“I felt like the old man recognized Yusra.” Ally twisted toward her. “Maybe we can come back another day and try again.”
“I put your lemon tree in the trunk of my car.” She tried to change the topic. “That old man sure knew how to drive a hard bargain.”
“Oh, thank you.” Ally fumbled for her handbag. “How much do I owe you?”
“Nothing. It is a gift.”
“That’s very kind. But, please, I want to pay.”
“Keep your money,” said Huda. Abu Issa had told her to keep Ally in her debt. He said it would make her easier to control. “Remember, Abdul Amir and I are always happy to help when you want to buy something. Otherwise, those merchants will take the skin off your back.”
“You mean, the shirt off my back?”
“The skin is more painful, no?”
Huda navigated toward an elevated freeway. The car behind them peeled away. In the shade of the looping on-ramp, a young boy watched over a flock of yellow-eyed goats.
“Did you know that Rania Mansour’s mother suffered a stroke?” said Ally. “She’s in hospital in Baghdad.”
“My cousin mentioned it.” Huda pressed her foot on the accelerator. “I hope the sheikha recovers.”
“I was there when Rania got the news.”
Huda felt an unexpected twinge of jealousy. She knew it was ridiculous, but when she pictured Ally comforting Rania, a tiny part of her wished she could have been the one to stroke her hair while she cried.
After the call from her cousin, Huda had drifted outside to the carport and searched for her old set of runes. She had a vague idea that they might reveal Rania’s mother’s fate. After ten minutes of rummaging through the cobwebbed corners of the garage, she found a small cedar box coated in a fine layer of dust. Butterflies fluttered in her stomach. She pried open the lid. Inside lay a small leather pouch, and within that, half a dozen pearlescent seashells, a few tarnished brass coins, pebbles the color of storm clouds, and the fragile bones of a small bird.
It had been twenty years or more since Huda last held the talismans, and when she picked them up, the bird bones crumbled to dust in her fingers. Tears welled in her eyes. She remembered Rania crouched beside her, urging her to empty the bag, to chart their futures in the scattered patterns of bones and coins. They would have been young teenagers then, hiding behind the tall grass near the river at the back of the sheikh’s farm.
“What do you see?” Rania had quivered with excitement. “Will I travel to London this year?”
Huda frowned. Rania had only just returned from another year at school in Baghdad, and already she was dreaming of flying away.
“Don’t rush me,” said Huda.
The tall grass hissed and swayed.
“If Mama leaves me behind on the farm again, I swear, I’ll die.”
“Must you always be so dramatic?” mumbled Huda. “Surely, some time at home won’t kill you.”
In years past, Huda would have scoffed even louder, but she’d become wary of tempting fate. Just a month ago Mustafa had sliced his foot on an old knife head buried in a riverbed. Days later, he was struck with a violent fever that set his teeth chattering. Lying on a bedroll in their back room, Mustafa called for Baba to bring him a drop of water. Huda shivered at his call. Their father had been dead more than ten years.
Huda’s grandmother had tried all the usual remedies—black cumin seed potions, turmeric poultices, and honeyed herb tea. The flame within Mustafa only grew stronger. Grandmother rested her ear again his chest, then dug through her cavernous medicine bag.
“Huda, fetch a candle,” she ordered.
When Huda returned, the old healer held a buffalo horn inscribed with powerful hadith. Like a ribbon of fine lace, the holy script looped around the curves of the blackened ivory.
“Roll your brother onto his stomach,” muttered Grandmother.
She circled the base of the buffalo horn over the candle flame, then, when the bone was warm, she pressed it between Mustafa’s shoulder blades. His skin was already so hot, Huda was surprised it didn’t sizzle. She stroked Mustafa’s sweat-sodden hair, while her grandmother rocked back and forth, whispering prayers. Every time Mustafa moaned, pain twisted in Huda’s side. He’d always seemed so invincible. But when she pressed her fingers to his wrist, she felt only a thin quivering thread, easily unspooled, or sliced in two.
She closed her eyes and promised God she wouldn’t complain when Mustafa teased her. She wouldn’t sulk when he forbade her from joining him and Ali on their hunting trips. I’ll be good, she pleaded silently, just let Mustafa live.
