Every Ramadan, in neighborhoods around Baghdad, groups of men face off in the streets. But they are engaged in a battle of wits, not arms, as they play a game called "mahaibis" or "little ring." One team cloaks itself behind a large cloth and hides a ring in the fist of one of its players. Then they all sit, their clenched fists on their laps, as a member of the opposing team tries to guess which player holds the ring and which hand it's in. He (the teams are almost always all-male) has a few minutes to scan each face, looking for telltale signs of nervousness or artificial nonchalance.

The searcher moves with swagger and showmanship, slapping the hands of those he eliminates from consideration among the dozens there to confound him. If he's wrong, and dismisses someone who actually holds the ring, the hiding team gets a point. If he's right, he continues the search to the cheers of his partisans, employing bravado and confusing banter to shake his adversaries' nerves. When he finally settles on his choice, he'll grab the suspect hand in a dramatic flourish. If he's chosen correctly, his teammates exult; they then get to hide the ring and try to win points by baffling the other team's designated hunter.

America might have had a less perilous time in Iraq if its diplomats and soldiers had come armed with the kind of skills Iraqis learn from childhood in this holiday game of subterfuge. Iraqis who are good at it use their uncanny powers of observation to read opponents' faces and gestures in divining, quite literally, who is hiding something.