“Your brother … I read that he was—”

I didn’t let her finish. “My brother is brilliant,” I said. She looked down at her notepad, though she had quit taking notes. I knew she wasn’t interested in these reveries of my childhood. “I don’t care what you read about my brother. Jehad was gentle and vulnerable. When he was in middle school, I found out two boys were bullying him. I gathered my girl posse, and we waited for them outside the school gate and gave them a good hiding. It made Jehad look up to me even more. One summer—”

The Western woman put her hand up. She glanced down at her notepad, covered her written questions with both hands, inhaled deeply, and blinked one of those exaggeratedly long blinks—as if she were breathing through her eyelids—then said, “I read somewhere that you were gang-raped the night Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.”

I raised one eyebrow, which seemed to make her uneasy. In my peripheral view, Lena’s lips turned up almost imperceptibly.

The woman continued, “I can only imagine the horror of that night, and I’m sorry to bring it up.”

“What makes you think it’s okay to ask me these things?”

Lena hesitated but faithfully translated.

The woman appeared exasperated. “You agreed to be interviewed. That’s why I’m asking questions,” she said, pausing to take another breath through her eyelids. “I had to go through two months of vetting just to have this hour with you. I provided all my questions to the authorities in advance,” she added, almost desperately.

Lena repeated her words in Arabic but communicated something else with her eyes.

Finally I responded: “Ah, the authorities did not run them by me. Rest assured that I shall reprimand them accordingly.” My sarcasm reduced her nearly to tears, which softened me. I added, “But I’ll answer your question: No. I was not gang-raped the night Saddam invaded Kuwait.”

She seemed disappointed, but moved on to ask how I became involved in the resistance. She called it “terrorism.” She asked about my prison cell, which she called a “nice room,” then qualified, “But I know it’s still prison.”

“Are you Jewish?” I asked.

She made another long blink. “I don’t see how that matters.”

“It matters.”

“I’m here as a professional, not a religion.”

“And yet most professionals wouldn’t call this place a nice room,” I said.

Her eyes bore into me. “Considering what you did, I’d say it was nicer than you might deserve. You wouldn’t fare so well in any Arab country. They’d have flogged and hanged you by now.”

She folded her notebook and rose. “I think I have all I need,” she said, motioning to the guard to let them out.

The guard—who had been standing over us, ensuring that neither the Western woman nor the translator touched me or handed me any object—locked my security bracelets to the wall before opening the door.

The woman turned to me. “I just want you to know that my grandparents—”