fig tree was still the same, even at night, even with the moon that at the end of April in Tyre was nearly full). He shut himself inside. He turned the phone volume to maximum. He put the phone on the dashboard. He opened WhatsApp. He went to Ali's chat. The last message was a voice memo of one minute and forty-seven seconds sent on April twenty-eighth at nine eighteen in the evening, eighteen minutes before the second strike, which Hassan had not listened to because at nine eighteen he had been standing in front of the refrigerator getting a bottle of water and because at nine twenty-two Karim's call had reached him saying Ali is at Majdal Zoun, there's been a strike, he's going in, and Hassan had put the phone in his trouser pocket without opening the voice memo.

He pressed play.

Ali's voice was Ali's voice, a voice calm and lightly hoarse from smoking (Ali had been smoking for fifteen years and was hiding it from his mother with the same scrupulousness with which a boy hides cigarettes in a drawer), and Ali was saying: "Hassan, I'm at Majdal Zoun, the building on street eight, the first strike was ten minutes ago, there are three people still inside, including a child, they told me he's Mahmoud's age, he's four, his name is Mahmoud too, he's curious, we're going in with the Bilal and Ahmad team, you know that here today they know, and you know what we know here" (he used "you know what we know here" for the double tap, because at the Civil Defense they called it that, "what we know here," and eighty per cent of the operators knew it and went in anyway). And then a long silence, inside which one could hear the sounds of the street and Ali's breathing which was shorter. Then Ali whispered: "if I don't come back tell Souad I ate the rice she made me Tuesday." A sound of metal was heard, perhaps a door. The voice memo ended.

Hassan kept the phone on the dashboard. He stayed seated with his hands on the steering wheel and listened to the silence after. He took the phone off the dashboard. He turned it off. He started the car. He went back to Karim's house. Mahmoud was still sleeping in the children's room.