This seems simple enough, and yet completely ridiculous. Do you stop a thief in the middle of the act and ask him why he's doing it? Maybe it is different in America, or in France. Maybe in those countries, criminals agree to be interviewed.

"I hope you don't mind my saying so," I begin, "but I think it will be very hard to find someone who will admit that they are stealing."

"Really? Lots of papers have started to run stories like that. Someone's talking."

Rizgar drives deeper into a neighbourhood I don't know. The houses become denser, without any spaces between them, without any green in the gardens. And soon there are no gardens, only dwellings, cluttered and compressed into a warped grid of concrete and pipes and washing lines.

"So any family will do?" I ask. "Anyone who's stolen something since the looting began?"

"Yeah, anyone. Anyone who took things of value. Not just rusty old office equipment."

We enter an area with a string of shops and I get out of the car. I notice a dairy which has a steel gate pulled across it, and even though it's closed, there's a man inside, and I can see that he must still be open for business because a woman just went in looking for milk and I saw him pass it to her through the metal lattice. I walk up to the gate and I see the man, perhaps in his early forties, inside. His face twists in my direction; I appear to have startled him. I hold up my hands, perhaps on instinct to show him that I am unarmed, and begin to explain what I need. And he says to go to Rimal Street and ask for his brother, Hatem.

I thank him over and over, and he looks at me as if he doesn't know why. He wipes his hands on his trousers. "We're not ashamed," he says. "We are only taking back what the government stole from us. Everybody I know took only from the government offices and police stations, not from private stores. Not the real Iraqis. Go to see Hatem. Tell him Adel sent you. He will help you. I'll try to come and join you in a bit, after I close up here."

My mind is racing now with an energy that I forgot I had, like the feeling I used to have when I ran relays in school. I try to hide the breathlessness in my voice. "It's good," I announce. "We have an address of someone who will talk."

Hatem is wearing a thin T-shirt and blue trousers that are fraying around the bottoms, as if they might have been washed and hung out to dry in the sun a hundred times. He looks very young, but has grown a heavy beard that makes him look more mature. Behind him, two small children are wrestling with each other. The bigger boy has the upper hand and he bangs the slightly smaller boy's head on to the floor. The shrieking swells, and then a woman who is fully covered, I presume she is Hatem's wife, rushes to pick up the crying boy. She slaps the bigger boy lightly on the back of his head, and drags him by the shirt until the noisy mess of them disappears from sight.

Hatem is tall and slim and has a facial structure so sharply defined you can follow its angles beneath his beard. But his height is a slouching height, not a proud one, and I notice my shoulders receding to meet his, as if to assume a stance of solidarity.

Their sitting room is simple: floor cushions, marked and ripping in places, placed in a U-shape around the room. On the wall there is a picture of Moqtada in a cheap plastic frame. But I soon find myself counting up all the things that don't belong. A typewriter, much newer than the model I have at home, sits in the corner, next to a mound of shimmering white glass that sparkles like diamonds in the sunlight from outside. Hatem has noticed me eyeing it. "Do you want to see the other things that we have reclaimed?" he asks.

"Reclaimed?"

"Well, this isn't theft, you know. We are taking back the things the regime stole from us. This is like blood money that can never be claimed."

Sam points to the glittering glass. "Did they take that chandelier from one of the palaces?"

Hatem lifts his gaze to me and his eyebrows move closer together. It's clear he doesn't understand much English, nor does he know why the woman speaking it is standing in his home, and so I begin to explain that she is a journalist, and he says from where, and I don't know why, but I say France, and after all, doesn't her card say she lives in France? And he says Ahlan w-sahlan, you are welcome as if family, and that if Adel sent us, we must be okay. And I think of stopping right there, explaining that we only met his brother ten minutes ago by chance, but instead I smile and say thank you.

"First, come," Hatem says, and he leads us into the family room behind the sitting room, the place to which, in many houses of the religious, a stranger wouldn't often be invited.

There are many chairs and sofas and lamps, and everything is in an antique-looking European style, with velvet fabrics and fancy wooden carvings along the edges, some painted with gold. There are also some wooden side tables and a few Syrian folding chairs with inlaid mother-of-pearl. The furniture is packed in so tightly, it looks like a dealer's warehouse.

"Christ," Sam mutters to me. "This is amazing. Did he loot a whole palace living room?"

I ask Hatem the same question, in more polite form of course, and he clicks his tongue against the top of his mouth. "No, not a palace. A villa. One of the minister's homes."

"Really? Which one?"

Hatem hesitates. "Chemical Ali. He has many homes in Iraq, two in Baghdad. My brothers and our relatives decided we would target these homes."

"Mashallah," I say, and I am, in fact, impressed. Everyone knows that Chemical Ali, whose real name is Ali Hassan al-Majid, is said to have killed thousands of Kurds as well as Shi'ites, many by chemical warfare. When Saddam has a problem, I once heard someone say, Chemical Ali has the solution.

Sam is not as impressed as I expected.

"Which house?" she asks. "Where was it?"

