“There are too many eyes in this room.” Huda hugged her arms to her chest. On the walls of Rania’s whitewashed gallery, black-robed women, children picking watermelons, and warrior kings were all boxed into wooden frames. “I feel as if I am being watched.”

“So how do you know Rania?” Ally tilted her head. Her gaze still held the watchfulness Huda detected in the citrus grove. “I got the impression you two aren’t best buddies. . . .”

Huda ignored the question and peered at a painting titled Three Men on a Bench. To her, they looked like prisoners strapped into electric chairs.

“Forty dollars? So much?” She shook her head at the price tag, then surveyed the wall of oil-paint eyes: pale as moons, oversize, some crisscrossed with veins, others dead. “It’s hot in here,” she said. “Let’s go out to the garden.”

The foreigners fell quiet as Huda and Ally crossed the lawn. All those eyes again, watching their approach. Gunter darted forward and escorted them to the firepit.

“This is Huda.” He puffed out his chest like a fisherman who’d netted the catch of the day. “She works at the Australian embassy with Ally’s husband, isn’t that so?”

She nodded and forced a smile.

“It’s so wonderful to have one of our Iraqi colleagues among us,” he crowed.

The foreigners erupted into a chorus of greetings. Huda told herself there was nothing to fear. Still, her heart thudded as she stammered through small talk: families, summer heat, vacation plans. Luckily, every time conversation threatened to veer into dangerous territory, a helpful Chinese woman intervened and directed talk elsewhere. All the while, she waited for Rania to reappear, but she remained inside her mansion for the rest of the night.

When Huda arrived home, Abdul Amir was in the backyard, pacing the manicured lawn. The refineries were burning gas. Huda could taste it on her tongue.

“Rania’s garden was in such a state.” She shook her head. “Threadbare grass, plants run to seed. Surely, she can afford a gardener?”

“How did she appear?”

“She has some gray hairs, a few lines at her eyes, but she was beautiful as always. And just as arrogant. She still believes she can tell me how to live my life.”

“Old traditions die hard, especially for someone from a family like hers.”

Huda scowled at the row of gas flares on the horizon.

“Rania’s family is quick to abandon tradition when it suits them.”