“Sounds like they’re going to be partying till dawn.” Ally paused for a moment. When she spoke again, her voice was softer than the breeze. “What did your neighbor do, anyway? Did he say the wrong thing? Did he make a joke he shouldn’t have?”
Huda took a deep breath.
“He killed his wife.”
Ally’s head snapped back like she’d been clipped on the chin.
“And his family throws him a party?”
“Tonight he has a party. Maybe tomorrow his dead wife’s brothers come to settle the score.”
Ally stiffened.
“What do you mean?”
“When people cannot get justice, they take matters into their own hands.” Huda knew that among the crowd outside Baghdad’s jails, some were eager to greet loved ones. Others were waiting to take revenge. She remembered that white-hot hunger well.
“When it comes to family,” she muttered, “people do what they have to.”
When she looked up, Ally was curled up, knees tucked to her chest.
“My cousin Sara, she . . .” The young woman paused and stared up at the sky. “Her boyfriend beat her to death. She was twenty-eight years old.”
“Oh, my dear, I didn’t realize,” said Huda. “I’m so sorry.”
She’d always imagined life outside Iraq to be one bright, shiny day after another, where girls like Ally zipped about in cute convertibles, joined their friends for cupcakes as big as a child’s head, then went for a romantic dinner with a handsome man like Tom. At times, she envied Ally’s easy life, her freedom, the luck that saw her born in a country free from strife. But of course, fate didn’t pause for borders, or wealth, or age.
“Nights like tonight,” said Ally, “I can feel all the miles between me and my family.”
She stared up at the moon as if she were searching its craters and dark seas for a different ending. Guilt ballooned beneath Huda’s ribs. She wished, for what seemed like the thousandth time, that the two of them could be free to speak their minds. She wondered if Ally would ever consider helping Khalid and Hanan, hiding them in an embassy Land Cruiser and spiriting them out of the country. Even as she thought it, she knew she’d be a fool to ask. A reckless fool.
Just like she’d told Rania, the mukhabarat were watching her. No doubt her phone and home were bugged. Ally didn’t have decades of practice in biting her tongue. One slip, one whisper, and it would all be over. Huda rose from the bench and squeezed in on the swing. Another peal of laughter hurdled the fence. Ally flinched at the sound. Huda felt grief pulse through the young woman’s body, like it did through her own.
* * *
Bleary-eyed, Huda and Ally shuffled out the front door and into the morning sunlight.
“Careful,” called Abdul Amir. He put down the long-handled pruners he’d been using to trim a tree in the front yard. “The wasps are agitated this morning.”
No wonder, thought Huda, eyeing the papery hive dangling from a branch just beyond their wall. The insects would have been disturbed by the al-Ranis’ all-night party, like the rest of the neighborhood. Not that anyone could sleep soundly, thanks to the president’s amnesty.
“How are you feeling this morning, Abdul Amir?” said Ally. “Is your headache gone?”
“It’s okay.” Abdul Amir avoided her eyes and peeled off his garden gloves. “You want me to take you home?”
Huda touched Ally’s elbow.
“Promise me, you’ll come straight back if Ghassan is not there.”
“I will, thank you. Tom should be home in a few hours too.” Ally smiled, but Huda detected a glimmer of unease in her eyes.
“If he is late, you must call me,” she said. “I’ll be here all day, listening for the phone.”
In addition to the amnesty, the president had declared a national holiday. Hip, hip, hooray, she thought sarcastically. At least it would give honest people time to reinforce their locks and the bars on their windows. Abdul Amir wiped his hands on a towel and headed to the carport. Once he was gone, Ally swiveled toward Huda.
“I owe you,” she said quietly. Huda went to wave her off, but Ally reached out and trapped her hands. “I learned an Arabic proverb recently: ‘a true friend walks in when the rest of the world walks out.’”
Huda’s throat began to ache. “It was nothing.”
“Not everyone is brave enough to open their home to a . . .” The young woman blushed and trailed off. “I’ve been enough trouble. I should go now.”
Huda tried to muster an appropriate reply: No problem at all. You’re welcome. Come any time. But the words refused to obey. Instead, Huda stepped forward, wrapped her arms around Ally, and hugged her. In the carport, the Corolla rattled to life.
