Abdul Amir cursed.

“I can’t be this woman’s driver.”

“But you understand simple things like ‘left,’ ‘right,’ and ‘stop here.’”

“‘Left,’ ‘right,’ ‘stop here’? That’s why I studied all those years?”

“Listen, I will drive Ally whenever I can. She will not bother you often. And she will pay two hundred dollars a month.”

Abdul Amir paused.

“Two hundred dollars? American dollars? That is almost as much as you earn.”

Huda shrugged.

“It’s nothing to her. She was prepared to offer more.”

“And you stopped her? Why? It’s not as if you’re friends.”

Huda opened her mouth to argue, but prudence stilled her tongue. Abdul Amir was right. She and Ally could never be friends. No matter what she wished, it was dangerous to think otherwise.

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 5

Abdul Amir grimaced as if Ally were about to yank out his tooth.

“Please,” he hissed, “no pointing.”

“Sorry, I forgot.” Ally shoved her hands into her lap. “No pointing, only looking, right?”

Abdul Amir frowned. “Sometimes, better not to look at all.”

On the far side of the windshield, two enormous bronze hands rose toward the sky, each clenching a 150-foot sword, the tips meeting overhead. Ally tried not to roll her eyes. She’d seen the “Arch of Victory” plenty on local television, usually accompanied by the Star Wars theme and superimposed with footage of Saddam riding a white stallion. The mighty mitts were supposedly engraved with the president’s own fingerprints. Helmets looted from the bodies of enemy Iranian troops lay in jumbled heaps below, real helmets, each with its own individual wounds and stains from the battlefield.

The Arch of Victory disappeared in the rearview mirror, only to be replaced by a great copper disc slanting above the tree line like a stricken UFO. Ally felt like she was riding through a totalitarian amusement park.

“That’s the Monument to the Unknown Soldier, right?” Ally remembered not to point. “Is it open to the public?”

“I do not think so,” mumbled Abdul Amir.

“The National Museum is nearby. Is that open?”

On one of her postcards, Ally’s mother had written of wandering the museum, resting her hand against the statue of a human-headed bull with wings, and wondering, Is that its stone heart beating beneath my palm?

“The museum is closed for renovations.” Abdul Amir stared at the road. “Same as last time you asked.”

Ally tried to quell the heartburn of frustration. She wasn’t going to let it get her down. Not today. Not when she’d finally located the hospital where her mother had worked. It turned out, like so many other institutions and landmarks, it had been renamed after Saddam Hussein. As if on cue, the gargantuan dome of a new, multimillion dollar mosque came into view.

“That’s the Saddam mosque, right?” said Ally.