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Chapters (35)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Page
  3. CHAPTER 1
  4. CHAPTER 2
  5. CHAPTER 3
  6. CHAPTER 4
  7. CHAPTER 5
  8. CHAPTER 6
  9. CHAPTER 7
  10. CHAPTER 8
  11. CHAPTER 9
  12. CHAPTER 10
  13. CHAPTER 11
  14. CHAPTER 12
  15. CHAPTER 13
  16. CHAPTER 14
  17. CHAPTER 15
  18. CHAPTER 16
  19. CHAPTER 17
  20. CHAPTER 18
  21. CHAPTER 19
  22. CHAPTER 20
  23. CHAPTER 21
  24. CHAPTER 22
  25. CHAPTER 23
  26. CHAPTER 24
  27. CHAPTER 25
  28. CHAPTER 26
  29. CHAPTER 27
  30. CHAPTER 28
  31. CHAPTER 29
  32. CHAPTER 30
  33. CHAPTER 31
  34. AUTHOR’S NOTE
  35. Discussion Questions

They reached the top of the hill and paused to survey the city. Limestone houses gleamed under a cloudless sky that seemed to stretch on forever. Baghdad was six hundred miles away, and Huda didn’t know if they could ever return. But she took comfort that the three of them could stare into the same blue heaven, and hold on to hope for paradise.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

AUTHOR’S NOTE

When the Apricots Bloom is a work of fiction, but it is inspired by my real-life experiences living in Iraq under the Saddam Hussein regime and later during the Iraq War. I was thirty-one when I arrived in Baghdad, and like the character Ally in this book, I suddenly went from being a journalist and professional in my own right to “a dependent spouse,” the unflattering visa category for the partners of diplomats and UN workers. And as in this novel, I developed a close relationship with a woman like Huda—an informant secretly reporting back to the regime on where I went, what I saw, and who I spoke with.

Once the regime fell, the truth came out. I didn’t blame the woman who so often called herself my Iraqi sister. I understood that no was not an option with the mukhabarat. And by then, I was no longer the same naive person who first journeyed to Baghdad. As I recounted in my 2007 memoir, my former workplace had been destroyed by a suicide bombing. I buried a dear friend, survived sexual assault, and learned that under extreme circumstances good people can make bad choices. As the tyranny of Saddam’s regime was replaced by the chaos of war, it became clear that the best of intentions could go horribly wrong.

More than ten years later, I was still dwelling on all that happened in Iraq. PTSD was partly to blame, but I also couldn’t stop wondering, Had it been just a job for my sister? Were we simply informant and target? Or had we been friends too? Sometimes real life is just as complex as fiction—motivations blurred, lines crossed and redrawn. And so I started work on this novel, exploring questions of truth, loyalty, and friendship that I had left unanswered in Baghdad.