Fadwa told Mustafa that her father was thinking of joining Baath. “He doesn’t want to—he doesn’t like or trust Saddam Hussein—but he’s had a terrible time finding work since we got back from America.”

“He is right not to trust Saddam,” Mustafa said, going on to explain that the canal-building project, pushed through the state legislature with a series of bribes, was really an elaborate revenge plot. “The Shia smuggler gangs along the Persian border refused to join Saddam’s syndicate, so as punishment he’s draining the marsh out from under them.” As for the many innocent marshlanders whose ancient way of life was being destroyed, Saddam didn’t care about them. Neither did the federal government, unfortunately. “My boss has been trying to get the Environmental Protection Agency involved in the case—they actually have more power than Halal when it comes to this sort of thing. But Iraqis apparently don’t qualify as an endangered species.”

“So it falls to you then,” Fadwa said, smiling at his seriousness. “You’ll have to get the old gangster yourself.”

“Well, I am going to try,” said Mustafa, smiling back.

Several months later, Mustafa’s sisters and aunts met formally with the women of Fadwa’s family to hammer out the details of a marriage contract. Once that was taken care of, the men got together and had a barbeque. Mustafa and Fadwa’s wedding was in June. With money from Mustafa’s family, they got a starter house in the suburban district of New Baghdad.

That first year of their marriage was a happy one, though to Mustafa looking back later it often seemed like something that had happened to another person. Those were the days when he once more strove to be a proper Muslim: praying regularly, giving to charity, fasting during Ramadan. Much of what he did, he did to please Fadwa, just as he’d once done it to please his mother, but pleasing her gave him a sense of fulfillment that felt very much like righteousness. The sense of fulfillment carried over to his work. People sometimes referred to Halal agents as “God’s policemen” because they enforced purity laws; Mustafa preferred to think of his job as protecting the weak against exploitation by the wicked, but either way you looked at it, it was a banner year for the God squad. They seized a lot of contraband and locked up a lot of bad people, and even the old gangster Saddam seemed, for a time, tantalizingly within reach.

The trouble began the following year, when Fadwa’s family came to visit them in Baghdad during the Festival of Sacrifice. Fadwa’s mother commented repeatedly on the fact that Fadwa wasn’t pregnant yet. What were they waiting for? Was there some problem? Mustafa, figuring these were the pro forma expressions of concern that mothers-in-law were supposed to make, paid them little mind. Fadwa was badly shaken, though. After her parents went home, she broke down and confessed to Mustafa that she’d been keeping a family secret from him. One of her maternal grandmother’s sisters had been divorced by her husband after she proved incapable of bearing children. Not only did he literally kick her out of the house, he blamed her infertility on immoral behavior, a vile accusation that she denied, but that so shamed her she ended up committing suicide.

Mustafa listened gravely to this story but failed to take it as seriously as he should have. Family honor was important and memories were long, but the events Fadwa described had occurred before either of them had even been born. More importantly, Mustafa had come to take his own good fortune for granted, seeing the past year’s joy as a natural state of affairs rather than a blessing that might not last. This arrogance blinded him to the depth of Fadwa’s fear.

“Your great-aunt’s husband sounds like a monster,” he said when she’d finished. “And what happened was a tragedy. But it’s got nothing to do with us.”

Fadwa looked at him warily. “What if I can’t conceive?”

“Don’t be silly. You will. Of course you will.”

“What if I can’t?”

“Fadwa, come on.” He cupped her face in his hands. “You know I would never put you out.”

She closed her eyes and nodded and pretended to be reassured. But after that day things were different between them. Fadwa began demanding sex more often—in itself, nothing to complain about, but the act was tainted by an aura of desperation that grew stronger over time. In matters of faith, Fadwa became a scold, chastising Mustafa for any sign he was shirking his obligations.

Six months later Fadwa still wasn’t pregnant and Mustafa conceded that there might be a real problem, though he felt sure it was temporary, some biological speed bump that medical science could cure. He told Fadwa to make a doctor’s appointment. She did, but the appointment kept getting rescheduled. After several months of delays, Mustafa placed an angry call to the doctor’s office and found out it wasn’t the doctor who’d been postponing the exam.

Now it was Mustafa’s turn to play the chastiser. “You need to stop being foolish and get this checked out, Fadwa,” he said. “Whatever’s wrong, we’ll get it fixed.”

The verdict, when it finally came, was devastating. “Premature ovarian failure.” Mustafa repeating the doctor’s words felt sluggish and dumb. “Premature ovarian failure, that’s, what is that, early menopause?”

No, it wasn’t; it was much worse. A woman in menopause knows she cannot have children. A woman with premature ovarian failure knows only that she is unlikely to. Between five and ten percent of women with the condition still managed to conceive, the doctor said; but because the underlying causes were still poorly understood, there was no way to predict who would be in that lucky minority. And while they could treat Fadwa for some of the related symptoms, about the condition itself there was nothing to be done.

“And you’re sure that’s what’s wrong with her?” Mustafa said this several times, not so much because he doubted the diagnosis but because he needed time to get used to it, this new reality that was not at all what he had expected. Meanwhile Fadwa was sitting right beside him, watching him, absorbing his every word, every facial tic. If Mustafa had it to do over again, he would have insisted on meeting with the doctor alone, first—not the act of an enlightened husband, perhaps, but one that would have allowed him a chance to sort his own feelings in private. As it was, Fadwa suffered the double torment of hearing the bad news herself while observing Mustafa’s reaction to it—and projecting, into that reaction, all of her worst fears. By the time Mustafa had collected himself enough to try to comfort her, it was too late.

Fadwa called her mother that night in tears. Within twenty-four hours, the whole family knew. Fadwa’s father was the first to offer advice, saying that of course they mustn’t put all their trust in one doctor. They needed a second opinion—at least!—and he knew just where to go for one: a hospital with a first-rate family planning clinic that had recently opened in Adhamiyah.

Mustafa knew the hospital he was talking about. It had been financed by donations from Baath and the Saddam Hussein Foundation, and was already under scrutiny by Halal for possible narcotics violations. But Fadwa’s father, now a fully employed union member, no longer regarded Saddam as a bad guy, and when he offered to arrange an appointment at the clinic, Mustafa couldn’t refuse without insulting him.

The Baath fertility specialist confirmed the original doctor’s diagnosis but added a measure of optimism. There were a number of experimental therapies, he said, that might increase Fadwa’s odds of conceiving.

Mustafa quite naturally suspected a scam. “If the treatment is experimental, I assume it’s not covered by Blue Crescent. Will Saddam’s foundation be paying the bill?”

“Ah, no, I’m afraid you’ll have to bear the expense yourself,” the doctor replied. “And I won’t lie, these therapies aren’t cheap . . . But really, how can one put a price on parenthood?”