Her grandma said it was better that way. It did no one any good, she said, rehashing what was gone. It became an unofficial family motto, that refusal to dwell on the past. During the years to come, her mother’s memory grew distant and hazy. But the hole in Ally’s chest only deepened. Despite this relentless march forward, she knew in her heart something vital had been left behind.

Huda sighed, leaned back in her chair, and pulled her sunglasses over her eyes.

“I could fall asleep right now,” she murmured.

The river gently slapped the pontoon’s side. Ally searched for fishermen, but there were none out on the water. There were no other diners either. When Huda invited her to lunch, she said the restaurant was a popular spot. But like most Iraqis, she often spoke of decades-old history in the present, as if ordinary people could still sail the river without threat of punishment and had money to spare for fine masgouf.

Like her father’s dogged refusal to talk about his lost wife, there was a gap in Iraqi history too. It was as if time, and collective memory itself, stopped when Saddam seized power, when war, sanctions, and tyranny brought the cosmopolitan “golden years” to a bloody end. Nowadays, there was only the glorious past or the future. The pain that came in between, no one spoke of aloud. At least, not to Ally. She wondered if Huda had known all along that the riverside restaurant would be deserted. Perhaps she chose it because there’d be fewer people to witness her consorting with a foreigner. Ally couldn’t blame her for that.

“You know what . . .” She pushed her chair away from the table. “I might go for a little stroll and walk off some of that food.”

Huda removed her sunglasses.

“A stroll?”

“I won’t go far.” Ally gestured for her to stay put. “Don’t worry.”

“Who says I’m worried?” Huda climbed out of her chair and linked arms with her. “It’s a perfect day to stroll by the river.”

The two women paused at the top of the zigzagging steps. The Tigris burbled below them, sunlight reflecting off the ancient river. From the masgouf firepit, a graceful thread of smoke twisted into the bluest of skies. Ally wished that more people could see what she did: beautiful waters, and a generous friend. Huda and her countrymen didn’t deserve the suffering inflicted on them. Huda might pray in a different manner than Ally, bake her bread flat instead of leavened, but underneath that, they weren’t so dissimilar. They just wanted the chance to break bread in peace. Ally knew it sounded cliché, but weren’t clichés born from a greater truth?

Huda squeezed her elbow.

“I wish more foreigners had a chance to taste our masgouf. They might see Iraq differently if we got to share a meal on the river.”

Ally laughed in surprise.