Grandmother pried the bone from the base of Mustafa’s neck, revealing a dome of pink flesh. Suddenly, a slender knife glittered in her wrinkled hand.
“Don’t hurt him,” blurted Huda.
“Shush, girl,” growled Grandmother. She pressed the point of the blade into the pink dome at Mustafa’s neck. A dozen times she pierced his burning skin. Huda tightened her grip on her brother’s hand, as the network of tiny incisions wept clear fluid, not blood. Grandmother repeated the process ten times, covering Mustafa’s back with weeping pink domes. When she was done, she shuffled outside to comfort Mama, who was anxiously grinding a mountain of turmeric and cumin seed.
Huda remained, crouched by her brother, their shadows shimmying beneath the yellow candle flame. She whispered the same prayers Grandmother had set in motion, holy words and curlicues of smoke rising to the ceiling. Within an hour, the mounds on Mustafa’s back subsided. An hour later, his fever broke too. Only then did Huda allow a tear to crawl down her cheek.
A month later, as she cast her bag of talismans across the silty riverbank, Huda found herself once again holding back tears. Ever since Mustafa’s illness, she’d felt the need to keep those precious to her close: her two brothers, Mama, Grandmother, and Rania too. As she searched the scattered bones and shells for signs of faraway places and distant journeys, she wondered, How long would it be before Rania left for good? How far could their bond stretch? Did their blood oath still bind them? Or was it more like that skipping thread at Mustafa’s wrist, capable of snapping with a sharp tug?
Rania raised her amber eyes from the runes.
“I heard that Mustafa has been ill.” She rested her hand on Huda’s shoulder. “I heard you stayed by his side for a week.”
Huda blinked in surprise. And relief. Rania had been keeping track of her too.
“Cast your talismans one more time,” urged Rania. “Let’s see how long it will take Mustafa to recover fully. How long before he’s back teasing us? Perhaps this will be the summer when us girls finally take charge.”
“The chance would be a fine thing,” said Huda.
“I heard your mama makes Mustafa sit three times a day with a warm poultice strapped to his foot. So, while he’s laid up, you can show me how to throw his spear. By summer’s end, I might even be as good as you.”
“As good a shot as me? I don’t fancy your luck.”
Huda giggled and cast the runes across the sand again. She scolded herself for putting so little faith in their friendship. After all, blood oaths were stronger than distance and time, weren’t they?
* * *
“Huda, are you okay?” Ally peered at her from the passenger’s seat. “I’m sorry, I should have realized you’d be worried about Rania’s mom too.”
“I’m fine.” Huda stared doggedly at the freeway unfurling before them. That wasn’t enough to banish the tears from her eyes. “It was the weeping willow back at the nursery. I’m allergic, you see.”
Ally eyed her doubtfully.
“I dropped off some food at the hospital for Rania’s mom,” she said. “I’m not sure what else I can do. . . .”
“Pray for her.” Huda worked hard to keep her voice level. Why is it, she thought, that we Iraqis are the least pious Muslims in the Middle East, yet we have the most cause to pray for Allah’s mercy?
They sped on, across the southern fringe of Baghdad. Be
low the freeway, mud-brick huts were scattered about like dice: one-room, crumbling cubes baking in the sun. Dust coated everything. Even the leaves on the poplar trees.
“So this aerobics class I’m taking you to, is it popular?” asked Huda, desperate to change the subject. “Have you met anyone interesting at this class?”
“There’s Barbara, she’s from Germany. Inez is from Colombia. They’re both working for the UN’s oil-for-food program.”
In her head, Huda repeated the names, Barbara, Inez. Abu Issa usually paid a bonus for details like that, money she stashed away to pay for Khalid’s passport. She prayed that the names would keep him satisfied and that he wouldn’t ask about traitors or homes razed to the ground.
“You must enjoy this aerobics if you’re coming back for the third time this month.”
“Fourth time, actually.”
“Fourth time?”
The wind thrummed against the windshield.
“Well . . .” Ally looked sheepish. “It was a last-minute thing. The phone was dead, and I couldn’t call Abdul Amir. So I hired a driver near the Karadah market.”
