It was a lie. The reporter wasn’t just a friend of a friend. Ally had worked with him at the Canberra Herald, before he landed a well-paying gig in Dubai reporting on oil prices and real-estate deals. He was leaving Baghdad tomorrow, and Ally was going to see him, no matter what. He’d agreed to bring books for her—books about pioneering professional women like her mother. Ally’s own books were still sitting in Iraqi customs, waiting for import stamps.

“What’s this about?” said Huda.

“It’s nothing.” Ally grasped the door handle. “I can get a taxi.”

“A taxi?” Huda shook her head vigorously. “No taxis. You can’t trust those drivers.”

Ally decided this wasn’t the time to mention Hatim—a freelance taxi driver she’d started to use when she couldn’t get hold of Abdul Amir. Hatim was friends with a security guard at the embassy, and he usually worked around the souk near her house.

“Don’t worry,” said Ally. “You go home and relax.”

“I won’t relax. Not if you’re thinking about getting in some stranger’s car.”

Huda frowned, put the car in gear, and steered away from the curb. Reluctantly, Ally buckled her seat belt. Soon, they passed the Baghdad telephone exchange. The building was draped with a forty-foot-tall banner declaring, “Yes, Yes, Yes, Saddam!” A presidential election was looming—if it could be called an election when there was only one candidate—and the dictator hung over everything. Like a bad smell, Ally thought, or the bubonic plague.

“I’ll make this a quick visit,” she said. “You don’t have to come inside the hotel. Unless you want to, of course.”

Huda said nothing, but her eyes darted up and down, left and right. Ally attempted to lighten the mood.

“My mom used to go dancing in the Rashid’s nightclub. Can you believe it? She sent a postcard, saying she’d stayed till four in the morning dancing under a disco ball.”

Up ahead, a handful of people milled about on the side of the road, while a young policeman chased yet another presidential banner that had come loose from its anchors. The breeze changed direction, and Saddam’s smug grin rose high above the bitumen. The policeman twirled desperately, trying to catch it. A few onlookers tried to help out, but they seemed nervous, as if they might cause offense by placing their hands on the president. Ally wondered, If those people were free, would they set that banner on fire?

Ally glanced at Huda from the corner of her eye. She wished she could tell her that she knew about the secret police haunting the Rashid Hotel, and confide that her heart was beating faster than normal too. But she’d learned that in Baghdad, truth was like a blister. If you pricked the surface, you only made the pain worse.