When the Apricots Bloom

by Gina Wilkinson

  “So you decide to drive around with a stranger? Don’t you realize you can’t trust anyone? After all I’ve—” She broke off, red lips like a wound.

  The tin stars tinkled again.

  “Let’s not argue about this.” Ally tried to hide her frustration. “As it turns out, I couldn’t go into the shrine. Not even wearing a head scarf. No foreigners allowed. Not anymore.”

  “If you had asked me first, I could have told you.”

  Ally stared woefully at her ice cream. All she could taste was the sour tang of suspicion. What the hell is Huda doing here, anyway?

  “Shouldn’t you be at work, Huda?”

  Huda sighed in exasperation.

  “The school called and said Khalid didn’t show up for class after lunch. His friend Bakr thought he might have gone for ice cream.”

  “Oh.” Ally felt relieved and foolish at the same time. “Believe it or not, I saw a boy who looked a lot like Khalid outside the mosque.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I only got a quick glimpse of them.”

  “Them?”

  “Khalid and the imam,” said Ally. “At least, I think it was the imam. He sort of reminded me of Santa Claus. He had chubby cheeks and a curly white beard. All he needed was a red furry turban.”

  Huda pressed her hand to her mouth.

  “This Santa Claus, was he tall or short?”

  “Uh, tall. He was very tall, in fact. Do you know him?”

  “Did you see anyone else?”

  “Well, there was a man in a suit.”

  “Did he have thick glasses?” demanded Huda.

  “He did, yes.” She eyed Huda curiously. “Who is he?”

  “No one. Forget it.”

  Huda stared at her with eyes wide as a lake, but Ally had the feeling she wasn’t seeing her at all, that she was picturing some other time and place. Ally felt a pang of sympathy. She’d thought she was the one with secrets, but she’d begun to realize everyone had secrets here, enough to drown in.

  “Can I help?” she offered. “We can look for Khalid together.”

  “No, better I go alone.”

  “Don’t feel too bad.” Ally gave Huda’s hand a brief squeeze. “When I was a teenager, kids cut school to go shoplifting or smoke cigarettes. At least Khalid’s going to the mosque.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Rania sat at the bar in the Alwiyah Club’s restaurant. The high-pitched laughter of children splashing about in the pool drifted through the open windows, along with the thwack of balls on the tennis courts. Rania checked her watch anxiously. She’d promised to bring Hanan to the club, but soon she’d have to return to the hospital and relieve her cousin, sitting watch at her mother’s bedside.

  A plump woman strolled past the bar, licking an enormous ice cream cone.

  “How is your diet progressing, Amal?” chimed the woman’s whip-thin companion. “Is this another of your miracle regimes, where you can have all the ice cream and sugar you want, as long as you eat nothing but grapefruit on Wednesdays?”

  “You should try a little more sugar, sister-in-law,” she replied. “Perhaps it will help with your bitterness.”

  The skinny woman snorted and turned to leave.

  “Rania?” she exclaimed. “Is it you?”

  “Miriam Pachachi?” Rania’s eyes widened. “It’s been a long time. Too long.”

  “So long, you probably thought I’d died,” she chuckled.

  “No such luck,” snapped the plump woman, and sashayed away.

  Miriam rolled her eyes.

  “Please, join me for a few minutes.” Rania gestured to the bar-stool beside her. “Tell me, are you still sculpting?”

  The two women talked art and traded gossip, while nearby a plump waiter attempted to impress a table of young women snacking on french fries and falafels.

  “Your drinks, mademoiselles,” he declared, dispensing frosty glasses of mango and pineapple juice with a theatrical bow so low it split the rear of his tuxedo pants, like a polyester sea parting before Moses.

  Rania and Miriam battled to hide their mirth.

  “It’s times like these,” said Rania, “when I wish the club still served alcohol. A sight like that deserves to be toasted with a champagne cocktail.”

  “That was Madam Raghad’s favorite drink,” remarked the silver-haired bartender. In his dapper bow tie, he was as much a fixture of the Alwiyah Club as the massive mahogany bar. “She always liked an extra sugar cube in her glass.”

