In the wardrobe in my parents' bedroom, I know there's a small revolver. I was fascinated with this fact when I was a teenager, wondering how Baba could work on saving lives while arming himself for the possibility of taking them as well.

"I wouldn't want to carry a gun." I turn to face him. "If I did, I might end up having to blow the heads off assholes like you."

Louis guffaws. "Ka-ping!" He rasps through the rest of his laugh, which ends in a sigh. "That's the spirit, my man. Can't lose your sense of humour in all this. You won't survive without it."

I can almost feel the cold metal moving into my temple, the pressing of the gun against my head. We suggest you stop working with all foreigners. Particularly the Americans.

I'd get one to protect Sam, though. She'll go back to America in a pretty coffin.

"So they only cost $75?" I ask. "I mean, for a basic one?"

"About that," he says. "That's what I've heard. Can you afford one?"

Getting $100 a day to work with Sam, I can afford a whole arsenal. But that's not the point. I watch as he turns onto the Khalid bin al-Walid Expressway, reaching again for his removable siren to navigate us through the traffic.

"Don't worry, I'm not turning on the siren for now," he says. "Just us getting ready."

"I'm not worried."

"Sure you are, man. It's been written all over your face from the moment you got in the car!"

I feel the urge to pull the visor down, the way Sam always does when she's sitting in the front in Rizgar's car, to check myself in the mirror. Instead, I weave my fingers together and turn them out, sending out a rip of cracks.

"No problem, dude. I can imagine what it must be like. Our guys don't go out nearly as much as your reporters do. Your people do some crazy shit!"

My people. As in journalists? Or Iraqis?

"So how do you get information if your guys don't go out much?" I ask.

"Well, from people like you, Nerves-of-Steel. Not every Iraqi who can speaka da English is lucky enough to land a job like you did." Louis turns the siren on again and weaves through the cars that let him pass. The unsettling rise and fall makes my heart accelerate. I let him talk for a while, feeling my coiled spine loosen a little when he turns the siren off again to get back on the local road, leading to the beautiful Masbah, with its huge houses right along the riverfront. We never drove through here before the war because most of it was closed off to the public, protecting the mansions of government ministers and senior Ba'ath party people. It's one of the few things I like better about Baghdad ba'id than qabil - driving through the Masbah. I can only imagine how much more beautiful it must be from inside the houses, on the balconies, perched high and proud along the Tigris.

A queue to buy petrol winds around the bend on the way to the Hamra. While Louis talks, I count. I'm already up to more than seventy cars waiting in line.

"Hey," Louis says. "When you start scouring the city for stuff in the illegal markets, can you give me a little briefing on what you find? You know, very off the record?"

Maybe Sam would say sure, off the record, and say it's all in the name of cultivating a source. Cultivating. She explained that idea at length the other day, as it applies to journalism. I thought it was for gardening.

"I - might be able to help. I think I have to check with Sam first."

"You do that, buddy. I'd appreciate it."

Stop working with the Americans. "I don't want to promise anything, though."

"No sweat. Here you are, Mr al-Amari. Next stop, Hamra Hotel," he says, pulling into the car park. Some of the drivers who recognize me are watching us roll in, staring.

"Thanks a lot, Louis."

"Hey, Nerves of Steel," he says. "I'm sorry if I insulted you before with all of that nasty hajji-bashing. I really don't have anything against the Iraqi people or Muslims at all. Just that I lost a good buddy here last week."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

He nods. "Yeah, poor guy was only twenty-eight years old. Got a wife and kid at home."

"That's terrible." I want to ask how and by whom, but instead I wait for him to offer more.

He shakes his head. "Yeah, well. Look, Nerve-man, it's been a real pleasure," he says, thrusting his hand towards me, making me meet it halfway. "Come visit us anytime."

"Ahlan w-sahlan. In our country, you must allow us to welcome you," I say, still feeling the force of his hand against mine, waiting for him to let go.

37.

Waiting I've been sitting in the ugly orange-and-white cafe of the first tower lobby for hours, waiting for Sam to come back. I've skimmed through three newspapers and have run out of things to say to the few people hanging around. I'm avoiding Rafik in the second tower, in case he might expect some explanation of where Sam was last night, or resume his lecture about hiring a Shi'ite.

