Huda wasn’t quite ready to repeat the words she’d rehearsed in the car, so she sought refuge in ritual greetings, asking after Rania’s family, each one by name: her mother, Raghad; her daughter, Hanan; her aunt Muna. Rania replied with the appropriate rejoinders. Her amber stare never wavered. In the boughs of the eucalypt, the crow moaned again.

Huda shifted in her seat and waited for Rania to inquire about the purpose of her visit. Rania did nothing of the sort. She sipped her tea, puffed on her cigarette, and tapped the long gray column of ash into an ashtray. Was it possible, Huda wondered, that after all this time Rania had learned restraint?

Huda checked the path to the front gate.

“I need to ask . . .” She trailed off, nerves getting the best of her.

Rania remained still as a sphynx, head angled to the left, one knee elegantly crossed over the other.

“I need a favor.” Huda cleared her throat. “Not for me, for Khalid.”

Rania didn’t respond. She could have been one of the statues in her garden, a goddess carved from stone, while Huda was painfully aware of her own trembling flesh, her galloping pulse, her aching chest.

“It’s the mukhabarat,” she whispered. “They say they’ll put Khalid in the fedayeen.”

“The fedayeen?”

If Huda hadn’t been watching closely, she might have missed the flare of alarm that lit up Rania’s eyes. Huda plowed on, words spilling forth in a breathless flurry.

“Khalid’s not even fourteen years old. I can’t let them take him. Please, you’ve got to help. I need to send him out of the country. It’s the only way.”

“Stop.” Rania raised her hand. “You shouldn’t be telling me this.”

“You’ve got to help me. If I apply for a passport, the mukhabarat will surely find out.”

“I don’t see how I—”

Huda grasped Rania’s hand.

“The opposition can get him out. They have ways of moving people across the border. I heard they can get passports with fake names. They can smuggle people—”

“Stop this. I don’t want to hear it.”

“You know people in the opposition.”

“This is madness.” Rania jerked her hand free. “I don’t know anyone like that.”

Above them, the crow gave another strangled cry. It plunged from its branch and swept low over the garden, feathers so black they shone blue in the sun. To Huda, it seemed like an eternity before the bird stopped diving and changed course, swooping up again, wings slicing the air as it flapped toward the sky. In that moment she had a vision of Khalid’s future disappearing, like the black-as-night bird vanishing over the flat roofs of Baghdad.

“If you weren’t connected with the opposition . . .” Huda took a deep breath and folded her arms across her chest. “Then my brothers would still be alive.”