Mustafa woke again, from a dream of smokeless fire. He was lying on a four-poster bed with an embroidered canopy. Samir was a snoring lump on a second bed to his left, and to his right was a massive oak chest of drawers. A sign atop the chest, just legible in the faint glow of a nightlight, claimed that all three pieces of furniture were the onetime property of Pope Urban II. As for the room, it had originally been an office; looking between the bedposts Mustafa could see a windowed door, the words ASSISTANT CURATOR painted in reverse on the glass.

He sat up, remembering a helicopter ride from the airbase and a hasty meet-and-greet with a Marine Colonel Yunus who had been assigned to act as their host. Mustafa estimated he’d gotten to sleep between eleven and midnight. His watch now said 11:30, which, whether a.m. or p.m., seemed unlikely.

He got up and slipped out quietly. The hall outside the office brought him to a room painted with a mural of a deluge. Three of the walls showed only clouds and rain and wind-tossed waves; inset against the fourth was a scale model of an ark. A bearded white patriarch stood at the ark’s stern, gazing towards the center of the room, where a jagged pedestal like the tip of a drowning mountain jutted up from the blue carpet. The skeleton of a dinosaur with sickle-shaped claws on its hind feet was set on the pedestal, poised as if it were about to take a leap at the ark, but the placard at the pedestal’s base suggested it would not make it. “Velociraptor antirrhopus,” the placard read. “Extinct, 2349 B.C.”

A doorway in the wall opposite the ark led to a gallery containing the bones of many more of the Flood’s victims. The gallery had a skylight as well, and looking up Mustafa saw stars.

Wandering farther through the museum, he came upon Colonel Yunus in a room that looked like a tourism ad for Giza. “Good morning,” the colonel greeted him.

“So it is morning, then,” Mustafa said.

“Yes, about half past four. Were you able to sleep at all?”

“Some. The accommodations are quite comfortable.” Thinking of the velociraptor: “And unusual.”

The colonel smiled. “I don’t know how much you remember from our conversation last night, but this building really is a storehouse of wonders. During the initial occupation a large number of troops were housed here, in part to prevent looting. Now that the Americans have retaken control the museum is mostly unoccupied, but a few of us have been allowed to remain as unofficial caretakers until the new government has the money to reopen the place.”

“Thank you for sharing it with me.”

“You are welcome. I was just about to pray. Would you like to join me?”

“I would, thank you.”

“And your friend?”

“Samir is not observant, I’m afraid.”

“Ah. Well,” the colonel said, pointing, “there’s a washroom that way, and you’ll find some spare prayer rugs tucked behind Pharaoh’s palace.”

“You pray in here?”

“Sometimes, yes.” Smiling again: “I have a theory that a Muslim helped design this room. It turns out if you draw a straight line from the Sphinx to the part in the Red Sea over there, it corresponds almost exactly to the Qibla direction.”

“Interesting symbolism,” Mustafa said.

“Yes, there’s a lot of that in the Green Zone. It’s a weird place.”

Amal woke among lionesses.

At last night’s meeting with the colonel she’d been sufficiently alert to understand that Mustafa and Samir were being given VIP accommodations while she was being relegated to women’s quarters, which annoyed her until she realized which women she’d be bunking with.

The Women’s Combat Support Unit, aka the Lionesses, had been formed in 2007 as part of the broader counterinsurgency strategy known as the Surge. In addition to their reluctance to show gratitude, most Americans had a deep-seated cultural aversion to having their homes ransacked, but research had found that a feminine presence could help moderate this. Lionesses were assigned in pairs to accompany Marines on patrol in the Red Zone. When a house was searched for weapons or insurgents, it was the Lionesses who interviewed the occupants, preserving the honor of the women and keeping the men calm; they could often get answers where a male interrogator would be met by stony silence, or violence. The Red Zone being the Red Zone, violence did still sometimes occur, but as their nickname implied, Lionesses could also fight, and with a ferocity that took insurgents by surprise.

They lived along with the Marine garrison troops in the former residential and business complex adjacent to the Arabian embassy. Most of the male Marines occupied apartments in the Watergate East and South buildings; the Lionesses were housed on the top two floors of the Watergate Hotel, which had been turned into a high-security women’s dorm.

It was like college, but with more guns. Amal shared a room with a girl from Nablus named Zinat. Barely nineteen, Zinat had followed her six brothers into the military in order to earn a scholarship and pursue an engineering degree. When Amal asked what sort of engineering she was interested in, Zinat said, “Cars. Fast cars.”