Where is Sam? With Franklin Baylor, a man she hated only a week or so ago. A man who is posing as an expert in electricity, but presumably doesn't know anything about it. A man who is cultivating her, a man who has access to information she wants so badly that she doesn't do anything but roll her eyes when he calls her a media chick.

Sam breezes in the door just after 4 p.m. She smiles and makes an exaggerated sigh. "How long have you been waiting?"

"A while now."

"Good stuff?"

"Not really. He got called back right away so we only went to one place."

"Really? Oh, I thought he was going to show you a lot more than that." She scans the lobby, empty except for one fixer-and-driver team who have kept to themselves. "Let's go up and talk."

I follow her past the pool and into the second tower, where Rafik meets our entry with a fake smile. He's on the phone, asking for a room to be cleaned that was somehow overlooked, but as we round our way to the stairs, something about his tone seems artificial - to the point where I wonder if he's pretending.

In the room, Sam goes straight to her computer, taps around a bit. Her hands land on her face. "Oh, Jeez. Don't do this to me. Shit!"

"What?"

"They're telling me now that they want to run the story right away. Listen to this. *Sam, we feel we have all we need to run the story about the Jackson documents. Your interview with Akram all we needed. The ink-ageing is being confirmed by a second analyst. Call as soon as you get in.' Jesus Christ. I have to call them right now."

"Didn't they want you to find out who made the documents?" I ask. "We already knew that they were fake."

"Well, I thought so," she says, "but apparently they don't know what they want any more. They want the whole story, but they wanted it yesterday." Sam stands and leans her forehead on the sliding glass door, where the view seems blurrier than it did before, as if we're under water.

"What happened to the windows?"

"The security guy coated all the correspondents' offices with mylar," she says matter-of-factly, "in case we get bombed."

"You think the Hamra could get bombed?"

Sam shrugs. "Everything's possible."

"I don't think you need to really worry. It's not so famous like the Palestine or the Sheraton. I didn't even know the Hamra existed until you wrote the name down on your card."

"That feels like ten years ago." She goes back to her desk. "Baghdad years are like dog years."

"Like what?"

"Dog years. Have you ever heard of dog years?"

"I'm not sure."

"They say each year is like seven years for a dog. So if you're here for a month, it's like you've been here seven months."

The maths of that doesn't entirely make sense to me, but I get the idea. Is that good? Maybe it feels like seven months because she already feels at home here. Or maybe it means she is tired of it. Of us.

"We're going to have to really boogey from here on in," says Sam. "I'll ask them to hold off for just another forty-eight hours. I'll explain to them that we're really close."

"What happened today with Baylor?"

"Not that much," she says, waving an invisible fly away. "He gave me some leads."

"What sort of leads?"

"Why don't we talk about it tomorrow? You may as well go now and then tomorrow we can go into the specifics, after I speak to Miles."

"Sam, if you want to get this done, you need to tell me!"

"Nabil, sometimes you just need to cultivate your sources a little. Trust me. If there's something important to tell you, I'll tell you." She taps on the keyboard again.

Should I ask her, or would it be embarrassing?

"Hey Sam? What's nirvana?"

"Nirvana? It's um, you know, a state of peacefulness. But let me get you a fuller definition," she says, tapping a few keys on her computer. "Gotta love dictionary.com. It's a term from Buddhism and Hinduism: a stage in which one reaches a higher state of harmony and tranquility by disassociating oneself from worldly possessions."

That doesn't sound like Louis. I walk closer to her desk. "Check if there's another definition."

"That's it. It's like, paradise. Why?"

"This Louis had his music on loud in the car, I asked him what it was and he said nirvana."

"Oh! That Nirvana. It's also a rock band. Here we are now" she sings in a sinister slur, "entertain us... "

"That's it. That's what he had on."

"Jeez. That's a bit much. I guess you got a good crash-course in American culture, though."

Every day I work with you, Sam. "It was pretty interesting."

"They're depressing. The lead singer killed himself." Sam looks at me with that look, the one that says I'm worried about you. "I'll burn you a CD with some, you know, more chill stuff. I think that'd be more your speed."

"Maybe," I shrug.

