“If he were Shia, I would definitely think that. And I still think it’s the most likely explanation, but there’s a difference: A Shia boy who proposes temporary marriage to get sex may honestly believe he’s following God’s law. A Sunni boy knows he’s being cynical.”

“I’m glad you think so highly of Anwar.”

“It’s not the only possible explanation. I can think of other reasons why a Sunni might propose temporary marriage, but they’re all worse.”

“What other reasons?”

“He might be an idiot,” Iman said. “Or mentally ill.”

“Oh, wonderful. Anything else?”

“The worst reason of all: He might be in love with you. Maybe what he’s really after is a permanent marriage, but he’s afraid you’re not ready, so this is his way of easing up to it.”

“You call that the worst reason?” Amal said. “How could Anwar loving me be a bad thing?”

“Because you don’t love him,” said Iman. “I’ve listened to you talk about him, Amal. You like Anwar. You enjoy his company and the attention he pays you. He distracts you from worrying about your family. But you don’t love him, and I don’t think a temporary marriage—or an affair—is going to change that.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter anyway,” Amal said. “I mean, it’s not as if I were going to say yes to Anwar’s proposal.”

“You haven’t told him no yet, though.”

“No, but I’m going to.” And then, as if to demonstrate that there was an idiot here, but it wasn’t Anwar, she added: “Don’t worry, Iman. I know what I’m doing.”

The number on Umm Dabir’s message slip had a Baghdad area code rather than the Riyadh code Amal would have expected, and as she dialed she entertained the notion that this really was just a prank of some sort. But the voice that answered said “Al Rasheed Hotel,” and when she asked to speak to Abu Salim bin Amjad she was put straight through. The next voice she heard was Anwar’s.

He told her he was in town for a conference. He told her he needed to see her. He wouldn’t tell her why, but he also wouldn’t take no for an answer, and any impulse Amal might have had to hang up on him was checked by the thought that he’d just call Farouk’s office again, or perhaps show up in person.

She named a restaurant a few blocks from the hotel and agreed to meet him that evening at half past six. She arrived early, and like a Bureau agent setting up a sting, parked her car across the street, facing the direction of his most likely approach.

She’d run his name on the office computer. Sure enough he was a federal employee, though not with the State Department as he’d always planned—his posting was in Commerce, in the Patent and Trademark Office. His wife, Nasrin, was Persian, the fourth daughter of a former trade delegate. They had two daughters of their own . . . and one son.

Abu Salim. Salim’s dad. Of course it was the most natural thing in the world for a father to take the name of his firstborn son. But when the son is the product of a marriage that should never have happened and a woman who rejected you . . . Who does that? What does it mean? What do you want from me, Anwar?

Amal had been in the fifth month of her sigheh when Aunt Nida found out. Amal never learned who tipped Nida off, though she suspected Iman, in an act of kindness, had made a phone call.

That day she’d gone to the seawall to walk and think about drowning herself. Even in her worst despair, suicide wasn’t really in Amal, but another idea—of fleeing across the sea to some country where no one knew her—appealed more strongly, and if she’d come upon an unguarded boat she might have taken it.

Instead she went back to the dorm. A girl sitting in the lobby stared at her as she came in, and Amal walked by swiftly, drawing her abaya around her. To conceal her weight gain she’d been dressing more and more conservatively, but not even a burqa would hide her belly-bump much longer. Already there were whispers.

Anwar wanted to do more than whisper. “Let’s declare our marriage openly and move in together,” he said. “We’re in love, what’s the problem?” The problem? The problem was a future in which Amal ended up living in Riyadh, not as an ABI agent but as a suburban housewife. A future in which instead of helping her father chase Baath out of Iraq, she went shopping at the Hayat Mall. Oh, and they weren’t in love. Anwar was insane, and Amal was stupid.

She opened the door to her room and Aunt Nida was inside, sitting on her bed and smoking a cigarette. Amal stopped short, in panic trying to come up with some lie to tell, but it was pointless; she could see on Aunt Nida’s face that Nida already knew everything.

“Amal,” she said. “I’m very disappointed in you.” This mild rebuke, the only one Nida would offer, struck Amal like a blow to the head. She didn’t pass out, not exactly, but the terror she’d just barely been holding in check rose up and cloaked the world in a haze.

When the haze lifted, Amal was sitting down and Nida was interrogating her.

“How many months?”

“One more,” Amal said numbly. “The sigheh ends in thirty-four days.”

“Not the marriage. The pregnancy.”

“Oh.” Amal reddened. “I don’t know. It’s been three or four months I guess.”

“Three, or four?”

“I don’t . . . Four. I think four.”

“Ah.” Tradition held that God gave a fetus its soul a hundred and twenty days after conception. In civil terms, this translated into abortion being legal during the first four months of pregnancy and expensive thereafter. “Does the boy know?”

“Anwar? Yes, he knows.” She almost laughed. “He thinks it’s great news.”

“And you?” said Aunt Nida. “Do you want to stay with this boy, Amal? Raise a family with him?”

“No.” No hesitation. “I want—” I want the last five months back. I want the future I had before I did this stupid, stupid thing. I wish, I wish. “No,” she repeated.

“All right then,” Nida said.

“All right?” Amal couldn’t imagine those words applying to her.

“I’ll talk to my friends in the capital, see who knows his family.” At the mention of family Amal flinched, which Nida acknowledged with a nod. “I will have to tell your mother, too, of course.”

It wasn’t her mother Amal was most concerned about. “And father?”

“Shamal has other matters to deal with, as you know. Perhaps we need not distract him with this just now. No promises,” Nida added. “We’ll see what your mother says.” Looking around the room: “OK, let’s get you packed.”

“Packed?”

“Of course. You can’t stay here, looking like that.”

“But . . . my studies . . .”

“Those will have to wait awhile.” Nida had on her game face now, the expression she wore when she plotted against the POGs. You could almost see the stratagems queuing up behind her eyes. “Don’t worry, we’ll work something out . . .”

Amal spent the next week at her aunt’s house, not going outside, not even looking out the windows. One day there was a loud banging at the front door; Amal hid upstairs and listened while Anwar argued furiously with Aunt Nida. He came back again the next day and that time Nida had her bodyguards deal with him.

A few days after that, she sat Amal down for a talk. “I’ve spoken to the boy’s family. The father is a reasonable sort. He agrees it’s best we pretend this whole thing never happened.” Then the bad news: “The boy is being much more difficult. He is afflicted with a combination of rebelliousness and romanticism. Too much time hanging around artists in Tehran I suppose.”

“Please,” Amal said, fearing the worst. “Tell me I don’t have to stay with him.”

“No. The marriage is finished. Well, soon enough. But there is something else the boy wants. Something he is willing to defy his own father to have.”

Amal, feeling a kick, dropped a hand to her stomach.

She couldn’t give birth in her aunt’s house. With Aunt Nida’s election campaign gathering steam, her opponents would be trying to dig up any dirt they could. But Nida was owed favors in some unlikely quarters; she made a call and arranged for Amal to complete her pregnancy in a place the Party of God would never look.