Zinat kept a picture of her family taped above her bunk. A second photo showed Zinat and several other Lionesses gathered around the Persian war correspondent Christiane Amanpour, who’d done a special report on the women’s unit earlier this year. Zinat stood to Amanpour’s right, cradling a .50-caliber sniper rifle that was almost as big as she was. “Do you bring this weapon on patrol?” Amal asked.

“No, that was just for the photo,” Zinat said, sounding a bit wistful. “We were at the combat range and I talked the gunnery sergeant into letting me pose with it . . . If you’d like, I could probably take you over there for some practice shooting.” She raised an eyebrow. “They’ve got flamethrowers, too.”

“That sounds like fun,” Amal said, less interested in flamethrowers than in locating Salim. But perhaps this girl could help her with that. As for what she would do once she actually found her son . . . Well, Amal was still working on that. One step at a time.

Reveille for the troops was a muezzin’s call piped through the Watergate intercom system. After washing up, Amal followed Zinat to the top-floor lounge that served as the women’s prayer room. Attendance at prayer was voluntary, but it looked as though most of the Lionesses, save the few who were Christians or Jews, were there. The majority were Zinat’s age, but among them were a number of older career Marines.

The Lionesses’ commander was a fifty-two-year-old from Yemen named Umm Husam, who also served as the women’s prayer leader. As the last of her charges entered the room, she turned to face the northeast wall and raised her hands beside her head.

“God is great,” Umm Husam began.

The main banquet room in the Watergate Hotel was now a Marine chow hall. A portion of the seating area had been reserved for the Lionesses, and during Christiane Amanpour’s visit that section of the hall had been cordoned off by folding screens. Today, with no reporters present, the screens had been exchanged for orange traffic cones, and even these were largely ignored, the women and men fraternizing openly with only an occasional disapproving glance from Umm Husam.

At a table just on the men’s side of the divide, Mustafa, Samir, and Amal took breakfast with Colonel Yunus, Zinat, and two male Marines. Mustafa asked a question about the African-American civilians working the serving line; like the iconic homeowner in Amal’s pamphlet, they were all wearing tri-cornered hats.

“The tricorne is a symbol of the Minutemen,” Colonel Yunus explained. “Most of our support staff are former National Guard. We give them jobs to discourage them from taking up arms against us. The hats are a touchy subject—insurgents like to wear them, too—but we’re trying to win hearts and minds so we don’t make a fuss about it.”

“What kind of Christians are they?” Mustafa asked next. “My reading suggested that black Americans are more often Protestant than Catholic, but it didn’t say what denominations they favor.”

“I’m afraid I know nothing about Protestant denominations,” Colonel Yunus said. “But these men aren’t all Christian. Some of them are Muslim.”

“Muslim?” said Samir.

“Yes. Islam is still a minority faith in America, but it has made inroads, particularly among the marginalized.”

“Which sect of Islam?” Mustafa wondered. “Sunni or Shia?”

The colonel seemed disappointed by the question. “Surely that’s of no consequence. Islam is Islam.”

“I agree,” said Mustafa, “but still I’m curious.”

The colonel shrugged. “If it were considered polite to inquire, I imagine most would answer Sunni.”

“That’s interesting,” Amal said, guessing at Mustafa’s train of thought. “If they’re Sunni Muslims, that would make them eligible for membership in Al Qaeda, wouldn’t it?”

“Al Qaeda!” Zinat snorted laughter. “What fantasy is this?”

Samir looked alarmed. “You really think Bin Laden would recruit Americans?”

“If I might change the subject a moment,” Colonel Yunus said, clearly uncomfortable with this turn in the conversation. “I’d like to talk a bit about your mission here . . .”

“Of course,” said Mustafa.

“I’ve discussed the matter in some depth with Lieutenant Fahd.” The colonel indicated one of the other Marines at the table. “The address you are interested in visiting is about thirty kilometers from here. There are insurgents in the vicinity—they’ve been quiet lately, but we know they are still there, and if we try to secure the area in advance it might just encourage them to mount an assault. Lieutenant Fahd proposes instead that we dispatch you with a light reconnaissance force—four Humvees, plus air support—and try to get you in and out before the insurgents can react. Do you know how much time you’ll need on site?”

