On a recent afternoon, I was driving across Baghdad, resigned to the whims of my city’s traffic. An old woman in the backseat of the car beside mine sat with her lips sealed, her face catching the afternoon sun with the patient gravity of a pieta. Her gaze had settled on a child, lonesome and thin, working the edge of a roadside garbage dump. In a beige tracksuit, he was nearly invisible, almost dissolving into the place. He picked up a gunny sack, flipped it upside down, and mumbled something.