Abstract
"In Due Time All Are Buried" is the first act of a five act novel-in-progress. The novel takes place during the first year of the Iraq War and follows two distinct narrative threads, one Iraqi and the other American. This first act is told from the perspective of Thamir al-Jasham, an Iraq-Iran War veteran whose wife died during the subsequent Desert Storm airstrikes. Now in 2003, Thamir is again faced with his past failures as a husband, failures which have haunted him all these years. Thamir's surrogate son, Jassim, has fallen in love with a woman who comes from a wealthier class and Thamir sees the boy making the same mistakes he did. Following the initial airstrikes, Thamir and Jassim are forced out into the streets of war-torn Baghdad to search for Jassim's would-be-lover. Along the way, the two confront obstacles that threaten to destroy their relationship.