“It depends what we find there,” Mustafa said. “Obviously we won’t stay any longer than necessary.”

“Very well,” Colonel Yunus said. “I’ll reserve some additional forces in case it does become necessary to secure the area—or in case there’s trouble. This will take another twenty-four hours to arrange. I suggest you spend today resting, and be ready to leave tomorrow after breakfast.”

“Thank you. That will be fine.”

“If you’d like some diversion, I can have one of my men give you a tour of the Green Zone. Or if you don’t mind waiting while I take care of a few matters, I can show you around myself.”

“Sir,” Zinat said. “Amal has expressed interest in visiting Potomac Park. With your permission I’d be happy to take her.”

“The combat range?” The colonel gave Amal a quizzical look, but then shrugged. “Of course . . . If that’s what you wish.”

He said something else but Amal didn’t hear it. She was staring at the chow line, where the ghost of her father was bantering with a black man in a tri-cornered hat.

The ghost was not Shamal as she had known him. This was the young Shamal, a newly minted BU grad working off his ROTC scholarship, still a year or two away from meeting the ambitious woman from Maysan Province who would become his wife. The uniform was wrong—he’d been an Army cadet, not a Marine—but other than that he might have stepped right from the family photo album, so uncanny was the resemblance. Likewise his mannerisms—the way he stood, the way he tilted his head to listen, the easy way he laughed, which would become less easy as time and Saddam wore him down—were all just as Amal remembered.

Zinat saw the ghost too. While Amal sat motionless, fearful of dispelling this vision with a careless gesture, the Lioness stood up, cupped her hands to her mouth, and called out: “Hey! Salim! Over here!”

“Target right!”

This Minuteman was a white American, with big teeth and a big nose, angry eyes, and slashing eyebrows beneath a tricorne that looked a size too small for him. Like the restaurant in whose window he had so suddenly appeared—a painted stage flat adorned with golden arches—he was also two-dimensional. And he was armed with a revolver, which made him a bad guy: Amal pulled the trigger on her rifle and put three bullet holes in a tight grouping between his eyes. The Minuteman continued to glare at her for another full second before succumbing to his wound and dropping out of sight.

A chime sounded and Amal walked another ten paces down “Main Street”—actually an indoor lane lined with fake buildings. Her next target swung out sideways from behind a building marked KRISPY KREME. He had the same exact face as the Minuteman, but instead of a tricorne he wore a jersey with the word REDSKINS on it. “Target left!” Amal said. But the man was holding a soda cup, and after double-checking that the straw wasn’t really a lit fuse, she held her fire. After three seconds, the man ducked back into cover.

The rules of the game were simple. There were four kinds of targets—Minuteman, sports fan, woman, child—each holding one of four objects—revolver, pipe bomb, daisy, or soda cup. The goal was to shoot only those targets holding weapons. Hit three unarmed adults or one unarmed child, and you lost. Miss even one target holding a gun, and you lost. Miss a target holding a pipe bomb, and everyone on the shooting course lost.

Two of the course’s four lanes were down for maintenance, so Zinat sat out while Amal and Salim played. To keep from shooting each other, they advanced side-by-side and announced the appearance of each new target before deciding whether to pull the trigger.

“Target left!” Amal called out again, as a woman in a cocktail dress appeared in one of the windows of the Krispy Kreme. The woman was holding a daisy, but Salim had just called a target of his own and was firing, so Amal imagined she saw a revolver cylinder and put a three-round burst in the woman’s ample bosom. A buzzer sounded and an X appeared on the scoreboard at the end of Amal’s lane. It was her second strike.

“Damn it,” Amal said.

“You’re doing fine,” Salim told her. “Stay cool, we’re almost at the end.”

There were only two buildings left in Amal’s lane, a house and a hospital. She watched the windows, and got two Minutemen in quick succession, one—“Target right!”—with a revolver, whom she killed, the other—“Target left!”—with a daisy, whom she (just barely) let live. In his lane, Salim shot a Redskins fan with a pipe bomb, and then a final chime sounded and the voice of the gunnery sergeant said, “Course completed. Please clear your weapons.”

Amal removed the magazine from her rifle and emptied the chamber, calling out “Clear!” once this was done. Salim called out “Clear!” as well and a long buzzer sounded, indicating that the course was, for the moment, safe.

“You did well for a first-timer,” Salim said as they walked back down Main Street.