  “My father loved Bloody Marys,” said Rania. “He claimed the tomato juice canceled out the alcohol.”

  “That reminds me of that poor boy who had that crush on you,” said Miriam. “Do you remember, he drank all those Bloody Marys to try and work up courage to ask you to dance? He ended up falling in the swimming pool.”

  “That wasn’t me,” laughed Rania, waving her hands back and forth in protest. “Time is playing tricks on you.”

  The bartender topped up their juices, then left to help erect a large screen on the Alwiyah’s lawn. Later, once the swimmers tired of the pool and the tennis players downed their racquets, the French movie Carmen would play under the stars.

  “Do you remember that wonderful bronze you sculpted, of the mother curled around her child?” said Rania. “It must be ten years now that she’s been watching over my garden.”

  “Praise God you came just in time to save her.” Miriam ran her fingers through her cropped silver hair. “I was going to have to sell her for scrap.”

  “I couldn’t bear the thought of her melted down and turned into plumber’s pipes and bathroom fixtures,” said Rania. “Believe it or not, I recently thought I had a buyer for her.”

  “A buyer?” Miriam raised an anorexic eyebrow. “Who has money nowadays for a bronze this size?”

  “A diplomat’s wife,” said Rania. “I think you’d like her. She’s a young Australian.”

  Miriam blinked in surprise. She paused and scanned the dining room. The young waiter was off changing his trousers. The young women had left for the garden.

  “This woman . . .” Miriam lowered her voice. “Is her name Ally Wilson?”

  “You know Ally?”

  “Don’t get involved with that girl,” whispered Miriam. “She’s dangerous.”

  “Dangerous?” Rania exclaimed. “Why on earth would you say that?”

  “She says she’s Australian.” Miriam leaned closer, so close that Rania could feel her breath against her ear. “Really, she’s an American.”

  Rania recoiled.

  “That can’t be.”

  “On my mother’s grave, I tell you, I knew her mother. I’m not wrong.”

  “I’m confused.” Rania pressed her hand to her forehead. “How did you know her mother?”

  “There’s no point digging up the past.” Miriam eyed her mournfully. “Besides, sometimes it’s safer not to know everything. The fact is the girl shouldn’t even be in the country, let alone admiring art in your backyard.”

  “Miriam, are you ready?” Her sister-in-law appeared at the entrance to the dining room. “I’m leaving. Will you make your own way home?”

  “Tether your camel, I’m coming.” Miriam squeezed Rania’s hands between hers. “Be careful. Americans promise the earth, but we Iraqis are always the ones who pay for it.”

  Rania remained at the bar, too shocked to move. How could Ally have betrayed her like this? Didn’t she realize what the regime did to Iraqis who consorted with Americans? Couldn’t she feel the sword hanging over all of their heads?

  She tried desperately to recall every conversation they’d ever had, all the confidences they’d shared. Rania had a horrible suspicion she’d let too much slip. Paranoia unfurled its dirty tentacles inside her. What was an American doing in Iraq when everyone knew they were forbidden?

  Over the years, Rania had plenty of people pass through her gallery claiming to be interested in art but clearly seeking information—ambassadors, attachés, so-called
businessmen from the Gulf. It wasn’t hard to imagine the CIA sending an operative undercover as a diplomat’s wife. She’d always thought Ally was a good listener, but thinking back, it was almost as if she’d been taking mental notes so she could go home afterward and write it all down.

  Calm down, a voice inside her cautioned. Don’t overreact. She couldn’t afford to make any mistakes, especially not now that her and Huda’s plan was beginning to take shape. Rania took a deep breath and tried to loosen fear’s icy embrace. Maybe Ally wasn’t a spy. Perhaps there was another explanation.

  Rania glanced through the window. The bartender was busy setting up the outdoor cinema on the wide lawn. Behind him, Hanan and her friends were batting a helium balloon back and forth, playing a game of volleyball in slow motion. But for Rania, time seemed to be speeding up. She felt each second tick away, and with it, the need to get Hanan to safety grew ever more urgent.

