I was a natural flirt and got a lot of attention from boys, but I never had a real boyfriend like some of my friends. They would meet their boyfriends in secret, just to hold hands in the park. We thought we were bold and daring, but the most any of us did was kiss a boy. I believed what my world taught—that God intended one man for me, and my life would begin when I found him. My body would turn to fire at the thought of being married and making babies, just like the actors in the porn film.

I was seventeen when I first met Mhammad. He was twenty-five. He lived in the homeland but was in Kuwait visiting his aunt, Um Naseem, our neighbor one floor up. We had all seen him on the news when he was released from an Israeli prison a month earlier, and my friends were envious that he was now living in our building.

“Is he as handsome as he looks on TV?” one asked. I hadn’t seen him in person yet, but I thought he looked ordinary and old on TV.

“I hear he’s looking for a wife after being in prison for seven years,” another said.

“Nahr, can we hang out at your house?” asked a third.

“What’s wrong with you? Did the world run out of boys our own age?” I shooed them away.

They looked at me as if I were crazy.

Mhammad Jalal AbuJabal was a bona fide hero, a guerrilla fighter responsible for resistance operations. My friends said he was captured after killing two Zionist soldiers single-handedly after they killed two of his friends, martyrs, God rest their souls.

“He killed one of them with a knife, then took his gun and shot the other one,” they explained.

“So?”

“He’s not a boy. He’s a man. A famous freedom fighter,” Sabah said, sucking through her teeth, mocking my ignorance. I hated when she did that, especially in front of the other girls.

Sabah lived in the building next to ours, and we had known each other as long as I could remember. Ours was a friendship forged from rivalry and jealousy as much as from love and familiarity. We knew each other’s secrets, had history, and stuck up for each other against outsiders, but we consistently tried to outdo each other and sometimes competed for the attention of the same boys.

“He did some badass stuff. Since you don’t care about what happens to Palestine, I guess it doesn’t matter to you. But most of us appreciate what he sacrificed for the struggle,” Sabah continued.

Sabah didn’t know shit about Palestine. None of us did, except sound bites from the news and conversations of adults who used to live there. Truth be told, we didn’t care either. We were daughters of Kuwait, even though we could never be citizens.

“Eat shit, Sabah. Maybe he’ll marry you. Give it a try!” I said.

Once I realized that Sabah was interested in this new man, I wanted him too. I was prettier and a better dancer, even though she wasn’t bad looking and was smarter than me. She played the guitar, which annoyed me because she could captivate anyone when she’d start on it. Luckily, she was insecure and shy and mostly played in private or just around our close friends.