THE BEGINNING OF THE END

THE GUNMEN CAME IN THE AFTERNOON. Wearing the drab and baggy uniform of the Islamic State, they arrived at the door of Bashar Abu Ali’s home in western Mosul to commandeer it as a sniper’s nest. There were seven or eight of the militants, all Iraqis. They used an upstairs bedroom to shoot into the broad road outside.

In those days in late February and early March, the Islamic State was falling back quickly. The Iraqi military swept into the city, backed by ferocious American airstrikes and artillery. The militants had already lost the eastern half of the city and were now scrambling to mount a defense of the west side. That meant seizing some vehicles to make car bombs, setting fire to others to create smoke screens and taking over hundreds of civilian houses like Abu Ali’s, militarizing both the urban and the suburban landscapes of the city.

Then the battle began. For 11 days, the 43-year-old coffee-shop manager cowered with his family in terror in downstairs rooms while the ISIS fighters held the high ground, taking shifts shooting at the top of the stairs. American and Iraqi warplanes rained bombs around them. “I was 90 to 95% sure we were going