Wadih counts the sheep at eleven forty. There are thirty-nine. There should be forty.

He counts them a second time. Thirty-nine.

The pasture lies southeast of Hasbaya, beneath the pine hill. The dry-stone wall runs east to west for four hundred meters. The sheep press against the wall in the cold months and against the woods in the warm months. May is warm. The sheep are at the edge of the pines.

Wadih is fifty-eight years old. He has grazed this same land since nineteen eighty-four. Wadih's father died in the year two thousand, seventy-six years old, at home. His mother three years later, seventy-three.

The missing sheep is called Maryam. Four years old. Three lambs. Wadih calls all the old females in the flock Maryam. Now he has three, three Maryams.

In the house, four hundred meters above the pasture, Wadih's daughter sleeps — Salwa, twenty-eight years old, married for six. Her husband Fares works at a mechanic's garage in Marjayoun, eight kilometers to the south. This morning at four Salwa telephoned Fares and told him not to come home. Fares said yes. Now Fares sleeps on the garage sofa.

Wadih knew the sheep might be missing. He had known since Monday. A four-year-old ewe with a newborn lamb separates from the flock for sounds the others do not hear. Wadih had said as much to Salwa in the afternoon, under the fig tree.

Wadih switches on his headlamp. The lamp is a white Petzl, bought in Beirut in twenty twenty-two, rechargeable batteries. He walks along the edge of the woods. He looks for tracks.

To the southwest the sky flashes. A silent flash, brief. Then a second. Then a third. Wadih counts the seconds between flash and sound. Nine, the first time. Eight, the second. Seven, the third.

The seconds grow shorter.

Wadih knows what a closing distance means. These are not storms. It has not rained for twenty days. These are artillery strikes coming from the Marjayoun area to the south, or from further down, from the border. The village radio had said that afternoon: six hundred and nineteen strikes yesterday. Wadih does not know what six hundred and nineteen means. He knows what nine seconds means.

Wadih walks on. Four hundred meters. He stops. He points the lamp between the pines.

There is an animal standing still behind a low rosemary bush. The lamplight touches its flank. Wadih recognizes the white back and the black patch behind the ear.

Maryam.

Wadih approaches. The sheep does not move. Wadih crouches. He places his hand on her flank. Warm.

Maryam is breathing. Slowly, but she is breathing.

Wadih sweeps the lamp around. The light picks out two things: a dark stain on the ground near the right hind leg, and a grey metal object, finger-length, driven into the earth a meter away. The object has a curved tab along one side.

Wadih recognizes the shape. A submunition from a cluster bomb. He had found one in two thousand and six, after the other war, when the pasture was full of them. It had been unexploded. That time he had called a man from UNIFIL.

There is no UNIFIL in the fields of Hasbaya at eleven fifty on the fifth of May.

Wadih looks at Maryam's leg. The dark stain is blood. The sheep has a wound six centimeters long on the muscle of the thigh. The submunition detonated partially. Maryam is alive by chance.

Wadih does two things, in order.

First he removes the cotton scarf he wears around his neck. He folds it in four. He presses it against Maryam's wound, holding it with his left hand. The sheep trembles.

Then he lifts Maryam. Forty kilograms, live weight. He loads her onto his right shoulder. Wadih has the knees of a fifty-eight-year-old man who has grazed land for forty-two years. Wadih walks back toward the dry-stone wall. Four hundred meters.

He does not look at the sky again. He walks and that is all.

To the southwest the flashes continue. Six seconds. Five seconds. Five seconds again.

Wadih reaches the dry-stone wall at four minutes past midnight. The other sheep stand still against the woods, gathered together. Wadih sets Maryam down on a blue plastic sheet he keeps folded in a niche in the wall.

He washes the wound with water from a one-and-a-half-liter plastic bottle. He disinfects with iodine. He ties the scarf around the thigh.

Maryam opens her right eye in the light of the dry-stone wall. She closes it. She opens it again.

Wadih sits back against the wall. The blue sheet is under the sheep, the other sheep are behind the wall, the grass is still, the moon is high to the right, the sky to the southwest now makes a fourth flash that Wadih no longer counts.

In the house above the pasture, Salwa switches on the hallway lamp. She steps out onto the balcony. She sees the light of her father's headlamp, motionless, down below, beside the dry-stone wall. The lamp does not move. Salwa goes back inside. She switches off the hallway lamp. She stays on the living room sofa with her phone in her hand.

Maryam breathes. Wadih counts the breaths. One every two and a half seconds.

Dawn in Hasbaya, in May, comes at five twelve. Five hours and eight minutes remain.

Wadih stays seated. The sheep breathes. The scarf holds. The submunition, in the pasture four hundred meters away, is still where it was.

Maryam opens her right eye. She closes it.