Imagery and meaning

Here's a passage from a piece titled "Ramadi nights," by Neil Shea, who's a staffer at National Geographic, though this story ran in Virginia Quarterly magazine. What caught my eye was the way he used the rhythms of day turning to night to capture the state of the city, and what it meant.

"It is strange, looking back. At the time I didn’t feel any shift in the balance of things, though I’m told success was unfolding around me. Zarqawi had recently been killed, but that seemed to have little effect on the violent streets of Baghdad or anywhere else. There were only a few moments when it was possible to sense or grasp anything beyond the details of getting by. In the evenings, as the orange sun fell away and bats emerged from towers of the old palaces, you could feel the precariousness of the larger story, of the battle for Ramadi. It was as though, in the softening of the light and heat, a hidden view of the landscape was revealed. Perhaps it was that with dusk came a momentary peace. But then the acid night poured in, dissolving the edges of the city and reducing everything once more to small, irreversible moments of fear and action and inaction. It was in these moments that Ramadi was won, if it has really been won at all."