Off the central reservation and back into traffic, he veers to the right, down a sideroad. "Gotta know the shortcuts, Nabel."

"It's Nabil."

"Nab-eel? Like an *eel' at the end?"

"I guess so." My stomach has the feeling I get just before I become nauseous, and my heart is thumping like it's trying to escape through one of the spaces in my rib cage. It is embarrassing that I cannot stop thinking this way, that some things are allowed - masmuh - and other things are forbidden - mamnua. You should always ask. You don't want to make trouble for yourself by breaking the rules. It is a philosophy that has kept my family out of trouble for generations.

"Don't worry, dude!" He slaps a hand on my knee and shakes it, his left hand still vibrating at the steering wheel. His touch makes me recoil.

He smiles and slows a little. "Just having fun wit'cha. But look, you want to wind up a piece of roadkill just to avoid making cutsies?"

I glance back at the line of people we just blazed past and I remember that night of taking Noor to the hospital. On their faces, that same resentment and resignation.

"What's this?" I ask, watching him pound his head with the music.

"Nirvana, dude." He turns a switch next to the radio, and now the sound of the siren changes. It was long and wailing. Now it's short and staccato.

"Pick a tune, any tune," he says. "Anything to get these schmucks out of the way. Fucking towelheads."

I haven't heard that term since we lived in England. My father said it was very offensive, and that people who use it are ignorant. My father has probably never worn a ghutra on his head in his life, thought he does sometimes wear a dishdasha around the house, a long men's dress, on his day off, because wearing one is just plain comfortable.

There is no point in me reacting. What could I say? That most of us, in fact, don't wear towels on our heads, and that a ghutra does, in fact, provide very good protection from the combination of extreme sun and airborne dust? Or that I had expected more from someone who is working for the US government?

"Oh, by the way, I don't mean you," he says, speeding to the front of another line of traffic, towards a checkpoint. He rolls down his window and thrusts a pass in the face of a young soldier. "When I say towelhead, I only mean these hajjis with shit-for-brains who keep targeting our boys. That's all. There's a lot of folks *round here will shake hands with their right and shoot you with their left."

I nod, as if to indicate that I accept his racist commentary. I wish I could take the nod back.

"No harm done, eh?"

"Of course not."

"So who is it exactly you guys are looking for? I mean, what's your interest in this whole, you know, underground illegal goods market thing?"

I have to think for a minute. What would Sam say if she were here? What are we looking for, exactly? Connections to Akram? Chalabi? Saddam?

"We want to find out how a certain set of documents got made, now that we're pretty sure they were fabricated. And who made them, and why." I guess that's the most I could say, off the record. "It's a bit complex."

He smiles. "Sounds like it."

"Well, they certainly looked quite realistic to the average person, at the start."

"Things always look good at the start, my friend." The car rattles with the invisible backblow of an explosion somewhere, probably to the north, maybe around the neighbourhood of Al-Khansa or even Sab'a Nisan. "Like us coming here, Nabil. Looked good from the start, didn't it? Boy, it was downright brilliant."

I want to tell him that none of it looked good from the start. Not that things were so good with Saddam either, because every day they discover some new mass grave where Saddam and his men dumped a few hundred bodies, and you start wondering, could America have made that up, too? I don't think so.

A phone is ringing, and it occurs to me that we're practically shouting at each other. Louis turns the volume on the music down and reaches for what I thought was a small weapon on his belt. He flips the black, egg-sized gadget open, and answers. A phone, on his belt! I thought Sam's Thuraya phone was the best technology around, but you need to be outside for that to work, and hers is three times the size of Louis's.

"Yeah. Yeah. Yeah," Louis says. "Well, I'm busy doing a little recon work for the desk chief right now." Louis looks at me and winks. "Okay, yeah," he says, looking at his watch. "I'll be back within the hour."

He flips the phone closed and tosses it into a space just below the gearstick. "Hey, sorry about this, but this ride ain't gonna be as long as we planned because I'm being called back to the office by forces more powerful than Mr Baylor, and there ain't many of them, as Baghdad ops go."

"No problem."

"Look," he says. "I'll drive you over to the Souq Mureidi area in Sadr City so you'll know where it is."

"Well, I know where that is."

Louis raises his eyebrows. "Oh yeah? And do you know what you'd find in Habibiyeh market versus the one in Chuhader? Or where Baghdadis are going these days for guns?"

