Sami departed for Iraq on Valentine’s Day, leaving love behind

Evidence

Sami turned around in the empty room, and he understood that he really was going. And at 6:00 A.M. on February 14, 2003, Sami boarded a plane with the First Marine Division for Kuwait. It was Valentine’s Day. Love had been superseded by war. — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 228

Categorization

• SEED: The Valentine’s Day departure as narrative compression — love superseded by war in a single date — is a craft technique worth studying: one loaded date doing the work of pages of thematic commentary.