The last, and lengthiest, of the items in the packet was an August 2001 report by the Central Intelligence Agency’s Bin Laden Issue Station titled METHODS AND GOALS OF AL QAEDA. David Koresh had affixed a Post-it note to the cover reading, “Not my CIA! . . . But a wicked prince in one world is a wicked prince in all worlds.” Mustafa turned to the first page and began to make some notes of his own.

At the Azores refueling stop, the harshly lit tarmac had the bleak look of a gas station after midnight. No one got on or off the plane. Mustafa used the lavatory in the passenger cabin, then went back to the cargo bay to check on how the interrogation was coming. He stayed out of sight at the top of the stairs and listened to the high whining voice of Donald Rumsfeld. The man’s accent was almost impenetrable; the only phrase Mustafa could make out was “majahil marufah”—“known unknowns”—which made no sense to him. But then Amal asked a follow-up question, her confident tone making it clear that she understood. Sensing he could only cause trouble by interrupting, Mustafa returned to his seat.

As the cargolifter taxied back onto the runway, he opened his wallet and took out the 250-dinar note. He studied Saddam’s smiling face and saw, in his mind’s eye, a stoppered brass bottle.

Known unknowns, Mustafa thought.

The sun reappeared as the cargolifter approached the North African coast. Mustafa was dozing, but the pink light reflecting off the seatback in front of him invaded his sleep.

In the dream, he was crossing the Sahara on foot. He had traveled a long way over a sea of sand dunes, but now the sea ended, giving way to a rocky plain that was pockmarked with blast craters. He knew without being told that this was Site Yarbu, the testing ground where the first atom bomb had been detonated, and where the military had continued setting off larger and more powerful devices throughout the 1950s and ’60s. Located in a remote part of southern Algeria, Yarbu was named for the hopping desert rodents that were, according to the government propaganda of the day, the only living things endangered by the bomb tests. Of course that hadn’t been true: Berber nomads occupied the fallout zone as well, as did a number of former French soldiers who’d remained in the Maghreb after the war. Comedians sometimes joked about this latter group, the gerboises françaises, Legionnaires who glowed in the dark.

Mustafa walked to the lip of one of the blast craters and looked down into it. It was surprisingly deep, so deep that its bottom was hidden in shadow. He wondered what kept it from filling up with sand, and in answer a wind devil started on the crater’s far rim, vacuuming up loose grit as it moved. In the waking world, the cargolifter banked to change course and Mustafa’s lolling head turned away from the window; in the dream, the wind devil circled the crater, gaining size and substance until it blotted out the sun.

Then Mustafa was walking again, through a haze of blowing sand. All about him was formlessness and void, but soon enough the sand began to condense into the trunks and crowns of eucalypti. He passed a sign: REALITY REORGANIZATION TEST PLOT #99.

In a clearing beyond the trees lay a hybrid shrine, an amalgam of Cairo’s Nasser Memorial and one of the monuments Mustafa had visited on his tour of the Green Zone. Shallow steps mounted to a platform on which burned a guttering Flame of Unity. Behind this, a half-circle of fluted marble columns supported a curved slab chiseled with the words I TREMBLE FOR MY COUNTRY WHEN I REFLECT THAT GOD IS JUST.

Another wind devil started, seizing hold of the Unity Flame and drawing it up into a twisting pillar of blue smokeless fire. Then the fire vanished, and in its place stood a figure in a white tunic whom Mustafa recognized from another dream.

“Hello again,” the jinn greeted him. “Have you sorted out your time zones yet?”

Mustafa held up the photo of the dig site. “Al Hillah,” he said. “I found your bottle.”

“Not mine,” said the jinn. “It belonged to a prince of Babylon. So did I, for a time.”

Mustafa heard a hiss of windblown sand and turned to find the eucalyptus forest transformed into a mighty metropolis, its skyline dominated by twin towers. New York, Mustafa thought, but already a second transformation had begun, changes cascading through the cityscape, turning it into Baghdad. And even though he watched it happen, once the transformation was complete and the Tigris and Euphrates towers were standing there so familiar, it was hard to imagine the scene had ever been different.

“Did I do this?” Mustafa said. “Was this my wish?”

The jinn seemed to ponder the question. “To remake the whole world would be an act of extraordinary pride. Does that sound like you?”

Mustafa looked at the photograph in his hand. “No,” he said, surprised by his own answer. “No, it sounds like something an American would do . . .”

“I must have a touch of American in me as well then,” the jinn said smiling. “To grant such a request. Ah, but I do love a challenge . . . And I was most grateful to be released from my confinement.”

“What did I wish for, then? If not this . . .”

“Smaller things,” the jinn said. “Harder things. Things I could not give you, grateful though I was.” He gestured towards the cityscape, and Mustafa saw, through windows that opened in the sides of the towers, Fadwa in two aspects. She was riding a crowded subway train; she was also, in a parallel reality, home alone, praying for the return of her husband, who had walked out after their latest argument. Then the planes flew in over Baghdad, and Fadwa looked up, and looked up, and was no more.

“I could not bring her back to you,” the jinn told Mustafa, whose cheeks were wet now with tears. “I tried, but God wouldn’t permit it. Not her. Considering some of those He did allow back, perhaps that’s a good sign . . .”

“And her misery?” Mustafa said. “If you could not spare Fadwa’s life, could you not at least have done something about that?”

The jinn didn’t answer.

“And Noor?”

“Ah, Noor,” the jinn said, looking embarrassed. “A misguided attempt at consolation. I thought she would at least make you happier. But it appears I miscalculated.”

“I would say so,” Mustafa agreed. “You should not have given me a second wife. You should have given Fadwa a better husband.”

“That would not have been her wish,” the jinn said, “and I could not have granted it anyway. Look again at the city.”

Mustafa looked. The skyline appeared to rush towards him, and the towers and skyscrapers which seemed so solid from a distance were revealed to be composed of tiny, discrete particles whirling through empty space.

“Sand,” the jinn said. “So much of this world, sand, and easily reshaped, God willing. But not everything.”

The city receded again. Mustafa, feeling as though he were reciting a line in a play, said: “Human beings from clay.”

“Some parts softer than others,” said the jinn. He laid a hand against his own skull, beside the seat of memory. “Pliable enough with the right touch. But the characters of men and women—their strengths and weaknesses, their passions and fears, the sins and vices they are prone to—those are made of iron, and steel, and brass. Those I cannot alter. Oh, perhaps a detail here and there . . . But at your core, you are who you are. I cannot make you someone else.”

“Well,” Mustafa said, fresh tears starting. “Well, that’s wonderful then.”

“You should not weep,” the jinn said. “I can’t make you a better person, but God, who gave you both life and free will, can help you try to become one. Try honestly, and when you stumble, ask His forgiveness and try again.”

“If only it were that easy,” Mustafa said.

“It isn’t easy. It is a struggle. But struggle is better than self-pity. You do not honor Fadwa by continuing to dwell on what cannot be undone. You only distract yourself from the good you still can do—and the evil you may still prevent. You are a sinner, Mustafa al Baghdadi, but you are not the only sinner. You are surely not the worst.”