"Well..." I could find out such things if I needed to, if I wanted to. "I haven't had much reason to research that."

"Well, truth is, you can get illicit stuff all over the city now." He switches off the siren and turns east on the Dura Expressway, instead of north. "You just need to know where to find things. I wish I could bring you around town to check'em out all afternoon. So maybe instead I'll just show you one of the markets in Zayouna."

"Zayouna? I know Zayouna very well."

"Is that right?" Holding on to the wheel with his left hand, he reaches into his back pocket with his right. He pulls out a packet of chewing gum that says Big Red on it. "You want?"

I take a piece and thank him. Inside my mouth, however, it burns so much I'm tempted to spit it out, and then I find myself getting used to it.

Louis frowns. "What do you know about Zayouna?" he asks, shoving two pieces in his mouth.

"Well, I grew up in Baghdad. I had some friends who lived there, and also some distant relatives. It's a good neighbourhood. Very nice people."

"Very nice people who are actively involved in trying to kill my people, who are even nicer. Ha!" He shoots a glance at me. "That was a joke, Nabil. We need a nickname for you. Or maybe a title. *Nerves-of-Steel Nabil.' Haddya like that? That's a good one to have written on your tombstone."

Louis pulls another red-hot strip from the packet and balls it up into his mouth, working his jaw hard to keep the wad going. "So you got relatives in Zayouna? Maybe a nice cousin you want to introduce me to? Someone cute? Some of these ladies are good-looking if you get them out of their veils, you know what I mean? Except that a lot of them wear too much makeup, man." Louis veers off the highway, taking us towards Baghdad Jadida - not necessarily the shortest route to Zayouna. How could he possibly know all these neighbourhoods, anyway? Still, for someone who hasn't been here long he seems to be very familiar with the city.

Louis pushes his tongue out, blowing air to form a small, sugary bubble. In the pop, a speckling of spit lands on my cheek.

"Some of the ladies here, they're like, all covered and shit, and yet they're wearing an inch-thick coating of makeup. And then the men go around in those man-dresses! Explain that to me."

"It's called a dishdasha."

"A dish-whatta? A dishrag?"

He's trying to wind me up, I know. "A dish-dasha," I say slowly. "Shall I spell it for you?"

He laughs. "Now you're talkin'. Just trying to see how much shit you're prepared to take. Just bustin' chops, Nabil."

"And sometimes it's a thob. That's more a like a robe." At Maisun Square, he turns up Palestine Street, through Muthana. "Maybe I can draw a picture for you so you won't confuse them."

"Hey, now, that would be useful. Maybe you can make up a whole picture-book you can sell to dumb Americans like me. *The Idiot's Guide to Understanding the National Dress of Iraq.' By Nabil, uh, what's your last name?"

"Al-Amari."

"By Nabil *Nerves-of-Steel' al-Amari. But those women, with the big dark eyes? I'm down with that."

I listen to Louis yammer on for a while, that sort of polite listening which is only hearing the sound. Suddenly I feel homesick for the days when I had to listen hard to understand English. As a boy in Birmingham when, if I didn't listen carefully, the language was like a hum in the background.

"Have you thought of checking out the Tuesday Market as a place for counterfeiting? That's just up on the right."

"Yes, I know that one. But we're not looking for counterfeited goods, not exactly. That place is purses and watches, no?"

"Hmm. Well, it's just a suggestion. You also have Serai and Safafir. And Shorja."

I feel a laugh surfacing in my throat, and a quick instinct to suppress it. He sounds ridiculous trying to pronounce Iraqi names.

"Just trying to let you know about some places to check out, in case you didn't know," he says. "Baylor said you needed some help in figuring out the black market scene."

"Well, most of those are regular markets." Al-Shorja is one of my old favourites, with all the fresh spices piled high, mounds of orange cardamom next to dark-gold saffron and shrivelled green spices I never could quite place. I used to love going there as a boy.

"Whatever," he says, lowering his window. "But maybe if you rummage around the regular markets, you'll find what you're looking for." Louis brusquely pulls the car over, reaches out and over the roof, and takes back his siren. "No need to look like pigs in this neighbourhood."

"Pigs?"

He glances at me and pulls away again, as quickly as he pulled over. "Pigs. You know, cops? I guess that's slang. They probably don't teach you that when you learn English from the BB fucking C."

"I went to school in England."

"Really? Well then," he says, trying to feign an English accent, but sounding like an Irish brogue instead. "Smashing, I'm sure."

