"Why did you come to Iraq?"

"Oh, Nabil, please. Enough! You know, I'm going to stop over at the AP for a while. I need to visit a friend there and check a few things out. We can continue another time. Actually," she looks at me and nods rhythmically, "I think we're done with this conversation."

"Do you want me to wait downstairs?"

She swings the door open and it creaks in a way that almost sounds like an animal's cry. The way she's holding it, it's clear she's waiting for me to leave. "No, let's get a fresh start tomorrow," she says as she lets the door go.

Rizgar offers to drive me home, which he doesn't usually do. He stays with relatives on the northern edge of town, beyond Qahira, and I'm not exactly on the way.

I'm happy for the free ride, but then I realize it too has a price.

"What did you say back there that got her so angry?"

"Nothing," I say. "I don't know." He glances at me and sucks air through his teeth.

"Why were you in such a rush to leave the ice cream shop?"

"Nothing," he says. "I don't know," almost mimicking me, and we both begin to laugh.

"I think you think we were being followed."

"I think you think too much. And I think you're falling for her."

23.

Falling Walking into Saleh's family room in Amiriya is like walking back in time, to at least the 1970s, when being a member of the Ba'ath party was as stylish as wide collars and bell bottoms. People in the West might think we didn't have such a thing as fashion in Iraq, but we did. Saleh's father, Zaki, was a university professor and a well-known Ba'athist until he died a few years ago. Saleh has left his father's pictures up as a sort of shrine to his memory, primarily black-and-white photographs from his glory days, and the wall is full of awards and honorary doctorates from universities in the former USSR, and plaques recognizing his services as a professor of history at the University of Baghdad.

Saleh appears in the high-arched doorway between the salon and the rest of the house. "Nabil, my brother," he says warmly, and presents me with a tight, quick embrace. "I'm so glad you came back."

He sits down on an orange velvet sofa with fancy wooden arms, its cushions letting off a sigh as he releases his weight into them. He points to its matching armchair, a beautiful, wide-seated piece which I'm sure was his father's seat of honour, and invites me to sit in it.

The room is full of elite-looking European furniture of decades past, a testament to the days when we thought there was nothing more sophisticated than disliking Westerners, all the while trying to think, behave and set up home just like them.

Saleh coughs loudly, emitting the kind of croupy sounds you usually hear from a child's lungs in winter. "You heard the news this evening?"

The truth is, I haven't. I tucked into a respectable amount of everything Mum laid out - we never turn the radio on during dinner - and then excused myself and popped out to meet Rizgar, who had agreed to drive me to Saleh's for a spot of extra cash. In the car we listened to a cassette of Munir Bashir, the great oud player, who has a way of soothing a man's nerves.

"Another forty people were killed by a car bomb, just outside Saddam City," he says. "Or I should say, Sadr City. That's what they're calling it now, right? Maybe fifty or so injured."

"Oh God," I say. "Allah yarhamhum." May God have mercy on them.

"It's a nightmare what's happening here, Nabil. Did you know that in exchange for the Kurds fighting with the Americans up there, President Bush promised them their own state? They're going to carve up the whole country and take as much oil as they can. America is destroying us, day by day."

I find myself sinking into the chair. I push myself to sit straighten "Well, they're not setting off car bombs."

He smirks in the manner of someone who has just discovered your secret.

"You're glad the Americans are here." He says it as a statement, rather than a question.

"Glad? No, no. Not glad. I just think...maybe we should give things a chance. Better democracy than dictatorship, no?"

Saleh shakes his head. "Your American friends have already brainwashed you," he says. He stands and moves closer to me, taking my head between his hands and moving it in circles, making a whooshing sound. "See, I can still hear the water in there," he says, making both of us laugh.

Saleh's laugh turns into another bout of coughing. "You know," he says after he catches his breath, "I actually can't stand this room. Mother thinks that we should receive all visitors here because it's so impressive. Respectful of Baba's wishes. But I hate it. Let's go inside."

I follow him down a hallway with more pictures of his father's glory days. My eyes linger on a photograph of Zaki shaking hands with Saddam.

