When the Apricots Bloom

Ally goes to the hospital and asks to meet with a nurse who worked there at the same time as her mother, knowing that the fact of her mother’s American background would generate suspicion. Ally drifts into the memory of her mother’s photograph and indulges in the delusion that her real mother, dying of cancer, was an imposter. Ally comes back to reality when a nurse named Mrs. al-Deeb asks her who she is looking for. Strategically invoking Iraq’s cultural appreciation for writers, Ally tells Mrs. al-Deeb that she is writing a book and flatters her by praising both Iraq and Iraqi medicine in the 1960s and 1970s. When Mrs. al-Deeb sees Ally’s photos of nurses from that time, however, she recognizes the nurse that Ally is looking for and refuses to provide any further information.

Huda picks Ally up later that night in Abdul Amir’s stead, explaining that her husband is not feeling well. Ally reveals that she went to the hospital to find information on her mother but avoids saying that she is American. Huda tells Ally that her father died when she was young, and the two women bond over their shared losses. Ally asks about the state of Iraq before Saddam’s regime, noting a statue of