Hatem smirks, staring at her but speaking to me. "Ask around. Anyone can tell you where the house is."

Sam walks up to one of the chairs and runs her hands along the rich trim. "Can I photograph him with all of his loot?"

I cannot think of a way to interpret these words without insulting him. I certainly cannot use hawasim, since he doesn't view this as looting. The only words I can think of are stolen things, or other words that have sariqa in them, which can only mean theft. So for now I won't translate the question at all.

Hatem asks me to ask Sam if she knows who Chemical Ali is.

Sam strokes the green velvet on one of the sofas. "Sure I know."

"Well," says Hatem, "he is responsible for the murder of at least thirty of my relatives."

When I tell Sam that, she looks at Hatem with eyes that seem determined at looking sad. "I'm very sorry," she says. "That's awful."

Hatem nods. "Why don't you come back into the sitting room. Coffee or tea?"

And so we go back into the front room and settle into the cushions, and Hatem begins to tell us about all the relatives who have been jailed or killed in the past fifteen years - or who have simply disappeared.

Sam is fidgeting with the camera inside her bag. "But what about the rest of the city? The looters are picking Baghdad to pieces. People are getting killed in the street."

Hatem raises his right hand as if shielding himself from something. "That is not our people. Those are others. Maybe the criminals who escaped from Abu Ghraib when the regime fell. Maybe Kurds from the North. They are coming down here and committing the real crimes."

I feel my face tense at the thought: Rizgar. Did Hatem notice him pull up? Is he still out by the car?

"Tell her this," Hatem says to me. "Explain to her that in Islam, there is a difference between stealing and making reparations. The Prophet Mohammed, peace be upon Him, said that stealing is so despised by God that the thief's hand should be cut off. But it also says in the Holy Koran that when an injury is done by one party, he must fix what he has broken or pay the damages. There must be a sulha."

"Nabil," Sam turns to me. "Can you translate what he's saying?"

"Wait one minute. I need to understand first what he's trying to say."

"Well, I'd prefer you translate sentence by sentence, or you'll forget what he said."

"No, yes...please continue."

"But in our culture, please explain to her, we have a concept of the sulha, in which the families of the two parties get together to reconcile the differences. The elders negotiate and decide what is fair."

Sam's hand cuts the air. "Nabil, just stop him and tell him you need to translate."

"But in this case, Saddam has disappeared and we may never hear from him again. Maybe he is already in another country. And so, how will we get our ta'wid?"' he says, using the term for reparations. "Who will give me the blood money for my other brother, for all my cousins who are dead and missing? The United Nations? George Bush? I don't think so."

I turn to Sam. "He is saying that he doesn't believe they will be compensated for their losses."

Sam's shoulders fall and she tilts her head, petulant. "He said a lot more than that. It was at least a few sentences, wasn't it? I need to hear the whole story."

"Okay, I'll tell you after."

"No, not after."

"Just one minute-"

Hatem keeps talking, eyeing Sam like she is interrupting. "In a true Islamic society, if the families cannot solve the problem then they go to a mahkameh, to a religious court, and the judge there can decide who is wrong, and will award damages to the injured party. But since a fair court based on sharia doesn't yet exist anywhere in Iraq-"

Sam is shifting noisily now, and I give her a hand signal to wait just one more moment.

"...so then we must act as if we are the judges and must compensate ourselves for what Saddam took from us. We hope in the future we will have a true Islamic society based on sharia, and then we will never again see a situation such as this. Moreover, you must know that all of what we are seeing is presaged in the Holy Koran. You should read sura 15:47. *We shall strip away all rancour that is in their breasts.' I can show you the place. It means that the belongings of a decadent regime must be stripped away. When there is a war against a corrupt ruler or an infidel regime, this is what we are called upon to do."

"I understand. One moment? Let me explain to the lady." And I start to summarize his points for Sam, but she is sitting with her arms crossed and looking annoyed. "You don't want to write this down?" I ask.

She picks up the notebook she had placed on her lap and grimaces. "Yeah. Go ahead and tell me again."

I give her a summation of everything he has said, focusing on the most important points. Sam shakes her head.

She lowers her voices and tries to sound gentle. "Nabil, this isn't working. I need exact quotes, not summaries. Ask him to run through his day yesterday and tell me what he did. Where he went, what he stole. How he got it home. How did he get all of this stuff into his living room?"

"...and so you can explain to this lady that when we have a true Islamic government that works in concert with the ummah," and I cannot think of how to translate this, "we can reconcile any disputes over this process. The Prophet Mohammed, peace be upon Him, said to care for the poor. And we will make sure that the proceeds of what we reclaim are evenly distributed to the poor."

I do not know how to get him to slow down, or how to translate half of what he is saying. His arguments do not even make complete sense to me.

I nod emphatically. "Sorry, sorry? She wants to know where you went for these items."

"Where we went?"

"Yes, where everything is from."

And so he explains that most of these things came from one of Uday Hussein's homes, and from a government office that was run by him, and I tell Sam all of this, but she still does not look happy.