“I don’t think those two poor innocents I shot would agree with you,” Amal said. But she was pleased with her performance. Earlier at the sniper-rifle range she’d been a bundle of nerves, barely able to focus on the target.

She was beginning to get used to him. Thank God he didn’t sound like her father. The timbre of his voice was more like Anwar’s, and while Anwar’s voice in young Shamal’s mouth was unnerving in its own way, at least she didn’t feel as though she were talking to the dead.

Zinat had been joined by another Lioness. “Do you mind if we have a go?” Zinat asked, nodding at the course.

“Please,” said Amal. She and Salim turned in their weapons, and then, at Amal’s suggestion, stepped outside to have a smoke.

Before the invasion, East Potomac Park had been LBJ’s private golf course, and you could still get in nine holes down by Hains Point. But the Marines, on the pretext of securing the Tidal Basin, had turned the upper part of the peninsula into a carnival of violence. East of the blockhouse that contained the indoor target range was a great earthen berm, erected around the sniper’s range to stop stray rounds from traveling into Southwest D.C. To the north was the grenade toss, and to the right of that in a concrete pen, handheld sprayers belched fire at asbestos-clad mannequins. West was the Potomac, with Marines and other Green Zone refugees sunning themselves on the riverbank, while patrolling gunboats kept watch for waterborne suicide bombers.

Salim bent close to light Amal’s cigarette. She glimpsed her father’s ghost again and shivered.

“So where did you learn to shoot?” Salim asked.

“Beirut.”

He was surprised. “You’re Lebanese?”

“Baghdadi,” Amal said. “But I went to college at U of L.”

“Huh! Me too!”

She played it coy: “Really? Forgive me, you don’t look old enough to be a graduate.”

“Ah, I’m not—I was only enrolled for about a week.” He looked around. “I didn’t want to miss this.”

“Doing your part for the War on Terror,” Amal said. “Your parents must be very proud.”

He frowned, and she worried she’d been too forward. But then he said: “My dad, you know, he’s not entirely happy with me . . .”

“Oh?”

“He’s a conservative,” Salim explained, loyalty and resentment warring on his face for a moment. “He loves me, but he doesn’t want me to take any risks.”

“And your mother? What does she think?”

This time there was no conflict: He just looked guilty. “She’s scared for me. In her last letter . . .” He trailed off, took a drag on his cigarette. “But I’ve promised her I’ll be OK.”

“Well then,” Amal said, eyeing one of the gunboats on the river. “As long as you promised.”

He laughed. “It’s only a seven-month deployment! In no time I’ll be home again, and bored . . . So what’s it like to work for Homeland Security?”

“Exciting,” she said. “More exciting than I expected, actually. And before this I worked for the Bureau, which was also pretty cool. You get to chase bank robbers. Of course,” Amal added, “for either job you need to finish college.”

“Yeah, I know,” Salim said. “I promised my mother I’d do that, too.”

They tossed their cigarette butts and went back inside the target range, where Zinat and her friend had just finished. “What’s wrong?” Salim asked, seeing their faces. “Don’t tell me you lost!”

“I didn’t,” Zinat said. “But Tamara shot a kid with a soda cup.”

“A fat American child,” Tamara sniffed, handing her rifle back to the gunnery sergeant.

“It’s well-known that soda’s no good for your health,” Salim offered.

“Speaking of unhealthy sweets,” said Amal, “what is that about?” She pointed to a dish of hard candies that sat on the counter in front of the gun storage area. The candy dish, which had been fashioned from a piece of a mortar shell casing, had a steel tab sticking up from its center, to which a crude skull and crossbones had been welded. Just in case this wasn’t clear enough, a little cardboard sign had been taped beneath the skull, reading FORBIDDEN! Amal had noticed a similar candy dish at the sniper range, although that one had contained toffees.

“That,” said the gunnery sergeant, “is an object lesson about the importance of following rules.”

“And of the long-term effects of testosterone on one’s sense of humor,” Zinat added. The gunny scowled at her, but she smiled back sweetly until he turned away.

“They’re not really poisoned, though,” Amal said.

“Oh yes,” Salim said, “with cyanide.” He explained: “There’s a Christian holiday here, called Halloween—the Eve of the Saints—where it’s traditional to give away candy to strangers. Last year, the chow hall got an anonymous gift of Halloween candies.”

“Did anyone die?”

