The driver and I listened in disbelief. “Praise God. Allahu akbar,” he said.

My heart hammered at my chest now. “I think we should get out of the car and try to walk to the nearest house,” I said. “The street will be crawling with tanks soon, and they’re going to run right over this car. If you try to drive away, we’ll probably get hit with a missile from one of the helicopters.”

“Yes, yes. O God. Have mercy, O God.” We poked our heads up slowly. The street was quiet. People had disappeared into their homes or shops and the helicopter noise was receding. Our best option was an apartment building five meters away. Although we could not detect immediate danger in walking such a short distance, the eerie quiet was frightening. We could not be sure there were no Israeli snipers on rooftops. Slowly we opened the car doors. The driver began crawling out through the passenger’s side and I did the same from the backseat, just as a helicopter appeared overhead.

“Helicopter!” the driver yelled. We reacted in opposite ways. He rushed out of the car toward the building, leaving open the front passenger door. I pulled myself back inside the car, closing the door. As he ran, the helicopter came overhead and military jeeps sped down the street. I cowered low in the car, and heard several shots before something smashed hard into the car, jarring and disorienting me. There was blood. The car was upside down. Soldiers were pointing big guns at me, dragging me first by the neck, then by the arm from the shattered window, which cut the entire right side of my body as they pulled me through.

“Yaqoot? Are you Yaqoot?” they barked in accented Arabic.

The letter was still in my hand, still not fully read.

The letter! I wanted to read the rest of it. I cannot let them get the letter!

As they dragged me along the street, I rolled over and stuffed the paper into my mouth, the asphalt grating the side of my face. I kept my mouth shut, slowly trying to chew the letter to manageable pieces as they bound my hands and arms, threw me in the back of a jeep, and rummaged through my belongings. There was blood in my eyes. I didn’t know where I was bleeding from or if it was even mine.

One of the soldiers noticed me chewing. “What’s in your mouth?” he demanded, and I swallowed as much as I could. He yelled something in Hebrew to other soldiers, and within seconds several of them were on top of me prying open my mouth. I bit flesh and drew blood. There wasn’t much left of the letter.