"See what? What I see is a trail of events that led us from one corrupt fixer or thug or forger to another. I don't know if they connect. It could all be random."

"How can you not see it? Really, how?" Afraid my family will hear, my voice falls into a whisper. I feel myself on the brink of exasperation. If she pushes me more, I will shout. Or maybe break. "Believe me, Sam."

"No. I don't always believe you. Not every little Middle East conspiracy theory you come up with holds water. You guys just love to think the forces of evil are aligning in perfect formation to rule the world. Like it all fits together so easily. Not every crazy event happens for a-"

"What do you mean, *you guys'?"

"Nothing. Forget it."

"No, what is *you guys'? All Iraqis? Maybe all Arabs?"

"No!"

"All Muslims, maybe?"

"Nabil, stop it!" She looks close to tears. "I said I didn't mean it that way. Sometimes I say stupid things, okay? I'm not always as eloquent as you."

The smell of the nail-varnish remover fills the air between us, accosting my nose. How I hate the odour of acetone, which reminds me of that horrible cleaning fluid at the hospital. Did scientists invent this putrid substance solely for the purpose of removing ladies' nail colour? But this is not, I see, why Sam asked for it. She ignores her toenails and begins to work at the tape-marks on her wrists.

A shock wave through my head: the terror of that first moment of Ali pulling out the gun, the shouting, the lack of control, the room spinning. I find my own hands in fists. Next time someone tries something to hurt me or Sam, I will hurt them first. I will be prepared.

"I just mean that I don't always think there's a perfect order to everything," Sam says, rubbing at the gummy grey ring around her wrists. "Sometimes things just don't make sense. People die here every day for no reason."

Maybe I'll be one of them. Maybe there isn't anything at all I can do to prepare. But I don't believe things happen for no reason at all. Right now, maybe I shouldn't be reasoning anyway. I'm so exhausted my eyes are starting to burn.

The fight was fixed, is what I should have said. That's something she might understand. In England, the boys at school were always talking about fights - and footie and cricket matches and tennis tournaments - being fixed. Fixed as unfair, without a fighting chance. Like the comments that some of the boys said years later about my fight with Hamed al-Alami. It was "fixed", they said, because my older brother Ziad was much stronger than his older brother, and it would become a blood feud if Hamed didn't let me win. There was no truth to that rumour, but that didn't stop people from believing it.

"...and just because we got to Z, we can't assume we know what X and Y are."

"Sam, you said forget it. So let's just forget it."

"Let's. Let's forget everything," she says. Her eyes twitch, and then she closes them. She shakes her head gently, as if in disagreement with herself. "I'm sorry, Nabil. I'm really sorry."

I should tell her there's no reason to be sorry, but finally, I'm out of words. Sam takes a fresh wad of tissues from the box on Ziad's desk and tips more acetone on to them. She's almost scrubbing now, working to wipe away the evidence of yesterday. But the gluey residue still marks both of us, a cuff at the end of each forearm that I'm keen to erase, like Adeeb did to his tattoo. How much did he know, about Subhi, about Ali? He seemed so honest.

I think I'll leave my marks right where they are, wide grey stains around the rim of each hand, until they start fading away all on their own.

52.

Fading Amal dashes out to open the front gate. It is one of her only chances to get out of the house, this business of occasionally answering the door, and she rushes to the job at every opportunity.

But when she sees it's someone we don't know, she asks him for his name, and scurries back to the front door where Baba is standing, with me next to him, peering out of the window. From his face, the familiar shape of the jaw, the cut of his moustache and a certain sadness around his eyes, I already know exactly who it is, and I give Amal the okay to let him inside. When she opens the gate, I see the car parked outside: Rizgar's Cherokee jeep, which I haven't seen since the day of Noor's funeral.

His name is Safin Barzani, Amal announces, and he is a relative of Rizgar's. Sam, sitting at the dining table, where only moments ago she was eating the leben and baamya Mum proudly put out for us, rises at the sound of his name.

"Rizgar?" she asks, a hue of hope on her face.

I fall short of speech, putting my lips together but failing to form the right shapes for English. I turn away from her and look back to the man walking up our path, knowing the answer. No, Sam. Not Rizgar. Rizgar's relative. Don't you know it by now? Didn't you think it when there was no trace of him at the Hamra last night? What are the chances that he's just sick or injured somewhere?