"It was just an award," he says. "My father got an award for best professor of the year and Saddam came to congratulate him at the ceremony. He wasn't a real Ba'athist."

"Oh," I say, "I didn't think-"

"Didn't you? I suppose anybody would. Everyone assumes that any successful professor on good terms with the government must have been a Ba'athist. But it isn't true. I think certain kinds of people, like my father, like your father, certain kinds of other professionals, and I might even include myself in this, find ways to rise above the politics of the day and stay true to their art, or to academia, or to medicine, or what have you. Without compromising on their principles."

He holds out his hand for me to take a place in their sitting room, a much more comfortable-looking space than their ghorfat al khotar, their guest room with its impressive European furniture, and I settle on one of the long cushions along the wall. Closer to the floor, and closer to Saleh. We don't have a room like this in our house, though I've often wished we did.

"How is your father, by the way?" he asks, and before I can answer: "Why didn't you go into medicine, like him?"

"Oh, it wasn't for me...being around all that blood."

He coughs and takes a tissue from the Syrian tea-table in front of us, spitting something into it. "Well, never mind. That's not why you came here tonight, is it?"

"Yes, well, I thought it would be good to talk."

"Nabil," he says, placing his hand on my thigh. "If something's troubling you and you need some help, you don't have to be shy about it. That's what family's for."

Ashtar enters the room. She offers a modest, understated greeting to me from the doorway, but does not approach as I would expect. I wonder if her spiritual advisor has convinced her to start behaving like a pious woman, who wouldn't touch a man other than her husband, not even a relative, not even to shake hands. Ashtar asks Saleh questions. "Are you all right? Did you take your medicine?" Though she has a scarf on, it only covers the crown of her head and I can see her hair is dyed a copper-blondish colour with black roots showing through. Her pretty, sad eyes are unusually elongated, almost tiger-like, and are lined with black to accentuate this fact. Though there is something artificial about her, perhaps it is the coloured hair, she's quite an attractive woman.

"Eiy, Ayouni." Yes, he says, calling her "my eyes", a term of endearment that my father used to use for my mother. "Can you just bring us some tea?"

I hate to admit to this, but in most homes, it would be seen as shameful for the woman of the house not to have offered to prepare tea straight way. Ashtar turns on her heels and leaves the room.

"Where were we? Ah, so tell me about your job working with this reporter. What's his name?"

"Her name. Katchens. Samara Katchens."

"Oh, a woman," he grins. "I see."

"No, not like that. She's - much older. And married." Another unplanned lie, two in fact. Unnecessary, but probably in everyone's best interest. And too hard to take back once it's out of my mouth.

"Good," he says. "So you've got some kind of situation on your hands with this lady reporter, but you don't have the kind of problems I have...yet," he smiles. "Lucky you. But it's about time you got married, isn't it?"

"Well, yes. After the war, Inshallah. So right now we're just... doing some research." I don't know how much to leave in and what to leave out. I never discussed any of this with Sam. But a few basic facts can't do any harm. "At this point," I continue cautiously, "we're researching some documents that might be fake, some documents that are getting all kinds of people into trouble."

Ashtar re-enters silently, putting two glasses of tea, small and steaming in the warm air, on the little table next to Saleh. And then a plate of kalijeh, stuffed with walnuts and pistachios, one of my favourites. She moves the table carefully so it is within my reach as well. "A'shet ideik," I say, May God bless your hands. It's a religious way to show appreciation when you are served. She leaves again without responding.

Saleh takes his tea glass and blows on it. "That wouldn't surprise me," he says. "At the moment, there are probably more artificial documents swimming around this town than there are fish in the Tigris."

"Ever heard of a guy called Akram? General Akram?" I take my tea and sip it.

"Can't say I have," Saleh says.

"Says he was a general in the Iran-Iraq war."

"Could be," he shrugs. "In those days I was busy doing my doctorate in economics, keeping my head down so I could avoid getting drafted. And?"

"We went to see him. He's offering documents to journalists, documents that make it look bad for all kinds of people, including your boss."