Huda’s jaw unhinged.
“You went in a stranger’s car?”
“Don’t worry. Hatim is a lovely guy. His wife is a teacher. They’ve got two little girls.”
“That’s what he told you? How do you know he can be trusted? He could be anyone.”
A robber. A rapist. Or mukhabarat. This “Hatim” could be an older version of the Bolt Cutter, monitoring goings on in the market zone. Huda could picture him: doing the rounds of the meat and vegetable stalls, comparing notes with his informants, checking the coffee shops for malcontents. In the heat of the afternoon, he’d nap in the front seat of his car, dreaming of new punishments to inflict on the disloyal.
“You must call for Abdul Amir. Always. Promise me.”
“But I’ve seen plenty of women take taxis.”
But they are not you. Huda grit her teeth. If the mukhabarat knew someone else was driving Ally about, unmonitored, surely she and Abdul Amir would be punished.
“If anything happened to you, Abdul Amir would feel terribly guilty. Mr. Tom would not want you getting in some strange man’s car, either.”
Ally fixed her mouth in a stubborn line and stared out the window at al-Sha’ab Stadium. The sports arena appeared to be deserted, but everyone knew that in specially built chambers beneath the stands, Uday Hussein tortured athletes who didn’t live up to his expectations. Huda couldn’t remember exactly when she first learned of the dungeons in the stadium, or who told her about the iron-maiden coffin lined with a thousand spikes to pierce those shut inside. It was one of those facts, universally known but never spoken of publicly: a few whispers, the tilt of a head, the sighting of a footballer with a bloody hole where his ear should have been.
Ally leaned forward. “What’s that?”
In a dry gully, a long trailer glinted beneath a web of sand-colored netting. A twenty-foot missile sat in its bed, snub nose angled toward the horizon.
“Oh my God.” Ally craned her neck. “That’s a missile.”
Huda stared doggedly through the windshield. Ally swiveled about.
“You saw it, right?”
“Not really . . .”
“It was right there. A big missile.”
“I was watching the road.”
Ally stared at her in disbelief.
“So about the lemon tree,” said Huda, desperate to change the conversation. “If you really want to pay for it, you can.”
“The lemon tree?” Ally’s eyes widened. Frustration flickered in their blue depths. She massaged her temples, as if she had a headache coming on.
“It was ten thousand dinar.” Huda’s lie slipped out smooth as butter on bread. “That’s how much I paid.”
* * *
A gritty wind sliced the muezzin’s call into ribbons. Huda probably wouldn’t have noticed the call to prayer, but a man in a brown dishdasha had pulled his bicycle over to the shoulder of the road and was rolling out a mat of palm leaves. This was Iraq, and only the most pious stopped on the side of the road to pray.
Huda watched the man and his bicycle dwindle in her rearview mirror, then her gaze fell to her handbag, open on the passenger’s seat. Ally’s money spilled from its mouth. Ten thousand dinar. Twice what she’d actually paid the old gardener.
Guilt crept through her chest. She eyed the purple notes, with the president’s face inked on every one, and wondered, How long before Ally worked out Huda was making money off her—promising vendors she’d get them a good price as long as she kept a cut? Perhaps Ally already suspected her. She’d been in Baghdad for some time now; maybe like everyone else, she’d learned it was best to turn a blind eye.
It was after that, that events became confused for Huda, as if someone had taken a film strip and cut out two of every three frames. She was left with disjointed images—pulling to the curb, removing her key from the ignition, searching for a patch of grass. She didn’t have water to cleanse herself before prayer, but later she found grains of sand in her hair, so she must have struck her palm against the soil, blown the dust from her fingers, then run her hands over her face and hair. She had only the vaguest recollection of turning to Mecca and mouthing the takbir.
What she recalled most clearly was the scratch of the mustard grass as she pressed her forehead to the ground. The sun burned the back of her neck as she recited prayers for protection over and over, until the words lost all meaning. The wind tossed her words into the sky. God is great mixed with fine desert sand and disappeared into the blue.