Hatem excuses himself and leaves the room. "He says that he has at least seven family members who have disappeared in the past decade. He is going to show us pictures."

"Nabil, could you try getting into his voice when you translate? Say, I did this or that."

"I should say I did this?"

"Yes, don't say, *He says he has more than seven family members.' Say, *I have more than seven family members.' First-person. Know what I mean by that? Pretend you are speaking for him."

Of course I know what first-person is. But I didn't understand until now that Sam would want me to speak like that, and I didn't expect that she would be constantly correcting and interrupting while I interpret for her.

Hatem comes back with a stack of pictures. The edges are tatty, and their faded colour betrays their age. Young men in their twenties and thirties with thick moustaches, some resembling Hatem, stare back at us. Hatem names each one and the time he disappeared. Many of them were picked up after March 1991, he says, after the war with Kuwait and America.

"On Monday we are going to go to Al-Mahawil to look for them," Hatem tells me. "The people are digging up the mass graves there and I think this is where they might be buried. We must give them a proper Islamic burial."

"He says he may go to the south to look for them when they excavate the area," I tell Sam. "I mean, sorry. *We are going to the south to look for them. The people will dig up mass graves there.'"

"Hmm. Wow, that'd be an amazing story. Nabil, ask him if he minds letting me get a shot of him holding these photographs."

"You want him to stand in front of the looted items while you take the picture?"

Sam seems doubtful, then dismissive. "Nah, I don't want to pose the picture that much, you know?"

I can't imagine how the photograph wouldn't seem posed. If posed means that the people arrange themselves in such a way that they know the picture is being taken, and they try to look appropriate for the photographer, then isn't it posed? Hatem calls his sons over and the smallest boy, fully recovered from his brother's pouncing, comes running to his father's knees. Hatem pulls him on to his lap, and then splays out the family photos like a fan.

"Okay," he says, "now I am ready."

"You can take the picture," I tell her.

"I already did," she says. But this time I didn't hear the click, so I am wondering how that could be.

"Take down all of their names," Hatem says, setting his son, who seems disappointed at the brevity of his father's affection, back on to the floor. "Put them all in the newspaper. Saddam has killed millions of Shi'ites. Millions. Now the future of the country belongs to us, and we will rebuild it in their name," he says, smiling at his boy. "Tell her that."

"He is saying that Saddam was very bad to the Shi'ites and killed a lot of them. But all the Shi'ites say this. We don't know if it is true but many people have been saying this."

Hatem interrupts me. "She's American, no? Maybe if America had come sooner, my cousins would be here with us now. One of them had his tongue cut out." He looks at her. "You had a chance to get Saddam twelve years ago, and then you come now. Why? Why so long?"

"What is he saying?"

"He is saying he is glad the Americans are here now."

"Is that what he said?" Sam gives him a face of pleasant surprise, which looks feigned. "Really? Are you happy the Americans are here?"

"Yez, habby. Now habby." Hatem answers in the shreds of English he must have learned in school, his "p" coming out as a "b". I wonder, is this the kind of English my students will speak one day, long after they have finished my class?

A ringing tone emerges from Sam's bag. She scrambles to find the phone and, pulling it out, looks at the screen. "This is my editor again. Do you have a balcony?" I check with Hatem, and he shakes his head.

"What about a window facing southeast?" Sam stands with a posture that says it's urgent. Hatem leads her through the back of the apartment, towards his bedroom. His wife and smallest son stand at the entrance to the kitchen, confused, but Sam hardly takes notice. She opens the window, fumbles to put an extension into the end of the phone and sticks her arm out with the phone pointed towards the sky. Then she dips an earpiece at the end of a little black cord inside her ear.

"Miles?! Miles?" Sam glances at us and pats the air in our direction to say that it is all right. "Hold on. Can you guys give me a minute? I just need to take this call."

We return to the salon.

Hatem searches my eyes. "She's an American?"

"Yes, she is."

"But you said France."

"I said...she lives in France. I thought you meant that you wanted to know where she was coming from now, before she came to Iraq."

Hatem's face is still. "How do you know she isn't working for the government? Most of the journalists are working for the government. Who else could have such a phone?"

Hatem's wavy beard fascinates me. Though I think he must be my age, and certainly not more than thirty, there is a marbling of grey in it that makes him seem like he could be a decade older. I find myself making assumptions about his life. A childhood of urban poverty in a large family, a brief education. How much could he know about freedom of expression in the West? About a media outlet which isn't owned and operated by the government?

"In America, the media and the government are separate," I explain.

Hatem's mouth twitches with disagreement. He takes a set of sebha from his pocket, a string of jade beads with gold dividers. I know that this quality of prayer beads is very expensive, and I wonder if it, too, was looted. He twirls it around his fingers, clockwise and counterclockwise.

"How do you know she's not a spy?"

The thought, however preposterous, has crossed my mind. I want to ask him which kind of spy he would prefer she be, CIA or Mossad. But he looks too serious to think it is as funny as I do.

"Believe me, I know. She's just a young woman travelling with other journalists. I know the newspaper she is writing for. It's famous. I can show it to you."