“No Marines did. There was a stray dog that hung around behind the Watergate kitchens, begging for scraps. One of the cooks gave it a sweet, and that’s how they found out about the poison. The candies were supposed to be destroyed, but as you can see, some were kept as souvenirs. And as good luck charms, of course.”

“Good luck charms,” Amal said. “Because no one died.”

“Except the dog,” Salim said. Smiling, he took one of the candies from the dish and gave it to her. “Here. To keep you safe while you’re in America.”

Amal stared at the candy, which was wrapped in a twist of green cellophane. “Thanks,” she said. “I think.”

“Just don’t forget and eat it by mistake,” he told her.

Samir spent the morning trying to hide from Al Qaeda.

Just before leaving Baghdad, he’d gotten a message from Idris saying that a Qaeda agent would contact him in America with instructions. Samir had no idea what he was going to be ordered to do, but he assumed that it would be something dangerous, possibly fatal, almost certainly illegal, and likely a betrayal of both his country and his friends.

He also knew that he couldn’t say no. But during the night a desperate strategy had occurred to him: If he couldn’t refuse the agent’s orders, perhaps he could avoid receiving them. The Green Zone was big enough that it ought to be easy to make himself scarce for the day. In the evening he’d have to return to the Smithsonian, but that was a pretty big place too; maybe he could sleep in a closet, or find a diorama of an empty tomb to curl up in.

All he had to do was make it through the next twenty-four hours. Tomorrow he’d be out in the countryside, and God willing if the insurgents didn’t get him by tomorrow night he’d be on a plane bound for home. Then when Idris asked, “Did you do what my man told you to?” he could say honestly, “What man?”

And Idris would accept that answer. Sure . . . But Samir would worry about that later.

Of more immediate concern was the discovery that it wasn’t just his own countrymen he needed to steer clear of. As he sat with Mustafa in the Watergate’s lobby, waiting for Colonel Yunus to finish up his business, Samir regarded each new black or Arab face that came into view with a mixture of fear and suspicion. When a group of Somali Marines burst through the lobby doors in a cacophony of laughter, he nearly jumped out of his chair.

Mustafa lowered the Washington Post he’d been perusing. “Too much coffee at breakfast, Samir?”

“I’m fine,” Samir replied. His attention shifted to a coal-skinned maintenance man who was up on a ladder replacing some bulbs on the lobby chandelier. To a casual observer he would have seemed completely absorbed by this task, but because he wore a white knit prayer cap, Samir became convinced that the guy was casting sideways glances at him.

“You know what,” Samir said, “I think I’m going to skip the tour of the White House . . .”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I’m exhausted, so I think I’ll just hike back to the museum and take a nap.”

“You should at least let the colonel get you a ride,” Mustafa said. “It’s a long walk.”

“Nah, the fresh air will be good for me.”

The maintenance man, done changing bulbs, was coming down the ladder now. Samir stood up quickly, ignoring Mustafa’s perplexed look, and bolted for the nearest exit.

Passing through a set of double doors he found himself in the adjoining office building at the intersection of three hallways. A group of Arab Marines approached along the left-hand passage, and two black men in suits were having a conversation in the hallway straight ahead; to his right he saw only a Hispanic woman vacuuming the carpet. Samir went right, his heart skipping a beat when the woman greeted him with a hearty, “Peace be unto you!”

Two minutes and several multicultural encounters later he was out on the sidewalk. A bus idled beside a sign that read FREE SHUTTLE in both Arabic and English. Samir boarded, not bothering to ask where the bus was headed, and slouched across two seats so that no one could sit next to him.

The doors closed. Just as the bus started moving, someone came running up alongside of it, banging furiously for admittance. Samir tensed, but when the bus driver opened the doors again, the latecomer turned out to be a white man with a silver cross pinned to his lapel.

The bus proceeded along its route, the driver calling out stops: State Department, Department of the Interior, various other agencies of the new American government, some of them still more hoped-for than real. Samir stared dully at the passing scenery while the bus was in motion. When new passengers got on, he lowered his eyelids and pretended to doze. When the driver announced “White House!” Samir slumped down below the level of the windows and remained that way until the executive mansion was far behind him.

He got off at the Hoover Building stop. The bus driver didn’t say what government agency was headquartered there, but from the look of the place—a boxy, concrete structure hinting at kilometers of filing cabinets—Samir assumed it was something stodgy and ultrabureaucratic, the Department of Weights and Measures, maybe. He thought about sneaking inside and finding an empty office to hole up in.

