"Somewhat," she says. "Shaab Stadium is famous."

"Maybe you heard about it because here we have our football game. Sometimes the national team plays another country team and Iraqi lose. And then Uday is torturing the players right there in the basement, below the looker room!"

"Locker room," I interject.

"Lucker, lucker! That's what I said. Did you know it?" His tone is aggressive, demanding an answer from Sam. "Did you know that people were being tortured?"

"Well, yes, I mean, there were stories in the paper sometimes about how cruel Saddam was, although I think the Bush administration was more concerned about what kinds of weapons he was acquiring than whether he was beating up on a few athletes."

Mustapha frowns. I'm not sure he is getting the nuances of Sam's language, the hints of sarcasm about her own government. I have the urge to translate what she said.

He suddenly thrusts his hand between us, scaring me to the point where I almost lurch to protect Sam. "Have you ever seen fingers like that?"

Each of the nails on his fingers is dark and disfigured, ridged like a carpet that needs straightening. "That," he says, pulling his hand back again, "they do to me while I was still in high school. One of my uncles was involved in the uprising against Saddam in one-and-ninety and they said I'm not giving them enough information about him. Not being enough helpful. And so they pull out each one, until I convince them I don't know anything about my uncle, my cousin, no one."

Next to me, I see Sam's fingers curl in on themselves. "That's awful," she says.

"Yes, very, very awful. But this is how we live here. And America see and say oh, very bad, Saddam, but wait another twelve years to do anything. So why now?"

Sam doesn't respond.

"I mean, why now? Why come Iraq now?" His voice is louder, and he seems to be struggling for the words. "If America come in one-and-ninety-"

"In ninety-one," I say. "You mean in nineteen ninety-one."

We say wahad u-tiseen instead of tiseen u-wahad. But Mustapha is clearly furious with me. He doesn't want my corrections, regardless of his mistakes.

"If you want to stop him because of the human rights, then you must stop him in ninety-and-one. American knows Saddam kill many people, and torture them and take my fingers out," he says, becoming more and more agitated, wiggling his hand in the air. "You know what I think? I think that if you, yaani, America, were here for our rights, you must come long time ago. And if you come for our weapons, then Ya Allah, where are they? And why you don't find them and show them! So maybe, just my opinion, maybe you come here for something else."

Brutus turns up Abu Nuwas Street, and the sight of the river comforts me. On it there is a lonely fisherman in a boat as slender as a banana. A flash of jealousy for him burns through me. Living a simple life, barely literate, selling the day's catch to the great fish restaurants along the Tigris. Bringing home the proceeds to a loyal wife and doting children. Far away from the problems of how to play Mustapha and how to protect Sam.

"What do you think America came here for?" Mustapha asks.

I hope Sam doesn't think she can win this argument with Mustapha and his completely incompatible premises. Saddam was evil. Who are you to take Saddam away from us? You have no right to be here. But what took you so long come?

"You are the journalist, yes? Maybe this is your job to find out."

No one says anything more, and as we drive north on Abu Nuwas, I watch the array of some of our family's favourite old restaurants along the water, shuttered up or empty of everyone but their owners. When things are better, I will bring Sam there sometime for dinner. Afterwards we'll go strolling, and perhaps I'll hold her hand, even just for a moment.

I must have passed these three-storey brick homes along the waterfront a thousand times in the last few years. There were rumours that after Saddam had these townhouses built, he gave them to senior members of the Republican Guard. The officers received a gift of prime land with one of the best views in town and Saddam received a ready-made line of defence from any attack from the southern side of the river.

The houses stand out from the landscape because something about their neat lines, overly modern and attached like townhouses in some smarter part of Birmingham, is really not the architectural style of Baghdad. They have pointy angles that don't belong here, triangular roofs designed for countries where there is much rain and snow to be managed. It is a European design, imported for prestige purposes. The only thing that is familiar is the colour of the bricks: lighter than mud, darker than tan, something like a mix of camel hair and sandy earth.

It's now, what? More than three weeks since Saddam and the other ministers simply ceased to appear in public, signalling Iraq's surrender to America. People say all of the Republican Guard fled these houses with their families on the very same day, and that hours later, new tenants took over. Whether they are poor squatters or armed militias is anybody's guess.

Brutus stops the car and Mustapha steps out, brisk and confident, and motions for us to move with him. We get out, too, following the yalla yalla motions from his hand of unseemly nails, telling us to move quickly. We follow Mustapha up the steps to the front door, Brutus shifting heavily behind us.

Mustapha knocks twice but doesn't wait for an answer, pushing the door open and telling us to follow him inside and up stairs demarcated with a red line of carpeting, as well as one of those plastic runners that make sure you don't trample the carpet into peach fuzz. "Come, come," he says, racing up almost as fast as we raced down yesterday, at the hotel. Why does every yesterday feel like three days ago? Dog years. We run up the stairs, me behind Mustapha, Sam behind me, Brutus behind her. At his size, if he moves as fast as Mustapha he could have a heart attack in the stairwell. And then, perhaps, we can end up back at Al-Kindi hospital, right where we started, Baba rolling his eyes at me.

