“Emu is too spicy,” Hatim dead-panned. “It gives me indigestion.”

Ally giggled and fastened her seat belt.

“How’s your wife?” she asked. “Is she back teaching?”

“Yes, the new term started, so she’s busy in the science lab.” Hatim carefully steered the Passat away from the curb. “She has a few rowdy students this year. She says it will be a miracle if they don’t set the classroom alight with their Bunsen burners.”

“And your little girls?”

“Ruby and Hela have just started grade one.” Hatim flipped down his sun visor and passed her one of the photographs he kept pinned underneath. “What do you think?”

Ally examined the shot of Hatim’s six-year-old twins in their school uniforms: blue pinafores over white shirts, jaunty red scarves tied at their necks.

“They get cuter every time,” she said.

“The other day, Ruby drew a design for the world’s biggest castle. She said she will build it herself one day.” Hatim beamed. “She takes after her father, you see.”

Before the economy went into freefall, Hatim made a good living as an architect. Ally could easily picture him at a drafting board, pencil tucked behind his ear, measuring angles and plotting dimensions. Now, his family scraped by on his wife’s teaching salary of five dollars a month, government rations, and whatever Hatim could make ferrying passengers to and from the market.

“Where are we going?” he said.

“Arasat Street,” Ally mumbled sheepishly. It was Baghdad’s ritziest strip of boutiques and restaurants. She and Tom had been there for dinner once or twice, but it was hard to have an appetite when she knew her meal would cost more than her taxi driver made in a month.

Hatim nodded and smiled. Ally wondered, Did he ever take his wife to Arasat Street, back when he was an architect? Hatim never betrayed any bitterness. If their situations were reversed, she hoped she’d have such a generous heart.

“You should have come to Baghdad twenty years ago, my Australian friend. Every street was as lively as Arasat.” Hatim pulled out to overtake a boy on a donkey cart. “Even now, if you bring a bottle of wine to an Arasat restaurant, they’ll pour it into a coffeepot and bring it back to your table.”

“Really?” said Ally.

Hatim grinned conspiratorially.

“You want to stop at a liquor shop?”

Ally laughed.

“Whereabouts should I drop you?” he asked.

“At al-Reef Restaurant,” she said. “I’m going to eat and then do a little shopping.”

Ally stared out the window so she didn’t have to look Hatim in the eye. She had no intention of lunching at Baghdad’s finest Italian restaurant or wasting time in fancy boutiques. She had an appointment with the sculptor, Miriam Pachachi. Gunter had managed to track her down at her brother’s home, three short blocks from Arasat Street.