“I’ll open the gate,” muttered Huda, blinking back tears.
As Abdul Amir reversed into the street, Huda collected his garden gloves and rested the long pole topped with pruning blades against the house. An agitated wasp flew in from the sidewalk and buzzed her like a kamikaze. Huda retreated to the front door, but as she reached for the knob a low burble stopped her hand. Faint at first, the familiar growl of the Oldsmobile’s V-8 engine grew louder. Huda wrenched open the door and stuck her head into the foyer.
“Khalid!” she hollered, heart loud in her chest. “I have visitors. Stay in your room.”
The Oldsmobile pulled up on the far side of the gate. Huda had been expecting this visit. That didn’t stop goose bumps from prickling her spine. She knew there was no hiding the journalist’s phone call. In fact, she’d called and left a message for Abu Issa, knowing he might already have seen a transcript of the call or listened to a tape recording. On the far side of the garden wall, a car door slammed. Then another.
Huda closed her eyes. She told herself to focus, to expel all distractions, to turn to her center, like her grandmother did when she was seeking insight. Huda took a deep breath, straightened her shoulders, and returned to the gate.
“As-salaam alaikum.” She slid the bolt loose.
“Wa alaikum as-salaam.” Abu Issa strolled in from the sidewalk. The Bolt Cutter lumbered after him.
“Did you get the message I left last night?” Huda bobbed her head at Abu Issa. “A foreign journalist contacted the embassy.”
“Let’s talk about this inside,” he said.
“Inside?” Huda planted herself between the men and the front door. She was almost certain this visit had nothing to do with Khalid skipping the president’s victory parade. But what if she was wrong? What if Principal al-Quds had turned them in? For a moment, Huda pictured herself leaping on the Bolt Cutter’s back, tackling him to the ground, and gouging his eyes out. She’d do it if she had to—like one of those legendary mothers who fought off wildcats, lifted crashed cars, or performed superhuman acts of strength to save her child.
“Please, follow me.” She shepherded the men toward a tall wooden gate at the side of the house, then down a path of concrete slabs to the backyard. “Take a seat at the picnic table. I’ll fetch tea.”
“I’ll take a slice of khobuz, if you have it.” Abu Issa smiled superciliously. “Jam too.”
Huda headed to the kitchen, bristling. She wasn’t running a cafeteria. She put the coffee on the burner, then ducked down the hallway to Khalid’s room. As she opened the door he jerked away from the window, eyes bulging.
“Is it about the parade?” he cried.
“Not at all.” Huda hugged him to her chest, but not as tightly as she wanted, fearing if she did that she might never let him go. For Khalid’s sake, she needed to stay calm. She looked him in the eye, unblinking. “This is not about you.”
Khalid pulled away from her and peeked through the curtains once again.
“How do you know?”
“Because I do,” she said firmly. “Now get away from the window.”
She peered past his shoulder. The Bolt Cutter looked like a gorilla lounging on her swing seat. She pointed to a comic lying on Khalid’s bed.
“Stay in your room
and read quietly. I don’t want to hear a sound from you. Understand?”
“But, Mom—”
“You’re already in serious trouble, young man. Don’t make it worse.”
She left him sulking and sniffing, and returned to the kitchen. She put together a tray of coffee, khobuz flatbread, and ramekins of butter, date molasses, and buffalo cream, then carried it all out to the garden. Abu Issa had made himself at home, legs stretched out, basking in the sun at her picnic table.
“Please, take some food and drink,” she said, hoping he would choke on it.
Abu Issa tore off a strip of bread and dipped it into the molasses.
“So, a journalist called the embassy.” He dunked the jammy morsel in the cream. “What did he say?”
“His name is John Wales. He said he worked with Peter Francis, the journalist Ally visited at the Rashid Hotel.”
Abu Issa stared at her with the same dead eyes she’d seen during their encounter at the ice cream parlor, when he first threatened to put Khalid in Uday Hussein’s death squad. Huda eyed the butter knife resting on the tray, imagined it a dagger.
She began to recount the phone call. All the while, she had a numb, out-of-body sensation, as if she were an invisible spectator watching from above: the two men in their leather jackets, and her, arms folded over her chest, making herself as small as she could possibly be.