Instead he picked a random direction and started walking. The sun rose higher in the sky; the morning got hot, and humid. Samir stopped to take a drink at a water fountain. He noticed a Christian church across the street. Its front doors were propped open, and a sign proclaimed in multiple languages, ALL SOULS WELCOME.

The church’s interior was cool and dim. There was no service in progress, and despite the open invitation the place was almost deserted. As Samir sat in a pew near the back, he could see only one other person, a gray-haired Chinese woman. Her head was bowed, and at first he thought she was praying, but then he heard her snores.

He looked up at the altar and was relieved to see that it was decorated with a plain cross rather than a crucifix. The Christian habit of depicting the prophet Jesus’s tortured body was objectionable on a number of levels, and while Samir wasn’t personally offended by the practice, he did think it was creepy. The empty cross, however much it had come to be associated with terrorism in recent years, seemed far more civilized.

The hairs on Samir’s neck prickled as someone slid into the pew behind him. He told himself to stay calm. But then a hand gripped the back of his pew and a voice said in Arabic, “Aren’t you one of Lut’s friends?” which was the code phrase Idris had told him to be alert for.

Samir let out a sigh of despair. He turned around. Sitting behind him was the white Christian from the bus. The silver cross on his lapel—definitely a symbol of terror in this context—shined faintly in the churchlight.

“You?” Samir said. “You’re Qa—”

“Shut up,” said the Qaeda man. “Follow me outside.”

There was a pocket park adjacent to the church. Something about the way it was laid out—the configuration of the benches, perhaps—reminded Samir of a park in Kadhimiyah where, not long ago, two gay men caught in a tryst had been beaten by a mob.

The Qaeda agent led him behind a hedge at the back of the park, then rounded on him with his fist clenched. “Take this!”

Samir raised his arms to ward off the blow. “Wait! Wait!”

“I said take this!” The Qaeda agent slapped a cell phone into one of his upraised palms. Samir fumbled and nearly dropped it, then held it out in front of himself as though it were contaminated.

“What . . . What’s this for?”

“It’s for tomorrow. When you go out on patrol with the Marines, you’re going to bring it with you.”

Samir was shaking his head even before he thought of an argument: “I’m not supposed to have a phone with me. They told us—it’s a security risk.”

“Never mind the rules,” the Qaeda agent said. “The Humvee you’ll be riding in will probably be equipped with a broad-spectrum radio jammer, so an ordinary cell phone wouldn’t work anyway. This one’s been modified to transmit on an unblocked military frequency.”

Samir kept shaking his head. “You want me to make a call from a vehicle full of soldiers?”

“The speed dial on this phone is very simple. You don’t even need to take it out of your pocket, just leave it turned on, and then when you get the signal push two buttons. I’ll show you.”

“What signal?”

“There’ll be a billboard by the side of the road with a white cross painted on it. As soon as you pass the billboard, you’ll hit the speed dial and let it ring.”

“And what happens then?” Samir asked.

The Qaeda man showed him a picture of Malik and Jibril. This was not the same photo Samir kept in his wallet. It was a photo he’d never seen before, the boys playing in their bedroom in their new home in Basra. The picture taker, whoever he was, had been standing outside the bedroom window, at night, looking in.

“What happens then?” the Qaeda man said. “Your sons get to grow up, that’s what happens then.”

The White House was something of a letdown. Mustafa would have liked to meet the new American president, about whom he’d heard good things, but a scheduling conflict made that impossible. Absent its chief occupant, the building was just another palace, albeit more tasteful than the Hussein residence. The rose garden was pretty.

From the White House they took a driving tour of some of the Zone’s other sights, eventually circling back to the center of the Mall, where they proceeded on foot to the base of the Washington Monument. Colonel Yunus drew Mustafa’s attention to a series of pockmarks in the obelisk’s north face. These were, he explained, the result of insurgent mortar strikes, the Monument having become a target after rumors spread that Boulos al Darir was planning to use it as the gnomon for a giant Islamic prayer clock.

“False rumors?” Mustafa asked.

“Rumors,” said Colonel Yunus. “Speaking of prayer, it’s almost noon. Shall we stop back at the museum before lunch?”

They walked east along the Mall. The colonel pointed to a castle-like building which he said was another branch of the Smithsonian, dedicated to Christendom’s wars. “LBJ’s misadventures feature prominently, but there’s also quite a lot about the original crusades. It’s rather interesting to see them portrayed from the antagonists’ perspective.”

