The cook emerged from the house carrying a tray of tea. Basil motioned for her to leave it on the garden table. They waited in silence until she returned indoors.

“She threatened to tell the mukhabarat that I insulted the president,” whispered Rania. “She said she’d tell them I was inciting young artists to rebel. If she does, it won’t end with my head. Everyone I’m close to will be at risk—the artists at my gallery, my friends, my family.”

“Surely this woman is bluffing? I thought you said she was an old friend?”

Rania sighed softly. Dry leaves eddied around her feet, and then the wind swept them toward the palm grove. Rania registered nothing of this. In her mind she saw only Huda: seven years old, squatting on the bow of a slender mashoof, racing along one of the tributaries veining the Basra delta.

Rania had been sheltering under a fat palm tree and wishing she were somewhere else before Huda sailed around the bend in the stream. On the riverbank, a half-dozen other skiffs were lined up in a row. Their passengers were all women who’d gathered in the long, low mud-brick house behind Rania to visit the newest mother of the al-Baidi tribe. The tribe was small, fewer than three thousand strong, but to Rania it seemed a new member was born every minute, just to spite her.

“This is the third time this week,” she’d whined an hour earlier, as her mother and aunt herded her toward the curtained women’s quarters.

“Try not to fidget,” her mother had ordered. “And don’t wake the baby.”

Rania tugged at the collar of her stiff-starched dress.

“None of my friends have to do these boring visits.”

“You’re the granddaughter of a sheikh.” Aunt Muna pinched her arm. “You have duties.”

Rania slipped off her shoes, added them to the line of sandals outside the women’s quarters, and crept past the curtain. The new mother reclined on a cot at the far end of the room. On the floor beside her, her baby napped in a small plastic bathtub that served as a crib. The baby’s grandmother, the matriarch, quickly guided them to the plumpest cushions nearest the cot. The other guests jostled about, trading positions until all were properly seated once again.

Rania’s nose itched as plumes of incense spiraled upward, collided with the thatched ceiling, and spread out in a myrrh-scented mushroom cloud. An old woman with dark skin and the scarred cheeks of a former slave brought in a coffeepot and a dish of dates. The guests watched on as Rania’s mother and her aunt each accepted a small porcelain cup. Aunt Muna sipped first. She swallowed, cleared her throat.

“What a lovely home you have.” She sipped a second time and smiled at the new mother. “How are you faring, dear? You look well, alhamdulillah.”