On the third floor, Mustapha taps on a simple door once and then once more. The door is opened by a man who is built like a goalie, fairly young but with a bald head, which makes the grizzly nature of his beard all the more striking. He looks past Mustapha to take us in, with eyes like those of searchlights that nervously pan the sky at night.

The room is big and sparse, with a large writing desk and some chairs to the left, windows to the right. On the carpet are discoloured, flat spots where the furniture used to sit. There are others: three men. One sitting, two standing in varying forms of repose against the wall, armed with pistols.

Be calm, like the Tigris, flowing out there through the windows, just beyond the void of what was someone's living room. Four of us coming, and they needed to match it with four of them. Perfectly normal for a business meeting: parity.

"Mr Ali," says Mustapha, "this our American friend, Miss Samara, and her translator, Nabil al-Amari."

We smile at him and I move to shake his hand, but he doesn't seem to notice because his eyes are focused on Sam. The Ali, as in Ali al-Yaqubi al-Sadr?

"American?" he asks.

Sam nods twice before saying "yes", as if working up to it.

"So you don't need to wear this hejab here," he says, pointing to her headscarf. "This is not necessary."

Sam puts a hand to her scarf. "I like wearing it. I have great respect for Muslim tradition."

"Sorry," I say, knowing that I've interrupted, but not wanting to let him begin a treatise on hejab. "What was your name?"

"Ali," he says, giving a sideways nod to Mustapha, almost imperceptible. "Some people call me Technical Ali, because they say my work is so good, I'm almost technician." He laughs in a way that is more of a sneeze and then points to the chairs, which put our backs towards the windows. He sits down at the other side of the desk, in a swivel chair unlike the others, facing the river and the sunlight.

"I understand you wanted to know more about the work I do," he says. "Mustapha here says that you already have done a lot of your own research." He raises his face, which is more Lebanese than Iraqi, sharply angled to the point of being bony, the kind of Arab looks that can pass for Italian or Greek.

"A little bit." Had I arrived earlier this morning, as I should have, I would have gone over things with Sam, discussed every possible direction the day could move in, working out in advance what Sam would want to do so that I wouldn't have to turn to her and have her seen to be making all the decisions on the spot, which might not look good for either of us.

"Ya Mustapha," Ali calls, as if Mustapha and Brutus were standing somewhere far away, instead of near the door, where they stayed even after we sat. Mustapha steps forward.

"Aren't you hungry for lunch?" Ali asks.

Mustapha puts a hand over his belly. "In fact, very."

"In that case," he says, switching into Arabic after having greeted us in English, "you must go over to the Nabil Restaurant on Arasat Street in honour of this young man and pick up lunch for all of us. Our treat, of course."

I feel a wave of fear, but I know I have to let it level out here, inside my head. Mustapha leaving us here?

"Of course," Mustapha says. My body moves to rise, but I press it back down. What would Sam expect?

"Well, really, you're so generous, but that's not at all necessary," I say. "In fact, we really were only expecting to make a short visit and then we're off for some other appointments." I turn to Sam, switching to English. "You have an early deadline today don't you?"

"Yes, that's right," she says, looking at her watch. "I do."

"Do we have time to stay for lunch?"

"Oh. That's so kind of you," Sam smiles. "I hate to refuse but-"

"So don't," Mustapha says. He gives a sympathetic but patronizing look that says, don't fight it. In Arabic, he says: "Clients and foreign guests always get treated to a meal, Nabil, you know that. It's natural. We'll be back soon."

Natural as the sound of another explosion somewhere, the kind you feel under your feet like a tiny tectonic tremor. Mustapha walks out, and Brutus closes the door behind him.

"Terrible, all of this violence, is it not?" Ali says to Sam, who seems nonchalant about our escorts' departure, or is simply putting on a very good show of it.

"It's horrible."

"Maybe your America government don't send enough of soldiers here to make security. Why not?"

Sam shrugs and shakes her head. "I don't know why. I guess they're trying."

"Trying," he says, giving his "g" an exceptionally strong ring, as if he is trying to imitate Sam.

Ali reaches into the front drawer of the desk and takes out a file. He opens it, and on top is a document that I immediately recognize. It looks exactly like one of the photocopies Sam has in her bag, the order from Saddam to pay $2 million to Congressman Jackson.

He passes it across the table, facing us.

"Is this one of the documents which is interesting you?"

"That's right," I say.

"You have a copy of this document already, I understand."

Naturally he knows by now - Mustapha must have told him. I nod, waiting for him to ask whether we have the documents with us, knowing that they're sitting in Sam's bag.

