She slipped a business card from her pocket and handed it over. A door opened at the back of the shop. The bookseller emerged and squeezed past a column of encyclopedias. A pimply teenager trailed behind him, carrying a tray of steaming tea. The bookseller spotted the two foreigners. Within seconds, he had a tea glass in Ally’s hand and another in Tom’s. Rania slipped her empty bag behind her back.

“I regret I must be going,” she said.

“Please stay.” The bookseller’s eyes did not leave the foreigners, not even for a moment. “Have some more tea.”

* * *

Rania emerged from the darkness of the narrow stairwell and found Adnan Nawab waiting on the sidewalk. A young boy skipped past them with a foot-long block of ice balanced on his shoulder. Only a thin T-shirt and a scrap of cardboard separated the dripping cargo from his skin.

“The boy’s errand is not so bad on a day like today.” The old man wiped his forehead. “I could do with something icy myself. If you don’t feel like tea, Rania, how about a juice?”

Rania nodded, and the two of them made their way to nearby Rashid Street. They waited side by side in the shade of a crumbling portico while a red double-decker bus rumbled past, then they dashed through the traffic and claimed a table outside a small juice bar. Two doors down, on the steps of a boarded-up bank, a shoe shine boy was doing brisk trade, his brushes flying back and forth. A wrinkled man shuffled by, carrying a pole slung with bagel-like rings of sesame-seed simit.

“I saw a couple of foreigners climb the stairs after you,” remarked Adnan. “Did you meet them?”

“Let’s pray the bookseller leaves a few coins in their pockets, because I invited the young woman to visit my gallery.” She swirled her juice. “With luck, she’ll buy a painting or two.”

“Here’s to that.” Adnan raised his glass in a toast.

Rania clinked her glass against his.

“So, how is your daughter?” said Adnan. “I heard you’d sent her to stay with your mother. I’m sure she misses you.”

Rania rolled her eyes.

“Hanan is a fourteen-year-old girl—she does not miss her mother. Her grandmother drives her from the farmhouse into Basra city every weekend for shopping and ice cream. The rest of the time she keeps her busy by taking her on the rounds out to the villages. There are many new babies, and the congratulatory visits must be made. Not that Hanan likes it. I called her last night, and believe me, she was not shy about letting me know I’d ruined her life.”

Rania sighed. She’d spent forty-five minutes, dialing and redialing, before she got a working phone line to Basra.