“So the foreign woman is a journalist. And a liar.” Abu Issa and the Bolt Cutter grinned at each other. “This is very useful.”
Huda glanced at Khalid’s curtained window. She remembered their argument by Martyr’s Monument, and the disgust in his voice as he asked, What would your brothers think of you . . . ?
“I think you’re mistaken about Ally.” The words slipped out before she could stop them. “It’s true she worked with Peter Francis at some business magazine in Australia. But she wasn’t a journalist. Ally was a secretary, like me.”
Abu Issa stared at her.
“A secretary?”
“In Australia they give it a fancy name, executive assistant.”
Abu Issa pushed his coffee aside.
“And you believe her?”
“Yes,” she said firmly. “I believe her. I’ve done what you asked, and fooled her into trusting me. She tells me all sorts of things you wouldn’t expect. Just last night she told me about a beloved cousin who died young. She even told me about, well . . .” Huda paused for dramatic effect. She glanced at the Bolt Cutter, then bent close to Abu Issa and whispered, “She confided about her relationships with her husband. It’s not entirely satisfying, apparently.”
“Unsatisfying?” Abu Issa smirked. “That’s no surprise. He has no mustache. He wears short pants in public. Only a hairless boy would do such a thing.”
“I’m sure she was telling the truth.” Huda giggled slyly. “About her husband, her work at the magazine, all of it.”
For the next fifteen minutes, as Abu Issa sipped coffee and took his fill of bread and cream, Huda told tales, made up gossip, complained about Ally, and poked fun at Mr. Tom. She felt like a courtier from ancient times desperate to keep a fickle caliph happy. When the coffee and khobuz were finished, she escorted the men to the front gate.
“Ma‘al-salamah.” She fashioned her lips into a smile. “Go with peace.”
She closed the padlock and waited for the Oldsmobile to growl to life. Instead, Abu Issa and the Bolt Cutter dallied on the sidewalk, puffing on cigarettes and trading spiteful jokes.
“That hairless girly-boy can’t get it up.”
“I should give the slut a taste of a real Iraqi man.”
Rage rose in Huda’s chest, a hot rage that blinded her and roared in her ears. She darted silently across the lawn, retrieved Abu Issa’s long-handled pruners, and crept back to the front wall. She flexed her fingers and weighed the tool in her hand. She thought back to her brothers, and how they’d speared fish and fowl with nothing more than a sharpened reed.
The two men on the sidewalk crowed again. Huda thrust the blade high. The pruners punctured the wasps’ papery nest. She twisted it sharply, left to right. Wasps streamed forth like black and yellow lava, buzzing furiously. Huda scampered through the side gate just as the Bolt Cutter bellowed. A second later, Abu Issa let out a high-pitched curse.
Huda fled down the path of concrete slabs, feet barely making a sound, pruning pole balanced at her shoulder, just like her brothers sprinting through wetland meadows. In the backyard, she paused to listen to the Bolt Cutter shriek and Abu Issa squeal.
Just like hairless boys in short pants, she thought triumphantly, and carried the tray of tea and jam back inside the house.
CHAPTER 20
A breeze swept through the bars on Ally’s bedroom window. It was uncommonly cool, and in the darkness outside, eucalypts and palm trees shimmied at its touch. Tom snored softly, bedsheet wrapped loosely around his hips. Ally eyed his moonlit silhouette and guilt ran its nails down her back. She still hadn’t told him that a journalist called the embassy asking for her, a former colleague. The prisoner amnesty had gotten him worked up enough.
Ally rolled onto her back and stared blindly at the fan whirring overhead. She felt like a cartoon character with a tiny devil at one ear and an angel at the other. One whispered not to worry, she was no longer a reporter. She was a diplomat’s wife, with diplomatic immunity. Then the other creature leaned in close, hissed that the bloodthirsty lunatics of the regime would do whatever they wanted. Diplomatic niceties be damned.