"So let me ask you, if I may, Mr Ali," says Sam.

"You may call me Ali."

"Okay, thank you." Sam is jumping on Ali's English, which I find myself cursing. It is better - safer, really - when the conversation flows through me, where I can play filter and arbiter. Censor. "Are you the one who made these documents?"

"Yes," he says. "I made them. Are you impressed with my work?" I have been trying to place his accent, trying to figure out where he learned his English. He almost sounds like he'd have learned in Germany or some Scandinavian country.

Sam pulls the page closer to her. It is a much better, clearer copy than the one we have, but obviously not the original, which you can tell from the signatures and the flatness of the government seal. "I am very impressed," Sam says. "You can hardly tell this from the real thing."

"It is the real thing!" His tone startles me. "Maybe I can even show you some more of my works, if this interests you."

"Okay," she says. "But what I'm mostly interested in right now is this set."

Ali blinks at her a few times, the bottom of his face in a sneer.

Sam, I'm proud to say, is calm. "Can you tell me why you made this set? And who asked to have it made?"

Ali looks perturbed. "Why I made them?"

"Yes, I want to know, why make up a document trying to make an American politician look bad?"

"Not make up!" Ali shouts. He oscillates rapidly in his chair. "We don't just make up!"

I want to put my hand on Sam's arm or her back, to tell her to slow down, to not push so hard, but in view of everyone, it would be totally inappropriate.

"We are providing the documentation for the crimes which we already know have been committed. Do you know that? Do you understand the difference?" Ali rises rapidly from his chair. One of the guards moves towards him.

"We are not criminals," Ali says, calmer now. "No. It is your country's fault that you must always think you need to have something on paper to prove that someone is a big criminal, and so we give you that. We give you evidences, because that's what you want," he says, drawing imaginary lines with his finger across his palm. "And you are even liking to pay for it, because otherwise you think it is not real."

Sam takes her notebook and pen out of her bag.

"No!" He shakes a finger towards Sam's face. "No. Not for writing."

She puts the pen back.

"You know, even when I see a woman dress like you do today, I know there is nothing true underneath it because you are not a Muslim inside. You don't have the modesty of a Muslim woman."

Sam stares at him.

"You know, a lot of people are glad you got rid of Saddam, but now they want you to go. Because if you don't, you'll bring here all of your infidel ideas."

Sam lifts her pen towards her notebook again.

"No writing!" He shouts, one hand slashing beneath the other in a motion meant to convey that something is forbidden. Hararti. He stops, breathing deeply, and I can feel my heart rate accelerating inside my ears. "I think you want to make our society sick, like your society is sick. Isn't it true that a woman in America cannot walk anywhere at night without getting raped? Or that the men feel they are free to take her because she is all the time dressing like prostitute?" He leans towards her, his eyes wider. "Or maybe the American woman like being treated like that."

Sam's hands hold each other stiffly. The Thuraya phone in her bag starts ringing.

"Tell me," he says, taking in the length of her body and the curve of her breasts, so much so that it's making me nervous. "Is it true? What they say about American women?"

Sam stands. "Would you excuse me? That's an urgent call that I need to take, but I need to be outside to get reception." I rise, too. Three of the men casually walk around the desk, fanning out.

Ali smiles. "Why don't you sit down and stay with us for a while, Miss Katchens?"

It must be part of the act. Saleh trusted Mustapha enough, and Mustapha led us here. It must be just an attempt to scare us.

"I need to go downstairs, or even from the roof-"

"This is your problem, Miss Katchens," he says, sounding entertained. "This is what is wrong with your culture and what will make everything go wrong for your people in Iraq."

"I'm sorry if there's been some misunderstand-"

"You think you make all the decisions. You are guest in our country and you begin to act like you own it. You are one woman among the men here and you think it is for you to decide everything."

"Pardon me," she says, putting her bag on her shoulder, prodding at me to prepare to move. "If you'll forgive me," she says, putting a hand across her heart. "I have a story on deadline and my editors will be wondering-"

The sweep of the gun from the back of his trousers moving into his hand. The sight of the metal there, pointing right at Sam's head. The snap of the latch, like the cracking of a small animal's bones when you accidentally run it over.

His grip is firm around the pistol. The barrel is inches from Sam's head.

Two of the other men with their pistols are turned on me. The third, whom I thought was not armed, trains an AK-47 on us.

"Maybe the deadline is you."

Ali lunges closer and grabs Sam's scarf under the chin and yanks it off. What was an almost-scream stops and Sam is speechless, staring at Ali open-mouthed and I am shouting "don't, don't don't, don't hurt her" and "we didn't do anything" and I'm saying everything without knowing what I'm saying at all and another guy comes from behind me and knocks me sharp in the back of my head and barks, "Shut the fuck up!"

I know it will hurt soon, but right now it feels light and numb, like everything in my head spilling out and spreading itself into the air.