  CHAPTER 22

  Huda hurried down the stairs of a decrepit apartment block with Rania two steps in front of her, both of them anxious to leave behind the people smuggler in his cramped fourth-floor flat. The close confines of the stairwell magnified the clatter of their heels. Rania cursed as she stumbled on the hem of her abaya.

  “Careful, don’t break your neck.” Huda’s heart slapped against her ribs. She wondered, Had anyone noticed them? Was an informant phoning the mukhabarat, right now? Beside her ear, an inch-wide crack zigzagged through the concrete.

  “Let’s keep moving.” Rania wrenched her abaya away from her ankles. “I need to get back to Hanan.”

  The women skittered through the foyer and out to the unpaved street. After the gloom of the apartment building, the sunlight stung their eyes.

  “I hate these damn robes.” Rania picked her way past a chain of potholes.

  “Most of the women here wear them.” Huda lifted the hem of her abaya and leaped across the gutter. “It’s better for us if we blend in.”

  Huda threw another glance at the squat apartment block. Its dun-colored walls were the same shade as the dirt road, the rubble-strewn lot next door, and almost every other building in the slum of Saddam City. There were no trees to provide relief, no flowering vines. Thick dust coated every surface. The only hint of color came from the jade dress of a little girl standing on the corner, bouncing a baby on her hip.

  Rania glanced at the boarded-up windows of the smuggler’s flat, then slid into her car. She slammed the door shut, catching her robe. She growled and tore the fabric free.

  “Calm down,” said Huda. “Now you’ll have to sew a new hem.”

  “I can’t believe it.” Rania jammed her key in the ignition. “That creep wants almost as much money as Kareem does, and the kids don’t even get a passport out of it.”

  “And we can’t be sure he won’t dump them in the desert.”

  “My friend Bashir said two of his cousins used this man’s services.” Rania steered the Volvo past a goat nosing for scraps in the trash. “The difference is, his cousins were full-grown men, not two kids barely in their teens.”

  “I agree.” Huda glanced in the rearview mirror. “I don’t trust him.”

  Inside the stifling apartment, the smuggler had stood with his back to the boarded-up window. Huda could see the outline of his body, his skinny neck, and the prickly stubble of hair on his head, but his face was all shadow. Huda couldn’t read his eyes, but she heard the slobbery lick of his lips as he named the price for smuggling their children out of Iraq.

  “What do we do now?” Rania navigated past a market cobbled together from plywood, plastic sheets, and pieces of corrugated metal. Men sat out front with baskets of tomatoes and burlap sacks of grapes. A little boy hawked cheap cigarettes. “My car would never make the journey, but perhaps I could rent a vehicle and drive the kids up north to the Turkish border. They could cross on foot.”

  “It won’t work,” said Huda. “Last time Ally’s husband returned from a trip up north, he said the number of checkpoints had doubled. It’s because of that warmonger George W. Bush, and his axis-of-evil talk. The same is happening near the borders with Iran and Syria.”

  “What about Jordan, then?”

  “You heard the smuggler—the only way to get there is through the desert. You’ll get bogged in the sand unless you have a new SUV or a Land Cruiser like they have at the embassy.”

  “The kids need passports and exit visas,” said Rania. “I don’t seen any alternative. We have to convince Kareem and the cleric to help us.”

  “How? We’ve got nothing to bargain with.”

  A muscle twitched in Rania’s cheek.

  “Listen to me,” she said, “Kareem says the US is just waiting for an excuse to attack, and then he believes Washington will hand power to him and his supporters.”

  “So?”

  “Kareem and his group want to prod America into action. They want a crisis, a crisis that will give the Americans a reason to invade. The sooner the better.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “We offer Kareem a deal.” Rania stared grimly through the windshield. “He gives us the passports and visas. In return, we give him Ally.”

  Huda blinked.

  “Ally?”

  “The girl has been lying to us this whole time. She’s an American.”

  “American? No, she’s Australian. I’ve seen her passport.”

  “In that case, Ally must have dual citizenship. She’s been hiding it.”