A gust of wind made the trees creak. Sand splattered against the window, insistent pinpricks, tap-tapping away. Ally gave up on sleep and crept to the kitchen. She pulled the curtain aside, just an inch, and peeked into the night. On the far side of the wall, Saddam peeked back. With a shiver, Ally thought back to the night of his prisoner amnesty, and Huda’s questions in the garden.
She couldn’t put her finger on it, but something felt off about Huda’s claim that she remembered seeing “housewife” on Ally’s visa form. Thank God she’d already come up with an answer for tricky situations like that, mixing the lie about being a secretary with the truth about how much it hurt to be unemployed. After all, the best lies had some honesty at heart. Ally grimaced at the billboard. Honesty? What did that mean? In Baghdad, few could afford the luxury.
Don’t get paranoid, she told herself. Still, she couldn’t shake Huda’s prying from her head. The secret police had most likely heard the journalist’s call to the embassy. Did they visit Huda and order her to find out more? Ally’s head began to ache. She let the curtain fall and returned to bed. Suspicion slipped between the sheets with her, nuzzled close.
She buried her head in her pillow and prayed it was all a figment of her imagination. But she knew she had no choice but to put distance between her and Huda. Whatever lay behind her curiosity, Huda wasn’t a diplomat’s wife. She couldn’t risk getting caught up in Ally’s lies.
* * *
Ally sat at a table on the edge of the al-Faqma’s patio and raised her ice cream cone in a toast.
“Fe sehtak,” she said. “Cheers.”
On the sidewalk, a shoeshine boy grinned and raised his cone in reply. A man in a white smock emerged from al-Faqma’s kitchen.
“Is he bothering you?” He gave the boy a stern look. “Shall I get rid of him?”
“Not at all,” said Ally. “Ice cream tastes better with company.”
The man looked at her like she was slightly mad, then he shrugged and smiled. The shoeshine boy had done the same when she first offered him ice cream.
“I wondered who the second cone was for.” The man straightened his smock. “I hope young Faisal remembered to thank you. He’s not a bad boy. He never tries to pick my customers’ pockets, but sometime he forgets his manners.”
“He’s been a perfect gentleman.” Ally raised her cone in another toast.
Faisal chuckled and licked his fast-melting scoop of pistachio.
“Ally?” a voice called. “Is th
at you?”
Huda hurried across the sidewalk. She was shiny with sweat, and clearly agitated.
“What are you doing here?”
“Getting ice cream,” said Ally slowly. “What about you?”
“Where’s Abdul Amir?” Huda squinted at a coffee shop nearby. A few taxi drivers idled at its sidewalk tables, waiting for customers. “He’s not smoking nargilah, is he?”
“I’m not sure,” mumbled Ally. “I couldn’t reach him.”
“He didn’t drive you?”
“It’s not a big deal.” She licked her ice cream half-heartedly. “I did a bit of sightseeing, that’s all.”
“Sightseeing?”
“I went to the Sayed Idris mosque.”
Huda’s mouth turned down at the corners. Ally pretended not to notice. The mosque was featured on one of her mother’s postcards, with its aquamarine minaret gleaming in the sun. Ally had wanted to see it herself, feel the same ancient carpet beneath her bare feet, and run her fingers along jeweled grid work protecting the casket of the long dead saint.
“You shouldn’t have gone there alone.” Huda folded her arms across her chest.
“I didn’t.” Ally tried to act unruffled. Above her head, a line strung with tin stars tinkled gaily. “Hatim drove me.”
“Hatim?”
“I’ve mentioned him before. He’s the driver I use if I can’t contact Abdul Amir.”
Anger flashed in Huda’s eyes.
“You promised you wouldn’t ride with strange men.”
Ally grit her teeth. What was she supposed to do? Spend her days braiding her hair? Perhaps she could crochet her very own padded cell?
“Hatim is a good person. And he helped me find the mosque a lot faster than if I’d gone there and wandered about on my own.”
“Does Mr. Tom know this? And have you forgotten that thousands of criminals are now free to roam about?”
“I don’t need Tom’s permission to leave the house.” Ally tried not to roll her eyes. “And the amnesty came with a condition, didn’t you hear? Anyone breaking the law from now on gets, you know . . .” She glanced over her shoulder, then sliced her hand like a knife across her neck. “Embassy security says crime has actually fallen.”
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