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

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.