  Huda’s mind whirled. Ally, an American?

  “Even if this was true, how would it help us?”

  “I told you,” sighed Rania, “the opposition wants to trigger a crisis. Nothing would anger the US more than Baghdad taking an American hostage.”

  “A hostage?” Huda’s fingernails dug into the faded leather seat. “You can’t be serious.”

  Rania kept her eyes on the dusty road, the scabrous sidewalk, the plastic bags and rusty cans heaped in the gutter.

  “The American CIA has used diplomats’ wives as spies before. How do we know Ally’s not one too? She lied to get into Iraq, and she’s been lying ever since.”

  “Come on, that’s crazy.”

  “She’s always asking questions and nosing around.”

  “That’s because she’s a journalist, not a spy.”

  “A journalist?”

  “She admitted to me she worked at a newspaper, but then she tried to convince me she was a secretary. Can you believe that?”

  “An American and a journalist.” Rania’s eyes glittered with tears of betrayal. “I hate to say it, but that will suit the opposition even better.”

  Huda felt sick to her core.

  “We can’t do this.”

  “Look, we tell Kareem we have the information he needs to trigger the Americans. But we won’t give him the details until our children have their passports and are on their way to the border.”

  “What about Ally? If she’s an American . . .” A shiver took its time crawling down Huda’s spine. She’d betrayed Ally time and time again. She’d lied and blackmailed and taken kickbacks. But handing her over to the regime was a depth Huda wasn’t ready to plumb. “We don’t know what the regime might do. They could send her to Abu Ghraib. Or worse.”

  “That’s why we need to time this carefully.” Rania turned the wheel. “We encourage Ally to take a trip to Jordan, a little holiday. Once her exit documents are ready, we reveal what we know to Kareem. Hopefully, Ally makes it out before the opposition feeds our information to the regime.”

  “Hopefully?”

  “In the worst-case scenario, we make an anonymous call to the embassy and tip them off. Ally can take refuge there. The regime is not going to drag her out.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “We don’t have time to debate this.” Rania slammed her palm against the steering wheel. “Any moment, Uday could decide he wants Hanan. He’s a rapist. A torturer. A murderer. And by this time next year, Khalid could be in the fedayeen, le
arning to slice innocent women’s heads from their bodies. Is that what you want?”

  “Of c-course not,” stammered Huda.

  “Ally will be all right. She has diplomatic status. She has money and options in life that our children will never have. My daughter is my priority. Khalid should be yours.” Rania guided the Volvo away from the slum and accelerated toward the freeway. “Besides, Ally is not as naive as she pretends. If she’s a journalist, she’ll probably end up writing a book and making a fortune out of this.”

  * * *

  Huda waited at her desk, trying to appear relaxed even though sweat was beading on her palms. She’d already set two cups of coffee on her desktop, hoping steamy tendrils of cardamom would convince Ally to join her after she finished up in Tom’s office. The girl’s smile had grown stiff after their row over her sightseeing, and over the past couple of days, she seemed even more distant and gloomy. Guilt poked Huda in the ribs. She took a deep breath and reminded herself, the girl was a liar, just like her.

  Huda checked her watch again. As if on cue, the door to Tom’s office opened.

  “Ally, my dear friend, how are you?” Huda motioned at the two cups on her desk. “Please, join me. I’ve got coffee for us.”

  “Maybe next time.” Ally kept walking. “I’m afraid I’ve got a few chores to knock out.”

  Huda hurried out from behind her desk.

  “Please, stop for a while.”

  “I’d love to, but I need to stop at the market on my way home.”

  Something in her voice made Huda wonder if Ally was lying again.

  “How about I do a reading for you.” She gestured for her to take a seat. “I can take a look at the grounds. Perhaps they will have some secrets to share.”

  The young woman eyed the two coffee cups.

  “A reading?”

  “It would be fun, don’t you think?”

  Huda waited as Ally eyed the cups of coffee. Not long ago, she’d believed the young woman was so easy to read, but nothing was clear anymore, not even Ally. Finally, the young woman pulled out a chair and sat down.