"My boss?"

"Kofi Annan? The UN chief."

He snickers. "The documents make it look like Kofi Annan took money from Saddam?"

"Something like that," I say. "How did you know? Is that true?"

Saleh shakes his head. "I don't think it's true. But I heard there were some reports about this surfacing in the British press, about British politicians doing the same. It's been around for a few days. I think it's a game people are playing. People for Saddam, people against Saddam. With the Americans, their whole justification for invading Iraq was built on bogus information. Don't you know what Chalabi and his friends did?"

Rather than admit I hardly knew he existed until Sam showed up, I sip my tea and wait for his explanation.

"Chalabi had all sorts of information cooked up to look as if we were well on our way to having a nuclear bomb. He found the best forgery artists available, which happen to be some of the very same ones Saddam used, and paid them to come up with elaborate documents and import lists and fake photographs, which made it look like Saddam had completely built up our ability to arm weapons with biological, chemical and even nuclear warheads. Which of course, was physically impossible given the UN sanctions and those arrogant weapons inspectors who were here nearly every week, soaking up our nice Arab hospitality."

Saleh leans back and takes his tea, but something about the tightness of his small body doesn't look relaxed. "Did you know about the yellowcake issue?"

Instead of answering, I reach for a dark-brown biscuit.

"Well, you should know. President Bush's foreign secretary, Colin Powell, presented a big report to the UN in February, accusing Iraq of trying to buy yellowcake from Niger, and it was the same thing Bush talked about the month before when he made his big State of the Union address." Saleh takes a kalijeh as well, but instead of eating it uses it to gesture, as a professor might a pen. "But it was all false, all of it! Of course, at the time, that didn't matter, because if the Americans say something is true, the rest of the world must agree or they will be accused of supporting terrorism. You see, when you have the most power and the most money, it doesn't even matter if you're right. So if-," he breaks off and begins to wheeze, putting down the biscuit and patting his chest with an open palm. Then he takes an inhaler out of his breast pocket, and puts it to his mouth. The sound is of air being sucked out rather than rushed in.

"I didn't know you had asthma."

He shakes his head as he inhales. "I don't," he says, and breathes out. "I had a bad lung infection a few months ago, during the damp months. My doctor says it should dry up soon, now that summer's coming. It had better, because these damn things are getting hard to buy. Some of the pharmacies are barely stocked because the shipping trucks coming across from Jordan keep getting attacked by bloody bandits." When he is finished, he puts the inhaler back into his shirt pocket. "Where was I?"

"Yellowcake. Africa. I didn't entirely follow."

"Of course. Of course you didn't. How would you know? Before, you were what, a teacher? I mean, a very noble profession," he smiles. "Yellowcake is a form of uranium, and it can be used in a nuclear reactor or a nuclear weapon."

"Of course," I say.

"You know what it is, then?"

"Sure," I say. "Chemicals for making weapons."

"Yes, but bigger than that. Yellowcake is a mixture of uranium oxides and other uranium compounds, and if Saddam were trying to buy it from Niger, it would prove that he was trying to build a bomb of the worst kind. But you see, I know from people who know that this uranium report was a fabrication. When Saddam was around, we only suspected that it was a hoax. Now we know for sure. So that means someone dreamed it up, and then came up with a bunch of documents to prove it. Someone paid a lot of money to have that done, and have it done well enough to be convincing to the Americans." He shrugs. "Which is probably not so difficult to do."

I feel I should be writing this down, the way Sam does when the conversation gets interesting. Because now he's beginning to make references I don't catch, to dates and deals and different inspectors, and I see that there are so many things that I just don't know. Before you were what, a teacher? Qabil, before. In that other life, before the fall. Saleh continues to talk and wheeze and cough, filling the air between us with chemicals and dates and people, with motives and counter-motives, with his medicine-scented breath. After much rambling on, he asks whether this was what I wanted to know.

"Well," I start. "We're investigating a story about an American politician who is suing her newspaper, the Tribune. But I can only tell you this in absolute confidence, just as you have spoken to me."

