I WAS CONCEIVED IN Karrada but born high over the elbow of Cape Cod. The only doctor on board was my father, a hematologist-oncologist whose last delivery had been at Baghdad Medical School, in 1959. To sterilize the umbilical scissors, he’d used a slug of flask whiskey. To get me breathing, he’d slapped the soles of my feet. Alhamdulillah! cried one of the stewardesses, upon seeing that I was a boy. May he be one of seven!

At this point in the story, my mother will usually roll her eyes. For many years, I took this as disdain for the male favoritism of her homeland, if not merely relief at having been spared five additional children, whatever the gender. Then my brother, who was nine at the time, suggested a different theory: She rolls her eyes because those stewardesses spent the entire flight leaning over her to light Baba’s cigarettes. In Sami’s version, the whiskey belonged to our father, too.

As to the question of my nationality, immigration officials scratched their heads for three weeks. Both of my parents were born in Baghdad. (So was Sami, on the same day as Qusay Hussein.) The plane in question belonged to Iraqi Airways, and, in the United Nations’ opinion, an in-flight birth was to be considered a birth in the aircraft’s registered country. On the other hand, we were moving to America at a relatively sympathetic time, and even today a baby born in American airspace is entitled to American citizenship, no matter who owns the vehicle. In the end, I was granted both: two passports with two colors and three languages between them, although my Arabic is barely serviceable and I didn’t learn a word of Kurdish until I was almost twenty-nine.

So: two passports, two nationalities, no native soil. I once heard that, perhaps as compensation for their rootlessness, babies born on planes are granted free flights on the parturitive airline for life. And it’s a winsome idea: the stork that delivers you remains yours to ride here and there and everywhere, until it’s time for you to return to the great salt marsh in the sky. But, as far as I know, I was never offered such a bonus. Not that it would have done me much good. Initially, we did all our sneaking back on the ground, via Amman. Then Iraq invaded Kuwait and all American passport holders were grounded from riding Iraqi storks for what would amount to thirteen years.