Baba greets the man kindly and I do as well, offering him Baba's armchair, the best in our house, which I know Baba usually gives away when we have an important guest. He takes in the lot of us, and then lingers on Sam.

"This is Miss Samara," I say, introducing her. "Sam this is one of Rizgar's relatives." Her face pulls itself into a trembling smile.

"Choni chaki," she says, offering her hand and the Kurdish "how are you" she learned from Rizgar.

He takes her hand, smiles a little at the gesture, and nods without answering.

"Amal," Baba says, "go to the kitchen and make us some tea."

"But Baba, I was going to- My father's frown is powerful enough to make the Euphrates run upstream instead of down.

"Come," Mum says, putting her hand around Amal's shoulder. "I'll help you," she says, and then whispers something in her ear.

It's not as if our living room has any sort of real privacy from the kitchen: what's said in one is generally heard in the other. But there is something in Safin's brow that is obvious to everybody, and it would be inappropriate to have a young girl sitting with us, listening to the details.

Safin, I think, as I offer him a seat: one of those names which remind me what a mystery the Kurdish language is to me. His face is out of the same mould as Rizgar's, a similar meatiness, wide and less than a decade away from turning jowly.

"Rizgar's been living with us since he came to Baghdad with Miss Samara," he begins. "Our people are from up north, but we've been here in the city for over thirty years."

"He says Rizgar has been living with them since he came to Baghdad with you. They're relatives from the north."

Sam blinks and then her eyes widen. By now she knows what's coming.

"You can translate for her after," Baba says. "Let the man finish."

"That's not the way we work, Baba," I say flatly, and then return to Safin. "Please, continue. Forgive me for stopping to explain to her."

Baba hates to be contradicted. But Safin seems not to notice, or to care. "I understand. That's your job," he says. "Rizgar told us about you and about Miss Samara."

"He told them all about us," I say.

Sam nods. I see her clenching her hands.

"This morning someone came and asked us to identify him," he offers quietly, as if a softer voice might make it easier. "They found his body in Saydiyeh, on the riverbank." He sucks in a quick breath that he holds for a moment. The sound of it lingers.

Safin continues. "It seems that they took him while he was waiting in the car, drove it to Saydiyeh, shot him there and then kept the car. The Chrysler, I mean. My car."

I turn to Sam, but she is already shivering, like an old person with a tremor. She stares at me with disbelief, though it's what I've believed since this time yesterday, when Rizgar, who would have done anything to save us, to save Sam, did not make an appearance.

"He's dead?"

Safin nods.

Sam puts her hand over her mouth and lets out a muffled cry. Then her hand covers her eyes for a minute and she shakes her head again. "Oh, God. I, I have to, excuse me for a minute." She gets up and rushes down our hall to the bathroom, storming through our house likes she's lived here all her life, nearly slamming the door behind her. I can hear her turn on the tap, trying to make noise so we won't hear her cries.

"Allah yarhamo," I say, and my father repeats after me. Safin closes his eyes and moves his head left and down, a sort of acceptance of our condolences. When he opens his eyes they fix on his shoes, a dilapidated pair of brown loafers. "I'm ready to work in his place," he says. "It will help make money so I can send it to his wife and children in Irbil."

"But she's leaving," I say. "She is going to leave the country soon, probably tomorrow, or maybe tonight," I blurt, wishing I could take it back. What if he isn't who he says he is, and I've just given him our entire plan?

"How will you go?" he asks.

I hesitate. "We're not sure yet."

Amal draws up a small table in front of Safin and lays out tea and biscuits on it. Sam returns, her face shiny in that way that faces can be, from either washing or crying or both.

She squints into a column of sunlight pouring in through the window. "I am so sorry," Sam says. "Rizgar was like a big brother to me, like a father. He took care of me."

I translate it the way Sam always wanted me to, in first-person, as if I am standing in her shoes. "Rizgar kan zayy akh il-kbir illi, takriban zayy abu."

He smiles. "W-inti illo, zayy uhto, ow binto." And you were like a sister or a daughter to him.

"I want to help in any way I can," she says. "Can you tell me how I can help?"

"Sam, he says he wants to drive for us now."

