Huda’s grandmother would have been wise enough to understand the symbols. In any case, she wouldn’t have done what Huda just did: force the truth from the nurseryman’s wrinkled lips with a combination of threats and bribery. Stick and carrot. It had worked for Abu Issa, why not for her? Huda trudged from under the shade cloth, trading the humid shadows for sunlight, clear and sharp as diamonds.

She glanced over her shoulder. The nurseryman still hadn’t moved from the riverbank. Huda wondered, was he eyeing the money she’d given him the same way she did when Abu Issa slipped cash into her palm, like it was a scorpion that might turn and bite? The venom was still in her veins, because a moment later she found herself wondering, how much would the mukhabarat pay for news of a traitorous nurse and her connection to Ally? Enough to afford Khalid freedom?

The nurseryman told her that Ally had been back here too, just yesterday. When he spotted her pulling up in a taxi—no doubt driven by Hatim—the old man hid inside a lean-to of corrugated tin where he stored his tools, fertilizer, and pesticide. He stayed there until she gave up and slouched away, clutching that faded photograph in her hand.

“Why does she want to stir up trouble?” he’d asked Huda. “And why the hell do you?”

Huda pulled her head scarf over her hair and hurried away from the nursery. She didn’t want anyone on Eighty-Second Street noting down her number plate, so she’d parked on the rise overlooking the masgouf restaurant and its bobbing pontoon. She’d even stopped by the kitchen and told the cook she was thinking of bringing a friend for lunch of roasted fish, building the lie she’d use if the mukhabarat came calling, demanding explanations.

She hurried to the Corolla and slid into the driver’s seat. A long, low sedan sailed past. Huda’s heart stopped mid-beat. The driver had the Bolt Cutter’s blocky profile. He turned toward her. Huda saw blue eyes, not brown. His lips were thin, unlike the Bolt Cutter’s fleshy red mouth. But he had the same carp-eyed stare. Huda trembled as she pulled the belt over her shoulder and turned the key in the ignition.

* * *

Huda’s heels clacked rapidly across the sidewalk outside Rania’s house. She rang the bell at the copper gate, then huddled by the wall, folding in on herself like a card player closing a bad hand. When Rania finally opened the locks, Huda squeezed past her without waiting for an invitation and hurried toward the garden.

“What’s going on?” Rania scurried after her.

“I think I was followed.”

“Here? Now?”