Later, she turned into her driveway and parked the Corolla in the carport. Huda remained behind the wheel for some time, trying to make sense of her roadside prayer. She told herself she should feel more at peace, but in truth she was more rattled than soothed. When would these lies end?
“Mom, are you hiding in here again?” Khalid appeared at the rear of the carport. “What’s wrong?”
Huda shoved the cash in her handbag and clambered from the car.
“Are you hungry, my dear?” she asked. “Did you eat a proper lunch? Let me make you a snack.”
From the corner of her eye, she spotted her battered box of childhood keepsakes. She wished with all her heart that the runes had held on to their powers, that the tiny bird bones hadn’t crumbled to dust, that she had more than seashells to help her find a way forward.
CHAPTER 18
In Rania’s studio, an empty canvas waited by the window, taunting her. Reluctantly, she inspected the photo in her hands. There was the president—in jodhpurs, riding boots, and a tan jacket. He carried a hunting rifle under his elbow. The gun’s walnut stock gleamed in the sunlight. He was gazing across Lake Habbaniyah, where fat cattails fringed a sweep of muddy shore. In fields all around, yarrow bloomed among thorny manna trees. The president’s face was tilted to the sky, tracking a neat arrowhead of ducks. Uday lurked behind him, smirking.
Rania tried to swallow her revulsion and homed in on the flat-topped blooms of yarrow. Somewhere in her paint box lay half a tube of cadmium lemon. That shade would match. The doorbell buzzed. Rania put down the photo and hurried out to the hall.
“Mom?” Hanan wedged open the kitchen door. “Are you expecting visitors?”
“I’ll see who it is,” said Rania. “Now, be a good girl, and go up to your bedroom.”
Hanan opened her mouth, as if she was going to argue. Rania planted herself in the middle of the hallway and pointed to the stairs. Hanan sighed and slunk away, but Rania knew she couldn’t keep her hidden away forever.
She hurried down the hall, worried that she’d find Malik at the gate. Had he come to inspect progress on the presidential portrait? Or to once again put his hands on Hanan’s picture, as if she was a gift he couldn’t wait to unwrap? Rania pried open the hall closet and checked that her husband’s old pistol was still concealed under the scarves. The bell sounded again.
Outside, Rania peered
through the gap in the gate. It wasn’t Malik on the sidewalk.
“What are you doing here, Huda?” she hissed. “I thought our business was done.”
“I heard the news about your mother,” said Huda, clutching a sack of tea to her chest like a pitiful bouquet.
Rania was suddenly struck by a memory of Huda’s grandmother pouring glasses of fragrant numi basra as she dispensed advice in the women’s quarters of the farmhouse. Rania wanted nothing more than to go back to that time, to when she and Huda would sneak away, lie in the long grass, and dream of the future.
“I’m sorry.” Huda turned away. “I shouldn’t have come. I’ll leave you in peace.”
Rania hesitated, then unlatched the gate.
“Come in,” she said.
The two women followed the stepping-stones to the garden and settled at a picnic bench in the shade. A crow kept watch, marching back and forth in the pale-limbed eucalypt. Silence gathered about them.
“I wanted to stop by earlier, but I was very busy at work, then of course there was the election. . . .” Huda trailed off and slid her pack of Marlboro Lights across the table. “I hope you managed to find enough time to vote.”
Rania felt nauseous as she remembered how she’d ticked yes and exited the plywood voting booth with a plastic smile so wide her cheeks ached. The poll monitor was watching her, so she swallowed down her revulsion and joined the woman next to her cheering, Yes, yes, yes, Saddam.
“Of course I voted,” she muttered. “I don’t need more trouble with the regime.”
“More trouble? What do you mean?” Alarm flashed in Huda’s eyes. “Did they find out about Kareem and the cleric?”
“It’s not that.”
“What is it, then?”
Rania eyed Huda carefully. Could she trust her with the truth? Despite all the hurt they’d caused each other, they both wanted the same thing—to keep their children safe.
“One of Uday’s men has been here.” Rania lit her cigarette and drew hard, like she was running a race to see who would burn out first, her or the roll of tobacco. “He wants to take Hanan to his palace.”
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