"Nabil." He reaches to touch my shoulder and shakes it, making my tea swirl in its cup. "We're family! I wouldn't have told you all of this if I wasn't sure I could trust you."

I finish the tea to give myself a moment to think. "It's like this," I say. "The Tribune published a story about a week ago which accused an American politician, someone who visited Iraq several times, of taking millions of dollars from Saddam Hussein in order to defend him in the West."

"Jackson."

"You know him?"

"Nabil, I know the name of every politician who came to visit Iraq in the past ten years. Doesn't mean he was taking money from Saddam. Who else would they accuse? He's black and he opposed the war. Perfect target."

Saleh coughs into a tissue, and I can sense a glob of something thick having landed in it before he crumples it and sticks it on the table.

"You think that Chalabi could be part of this as well? Would he have been trying to retaliate against influential people who were too friendly towards Saddam? Or who opposed the Americans coming?"

Saleh runs his hand over his small beard. "You know, that's a very interesting theory. But the truth is, I would imagine it's just that. Interesting. I think Mr Chalabi has more important concerns to attend to. He is dealing with the Bush administration and the CIA, and MI5, and probably the Mossad, too." He laughs again, leaving his mouth hanging open in a smile that is both boyish and hungry. "Then again...let me think about it. I can ask around."

"But you can't tell anyone," I say. "Yaani, off the record." Funny that those words would come out of my mouth - I only learned the expression the other day, when Sam told me about how it works when someone talks to you "off the record". As she spoke I daydreamed of the turntable Grandma Zahra used to have in the living room, where she'd play the records of Salima Pasha and spin her wrists to the languid melodies. Now I know "the record" means something else, some kind of holy boundary between what you are free to write about and what you are not, and that if you violate this unwritten rule of journalism, it's as good as committing blasphemy.

"I can't find anything out for you if I can't give away some details." His voice has an authoritative tone. "I won't tell anyone I don't really trust."

"Well, then you should be very, very vague. Don't mention Sam, Samara that is, or her newspaper or the lawsuit."

He pretends to zip his lip. "I never even heard her name. And Akram?"

"Well, other journalists seem to know about him, so I guess that's fine."

Saleh looks at his watch. "Curfew starts in twenty minutes. So unless you have a special military pass from your American friend-"

"I don't."

"Then you'd better get going. But look, I need you to help me, too." His throat clicks a few times, as if trying to swallow an insistent wad of phlegm. "I really need a new job. My family name is associated with the Ba'athists, mostly because of my father. I'm not going to be able to keep my job with the UN now that the Americans are demanding they fire all Ba'athists, and it's going to happen soon. I need a job like yours, in the news with foreigners. Or even with a foreign aid organization. I don't care where, just not the army. I avoided the damn Iraqi military, I'm not going to work for the Americans. You know my English is excellent. Maybe not like yours, ustaz, but more than decent."

I smile at his compliment, calling me something akin to professor. It's a way of saying you really respect someone who is a teacher of any sort. But this is the second time he's asking me, and given Sam's reaction, the conversation makes me uncomfortable.

"Not even a job, Nabil, just introductions. You know how it works. Foreigners are afraid of us and they don't know who they can trust. But a recommendation from people they know, that's what gets a man a job." He looks into my eyes, hard but intimate. "You know that, don't you?"

"Sure."

"So just try. Try for me and I'll try for you. If you can't, if the woman you're working for says no, then it's not a problem. I have other contacts. But the truth is, I need the money. We are looking into going to a private doctor in Europe to see about our problem, you know," and he falls into a whisper, his head so low it's as if he's talking to his belt buckle, "about why we haven't had a baby yet. These doctors cost a lot of money. Can you believe, in the middle of a war, the country being invaded, people stealing and kidnapping and killing each other in the street."

He looks towards the door, then back at me. "All that," he mouths almost soundlessly, "and all my wife can talk about is wanting to have a baby! That, and this bloody dream about the UN being blown up with me in it!"

He dismisses his tea cup towards its saucer, but it slips from his hand and fails to regain its composure, spilling its speckled brown contents on to the table.