The elder arrived at our FOB two days after the suicide bombing.

His shoulder was injured in the blast, though we couldn't tell just how badly. There was a hole in it, poked by some piece of shrapnel, but the wound had already closed and there were no obvious signs of infection or disability. Instead he had an X-ray from the local hospital that showed a light smudge just a few inches beneath the skin, in the fleshy part of the shoulder around where doctors give your influenza shot.

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