She exhales, and in her eyes, I see all the pain and guilt, the list of complications and ramifications of taking Rizgar's cousin with us on a journey in which we might well be targets. And me, I can't get past the small doubt in my head, despite everything about Safin that checks out. What if he's part of the set-up, too? Maybe they just found some Kurdish guy to stand in for a relative, and sent him to gather information? Another man could easily resemble Rizgar.

I encourage Safin to take his tea, and he does, offering blessings to the one who made it.

"Do you have anything of his, his identity card?" I ask. "Did they recover anything?"

Safin looks at me like he wonders why I'm asking. Like he wants to believe it's nothing but caring, but isn't sure. "Nothing from the car. At home, though, in the guest room where he stayed, he had just a few things: his clothes, a small Koran, photographs of his family. There's also a painted tile."

When I translate this for Sam, she brightens for a moment, but falls back into sadness. "The tiles we took on the way down from Tikrit."

"Tiles," I ask. "Like, floor tiles?"

"No, there was a big mural of Saddam along the highway," Sam says, wiping away the tear that just escaped from her eye, stopping it before it could go far. "It was kind of like a huge mosaic, of Saddam in a fedora. These young guys were picking it apart with crowbars and screwdrivers, I don't know what. So we stopped to get some of it. Rizgar got a piece of Saddam's throat. He got me a reddish one that made up part of his mouth. I still have it."

"You were looting?"

Sam lips crinkle and immediately I want to take the words back. "Not really looting, Nabil. It was, you know, little souvenirs of the regime. Not like taking money or something valuable."

I explain the bit about the tiles to Safin and he nods as if he already knows. I'm probably becoming paranoid: how could I suspect this poor man?

"It's probably safest if you go through the north," he says. "Cars on the desert road to Jordan get attacked every day. If you go through the north, I'll take you. I know my way very well."

"Sam, he wants to drive us through the north."

Her eyes are puffy from lack of sleep, or from crying. She shrugs. "Is that what you think is best?"

"I don't know." My watch says it's almost 3.30 in the afternoon. "Maybe we should just leave now."

"No, no," Baba says. "If you leave now you will be driving through Tikrit at night. It's not a good idea. Everybody will be suspicious of you. Wait until morning. Wait until you plan."

Safin nods deferentially at Baba. "Your father is right. Driving around Tikrit is not safe. Especially after dark." Especially, we are all thinking - except for Sam, who is oblivious to this conversation - if you are a Kurd.

"Sam, give us a minute to figure this out, OK?"

She nods. Amal moves behind her and runs a hand through Sam's hair. Sam closes her eyes and smiles at Amal's affectionate gesture, encouraging her to carry on. My sister's hands move delicately through the fire-curls.

I turn to Safin. "You're driving the car Rizgar used to drive."

"It's one of the best cars you can get," Safin says.

"How well do you know the road?" Baba asks. "Do you know people up there?"

Safin turns out his hands. "Of course. I only came to Baghdad to study engineering, when I was eighteen. I grew up there. All of my family connections are still there."

"Good," Baba says. "Do a favour for me. Write out a map of the route you will take so I'll be able to know where they are going. I'll be worried about them."

"Sure," Safin replies. "I'll bring it tomorrow."

"You should leave as early as possible tomorrow," Baba says. "But it has to be after the curfew."

"No later than 6.15, then?" I search Safin's face. In it, there is a kind of flatness, a look of being beaten down.

"I will come at 6.15," he says, rising slowly.

"You don't want to stay for dinner?" Mum asks, which seems like a stupid question. It's so rare we have a guest these days that I suppose she is acting more on instinct than sense.

"Thank you," says Safin. "But I really must get home to my family."

"Wait!" My mother hurries to the kitchen, and comes back bearing a glass-topped pot of biriani - food she had been making for our dinner. "Take it to your family."

"Oh, thank you, but no-"

"I insist," says Mum. "You must take it. You can bring the pot back tomorrow." And it is true, he must take it, because mourners must always accept gifts of food from their guests, everyone knows that, and in these extraordinary times, when it isn't sensible to go out when it's not urgent, he must appreciate that this is as good as a condolence call.

Safin takes the food with two hands and offers humble words of appreciation, carrying the pot like you would any heavy burden, as Baba and I walk him to the door.

53.