I suppose every culture has some sort of unflattering name for the police. But pigs? I can't think of a more insulting thing to call a human being. But then, maybe Americans don't see pigs in the same way we do. When I came back from England and told my friends at school that kids in England eat pig-meat for breakfast, they didn't believe me. Mum forbade us from eating bacon, but Baba let us have it a few times when he took Ziad and me out to see the football game at the St Andrew's ground.

The wide streets and large houses of Zayouna look pretty much the same as they did when I was last here. What's different is the shops, many of them closed, and the sidestreet checkpoints and homemade roadblocks, which are almost everywhere.

At the mosque, Louis makes a right and then another right, and then heads past a line of large houses, many of them just like the ones in my neighbourhood, only a little bigger.

"Do you see this primary school on the right?" He uses his chin to point.

"Al-Watheq School?"

"I guess that's the name. There's an illegal gun market inside. I'm told you can get a single-action, semi-automatic there for as little as $75."

"There? In the school? I find that hard to believe."

"Well, I'm pretty sure of it. Do you want to go in and check?"

"With you?"

"Nah, I'll just raise suspicions. Despite what that Waspy-assed Baylor says, I don't pass for an Iraqi."

I move my hand towards the door handle, then use it instead to smooth my trousers. "Well, if I go in and there are people there, I'm sure I'd have to spend at least ten minutes shopping around. If I go and leave quickly, they'll be suspicious of me."

"Take my word for it. They just want to make sales."

"Well," I say, looking at my watch, "if you do have time..."

"Go already!" he says. "Make it fast."

I'm out, pacing quickly towards the school entrance. I hate it when Americans think everything can be done quickly. There is no sense of appreciation that important things take time. I'm walking faster, and as I do the heat creeps up around me, moving across my skin, beneath my clothes. The lobby door is unlocked.

Two young guys holding Kalashnikovs look up. One of them puts his hands into place on his rifle.

"Salaam aleikum," I say.

"W-aleikum is-salaam," mumbles the one without his hands ready to shoot.

"I was looking for a place to buy some...defence." Stuck between weapons, silah, and defense, difa', the latter sounds more dignified.

"They're not here today. Try coming back tomorrow."

"Not here?"

The quieter man, wearing a stubbly beard that looks like it is based on lethargy more than piety, puts a cigarette in his mouth and lights it. "They went to sell in Aadhamiye today," he says. "They'll be back tomorrow."

"Oh, well maybe I'll come back then," I say.

He takes his cigarette out. "Looking for something in particular?"

"Nothing special. lust something small...maybe a Beretta."

He puts his cigarette back in and leaves it there. "Well, the Zayouna Brotherhood has the best prices. If we're not here, ask for Mazen at the pharmacy across from the mosque. He'll tell you where to find us."

"Thanks a lot."

"Fi m'Allah" the smoker says, raising his head in a gesture of goodbye. I nod at the other and take off, back through the courtyard. Fi m'Allah. A shortened form of fi iman Allah - with faith in God. May God see to it that we see each other again. Though religious people say fi m'Allah often, it seems strange coming from them. If you have faith in God, why do you need to rely on weapons? I suddenly remember a line by the Indian poet Kabir: "But when deep inside you there is a loaded gun, how can you have God?"

Louis is not where he dropped me off. What if someone shot him and stole his car? What if they're waiting for me, ready to shoot me for working with the Americans?

The sound of a car horn, and with it, the sight of Louis's car, just down the road, closer to the mosque. When I see him, he blinks his lights at me. I walk over, trying not to look too rushed, too obvious, to people on the street. It's so much better travelling with Rizgar. Even though I often worry about Rizgar looking or sounding Kurdish, at least he is Iraqi.

"So?"

"Just two guys with guns."

"Really?" Louis looks surprised.

"But usually they're there, I guess. It sounds like they took their goods over to Aadhamiye for the day. They might be back tomorrow."

"Aha! So it's a mobile market. Well, that's good to know." Louis puts the car into gear and takes off, making too much noise as he does. For someone who is not supposed to be conspicuous, I feel like we may as well have spray-painted news of our visit across the mosque walls.

"D'you price anything?" Louis puts his chewed red blob into one of the wrappers and dumps it in the ashtray.

"You mean to buy a gun?"

"No, I was hoping you'd buy me a fresh fucking pack of chewing gum."