Huda cleared her throat. “I would take the children myself, but my absence would be noticed immediately by the mukhabarat.”

“I don’t understand why the mukhabarat are targeting you, Huda.”

“I work for the embassy.” She sighed. “Also, I am friends with you, a foreigner.”

Bile rose in Ally’s throat. She’d always suspected their friendship put Huda at risk, but Khalid and Hanan were only children, innocent in all of this. A voice inside her whispered, What would the regime do to an American journalist who lied her way into the country and tried to smuggle Iraqis out? She thought back to the reporter arrested in Baghdad and branded a spy. She could see his battered body, like it was right in front of her, dangling from a rope.

“If you can’t deliver the children to Amman,” said Rania, “then take the detour near the border and let the kids cross on foot by themselves. They will have some money, water, and food. Then you can return to the highway and exit at the official border checkpoint. You will cross the border legally. And the side trip will cost you an hour or two at most.”

“An hour or two,” said Huda. “That’s all it will take to save our children. Surely that’s not too much to ask?”

Ally fumbled for a reply. She felt strangely numb, as if she were outside her own body, watching herself at the picnic table, pale as sand, fingernails digging into her palms.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

Huda and Rania traded glances. Huda trained her eyes on Ally, like she was reading the fine print on her soul.

“I have something to show you,” she said.

* * *

Ally trailed Huda past a row of potted geraniums into the mottled shade of the nursery on Eighty-Second Street.

“What are we doing here?” Ally glanced over her shoulder. The nurseryman was back by the gate, nervously plucking at his dishdasha, head swiveling left and right. “Did you pay him to keep lookout? Is that what the money was for? Don’t tell me he knows about this too?”

Huda shook her head, then beckoned Ally on.

“It’s not far away.”

Ally hesitated.

“I don’t like this.”

“You want to know about your mother, right? And her friend?”

Before Ally could ask more, Huda pried apart two lengths of rusty wire separating the nursery from the vacant lot next door.

“Slide through,” she said.

Ally eyed the prickly purple thistle, flowering chamomile, and scraps of rusty tin poking from the earth. Dust and dirt coated a mound of broken concrete. Bright yellow dandelions had sprouted in its patchwork of crevices.

“Hurry up,” said Huda. “Before someone sees us.”

Ally slid reluctantly between the wires. Huda picked her way toward a pile of dry branches.

“The nurseryman man must have covered it up.” Huda dragged a large palm frond to the side.