She couldn’t put her finger on it, but something felt off about Huda’s claim that she remembered seeing “housewife” on Ally’s visa form. Thank God she’d already come up with an answer for tricky situations like that, mixing the lie about being a secretary with the truth about how much it hurt to be unemployed. After all, the best lies had some honesty at heart. Ally grimaced at the billboard. Honesty? What did that mean? In Baghdad, few could afford the luxury.

Don’t get paranoid, she told herself. Still, she couldn’t shake Huda’s prying from her head. The secret police had most likely heard the journalist’s call to the embassy. Did they visit Huda and order her to find out more? Ally’s head began to ache. She let the curtain fall and returned to bed. Suspicion slipped between the sheets with her, nuzzled close.

She buried her head in her pillow and prayed it was all a figment of her imagination. But she knew she had no choice but to put distance between her and Huda. Whatever lay behind her curiosity, Huda wasn’t a diplomat’s wife. She couldn’t risk getting caught up in Ally’s lies.

* * *

Ally sat at a table on the edge of the al-Faqma’s patio and raised her ice cream cone in a toast.

“Fe sehtak,” she said. “Cheers.”

On the sidewalk, a shoeshine boy grinned and raised his cone in reply. A man in a white smock emerged from al-Faqma’s kitchen.

“Is he bothering you?” He gave the boy a stern look. “Shall I get rid of him?”

“Not at all,” said Ally. “Ice cream tastes better with company.”

The man looked at her like she was slightly mad, then he shrugged and smiled. The shoeshine boy had done the same when she first offered him ice cream.

“I wondered who the second cone was for.” The man straightened his smock. “I hope young Faisal remembered to thank you. He’s not a bad boy. He never tries to pick my customers’ pockets, but sometime he forgets his manners.”

“He’s been a perfect gentleman.” Ally raised her cone in another toast.

Faisal chuckled and licked his fast-melting scoop of pistachio.

“Ally?” a voice called. “Is that you?”

Huda hurried across the sidewalk. She was shiny with sweat, and clearly agitated.

“What are you doing here?”

“Getting ice cream,” said Ally slowly. “What about you?”

“Where’s Abdul Amir?” Huda squinted at a coffee shop nearby. A few taxi drivers idled at its sidewalk tables, waiting for customers. “He’s not smoking nargilah, is he?”

“I’m not sure,” mumbled Ally. “I couldn’t reach him.”

“He didn’t drive you?”

“It’s not a big deal.” She licked her ice cream half-heartedly. “I did a bit of sightseeing, that’s all.”

“Sightseeing?”

“I went to the Sayed Idris mosque.”