“Is the crusaders’ wing where my guest bed came from?”

“Yes.” The colonel smiled. “I rather doubt it belonged to Pope Urban, though.”

Ahead in the distance they could see the half-completed dome of the new Capitol Building. A low-flying cloud passing behind it made the dome seem momentarily whole. Mustafa’s inner ear went crazy. He stumbled and would have fallen if the colonel hadn’t caught him.

“Careful,” Colonel Yunus said. “You have dizzy spells?”

“I do get vertigo sometimes,” Mustafa told him. “But I think this is just jet lag.”

“Chronic vertigo is common here. It’s a symptom of what the doctors call Gulf Syndrome.”

“Gulf Syndrome? Like the Gulf War?”

“Yes, but also gulf in the sense of a void, a gap between the way things are and the way instinct says they should be. The sense of dislocation is difficult to describe exactly, but once you’ve felt it—”

“I have felt it,” Mustafa said. “I think my father has, too.”

The colonel nodded. “I’d heard that there were cases of the Syndrome back in Arabia. Here though it’s much more pervasive. Almost everyone experiences it to some degree.”

“What do you do for it?”

“Valium helps, supposedly. Also certain antihistamines. For myself I prefer a more natural remedy.”

“And what is that?”

“Devotion to God, five times a day,” the colonel said. “Not quite as potent as benzodiazepine, perhaps, but it has other benefits.”

Mustafa snuck another look at the Capitol, and this time when his balance wavered, he knew it wasn’t jet lag. Forcibly shifting his attention, he said: “It really is different here, isn’t it? So many trees, Gaddafi would be jealous.” Glancing up at the sun: “Even the summer heat feels different.”

“I’ll tell you something funny, it’s not the climate or the country I find alien, it’s the war.” The colonel shook his head. “I really should be used to it by now. This is my fifth tour of duty. I’ve been here so long, when I think about Arabia, it’s not just like another lifetime, it’s like I was never there at all.”

“Maybe you should take a leave,” Mustafa suggested. “Go back home, get reacquainted with the place.”

“No, I’m here for the duration, now . . .” A tremor went through him that he did not seem to notice. “You know, I have these dreams sometimes, very vivid, you’ll probably get them too if you stay here long enough.”

“Dreams about what?”

“About being an American citizen . . . This one dream in particular, I have it over and over. I dream that I’m a civilian only pretending to be a soldier. It’s outdoors in a big field, at a place called Manassas. I’m there with other Americans, professionals mostly—doctors, lawyers, defense contractors . . . We dress in these costume uniforms, some blue, some gray, and stage mock battles, ‘fight’ for freedom. Then at the end of the day we go to a tavern and drink beer—mine is nonalcoholic. And then I get in my car and drive back to Alexandria . . .”

“A long drive,” Mustafa said.

The colonel laughed. “Alexandria, Virginia, not Egypt . . . It’s right across the river, just south of here. In the dream I have a house there, a big yellow house by the water. I live there with my wife and four children. It’s nice . . . And then I wake up and I’m here in the house of war, not a citizen but an invader. And my head spins . . . But prayer helps.”

They’d reached the museum. A drowned tyrannosaur welcomed them back.

The colonel asked: “Have you been to Mecca, Mustafa?”

“You mean on hajj? Yes,” Mustafa said. “My wife Fadwa insisted on it . . . What about you?”

“I want to go,” the colonel said. “When I am done here . . . I’ve spoken to other Marines who’ve gone, and they all seem very grounded, in a way I would like to be.”

“Grounded?”

“At peace,” the colonel said. “Mecca is peace.”

“What about Alexandria?” asked Mustafa. “Have you ever gone across the river to look for your dream house?”

“No. That would not be wise.”

“Really? I would be tempted.”

“I am tempted,” the colonel said. “But it’s the Red Zone. Not a good place to go chasing after dreams. You should remember that on your foray tomorrow.”

“You’re not coming with us, then?”

“No, I have business here. But I’ll ask God to look out for you.” Then he smiled, for even as he spoke these words they entered a hall decorated with another mural, showing the prophet Daniel standing untouched in the den of the lions.

“Thank you,” Mustafa said, looking from Daniel’s calm expression to the frustrated snarls of the beasts. “I would appreciate that.”