Radical art and radical politics.

Again, her fingers tapped the keys.

Yusra Hussain, 82nd Avenue. By the river?

She thought back to the stretch of lonely roadway, the thatched guard post, the wind whipping up gray sand like spray from a dirty wave. She opened the textbook again, and her breath stopped dead in her throat. The final chapter of the book had been ripped out. All that remained was a row of fragile white teeth pressed against the spine.

Ally was certain the chapter had been there before. She remembered one photo in particular—a still from a video taken just days after Saddam assumed power. It showed a parliamentarian being marched from a grand hall, the whites of his eyes wide and rolling, like a terrified calf’s. In the background, Saddam puffed on a cigar. A list of sixty-eight names dangled from his hand. Those sixty-eight men were marched off, one by one, and shot. A few were spared, but only after they were made to gun down their fellow parliamentarians.

Ally leafed forward and backward, pulse accelerating with each page. But the photo and the chapter on Saddam were gone. The wind rattled the front door, startling her. She imagined the mukhabarat testing her locks, slipping inside, sifting through her photos, tearing pages from her books, copying the files on her laptop.

Yusra Hussain, 82nd Avenue.

A shiver inched down Ally’s spine. She’d intended to record every detail of her visit to Miriam’s house, the talk of communism, the unsettling ride through the wasteland of Eighty-Second Avenue. She wanted to document that painful flare of honesty in Hatim’s cinnamon eyes. She wanted to honor it the only way she knew how, to put it down in words, make it permanent, refuse to allow it to drift away like dust.

She sighed and dug her fingers into her forehead. She couldn’t write it down. None of it. She couldn’t risk the mukhabarat seeing Hatim’s name. Or Yusra’s. Or words like Communist Party, radical politics, and notes on mutilated kings. Wind whistled through the narrow gap beneath the front door, bringing with it sharp grains of desert sand. Ally wondered if the mukhabarat were parked outside, right now, biding their time, while the same wind gently rocked their car.

She rifled through her mother’s photos, removed the shots of Yusra, and then stuffed them deep into the pocket of her handbag. She couldn’t risk leaving them unattended. Next, she changed the login and password to her laptop. She eyed the screen.

Yusra Hussain, 82nd Avenue.