"All right," she stands, sending the signal that my invitation to leave is being sent a second time. "Come at, say, around nine tomorrow? Or, wait, you said you might go to check out that other forger in Sadr City without me, the one your cousin Saleh is going to recommend. So why don't you do that first, and come to me around ten. Oh!" She rushes to the refrigerator. "Your desserts, for your family." She hands them to me in a gesture that says take them. "You're not going to leave me with these sugar bombs, are you?"

I take them in my left hand, and make for the door handle with my right.

"So see you in the morning," she says.

"I'm down with that."

Sam leans against the refrigerator. "Picked up some good slang today, eh?"

I point at her with my thumb pointing up, pistol-like. "Raping," I reply. Sam shakes her head and stands, frowning at my hand, in the shape of a gun.

38.

Frowning Liar. Sam is a liar. Samara B. Katchens, Paris Bureau Chief who is hardly ever in Paris, has been lying to me. Who in this city is not a liar?

I have the whole walk through Yarmouk and the taxi ride to Karada to review things in my head. Last night, as I was walking out of the hotel towards Rizgar's car, a broad-shouldered young man bumped into me. Then he pushed an envelope into my chest and murmured, "For you."

"For me? What's this-" and halfway through my sentence, he was gone. So I shoved the envelope into my trouser pocket, not wanting to have to read it in front of Rizgar, and got into the car. Then I remembered that I wanted to see Saleh, and decided maybe I shouldn't open it there either, and so I may as well just wait until I get home.

I had Rizgar drop me off in Amiriya, close to Saleh's house. I have started to do that wherever I go. What if Saleh's neighbours don't trust him? What if they see a fancy car they don't recognize stopping at the house? They might suspect he's working with the Americans. I've already heard too many stories of guys getting shot, and neighbours just shrugging and saying that he was working with the Americans, so he deserved it.

Saleh gave me more precise directions on how to get to the office of a guy called Mustapha al-Tamimi. Saleh said I should forget about going back to Khalil Ibn Khaldoun. He does not have the goods, but he will try to pull the same trick on us, in which he'll play Akram and we'll play Harris. Saleh says Khalil will just produce information demonstrating what it is he thinks we want to prove, and then expect us to pay. That's the trouble with people in the forgery business, Saleh said. You rarely get an honest word out of any of them. The guy we really want, Saleh insisted, the guy with a direct line to our documents, that's Mustapha, and Khalil is just one of his competitors.

They insisted I stay for dinner. Ashtar makes an incredible teman o'morga. It's just a simple rice stew with vegetables, but I like the way she makes it, with dried mint and sweet peppers.

I started filling up on it, and her homemade leben, which is like yogurt. When she saw how good my appetite was, she heated up some baamya, a stew of lamb and tomato sauce, which was probably left over from the night before. I sat at the table, pushing it into my mouth and thinking of Louis and his foul, funny mouth, devouring his spicy sticks of gum. Ashtar said I looked tired, and that maybe I hadn't been eating enough. She was thrilled to get the box of European sweets, which looked close to soggy by the time she opened them. My family won't know the difference.

After dinner, Saleh and I went into their garden and smoked some sheesha. It was probably the most relaxing hour I've had in weeks. I hate cigarette smoke, but I don't think smoking an occasional nargila could be bad for you. Baba said the people who got lung cancer smoked cigarettes, the best of which are exported from America. But sheesha? That never hurt anyone.

I almost smoked myself into nirvana, and then I started talking. First about Sam, then about the thugs outside my house the other night. Who else could I tell? Baba? He would worry too much. Amal? I trust her the most, but she is too young to handle any of this.

Saleh said to be careful. Maybe I should think seriously about getting a gun, he said. Or maybe I should quit my job - the same kind of job he's trying to get. I tried to explain that it wasn't about the money. What else could work be about, he laughed. It's not like you're going to do these things to help some American woman. Unless you're in love with her! I laughed with him and said of course not. He lit another bowl of sheesha, this one with cherry-flavoured tobacco, and promised it would be the last.

By the time I got home, just in time for curfew, I felt better than I had in weeks. Citing exhaustion and Ashtar's good cooking, I went straight to my room. And read the letter.