When an American invasion was clearly imminent, I stopped reading and watching the news. I kept myself busy to stay out of the house, because I could not bear to listen to Mama, who was cheering for the Americans to come. “People just can’t go around stealing other people’s countries,” she said. “It’s wrong. For better or worse, Kuwait is our home. It’s our duty to defend it. When did you stop loving this country? Don’t you know the only tax collected in this country is for the Palestinian resistance? We cannot deny that!”

I left without answering and stayed more and more with Um Buraq, coming home as little as possible, until our home boiled and evaporated and then vanished with history’s disappeared bits. But that wouldn’t happen yet.

There was something else. I had a secret life during those months. No one, not even Um Buraq, knew. I took up with an Iraqi soldier. I wasn’t yet ready to give up on men. Part of me wanted to know if men could be good; if it was possible for physical intimacy with a man to be something honest, loving, nurturing, powerful, and passionate. I wondered, too, whether I was lovable. I needed to know, because I thought we might all die soon.

His name was Mubshir. He manned a checkpoint I passed frequently. A few glances and flirtations later, he gave me a number and time to call a public pay phone, where he would be waiting. At first we met by the sea, but as things developed, we began meeting in an abandoned apartment in the Salmiya district. We found a kind of refuge in each other, especially when it became clear that he would be forced to fight the Americans soon. He thought he was going to die and worried how death would come. But we didn’t talk about that much. We fucked with little respite to keep from thinking about it.

Mubshir was beautiful. He was the first man who ever made me climax. I told him I loved him, and he said the same to me, but we were pretending, and both knew it. We wanted a love story. It made our imminent demise romantic. He had a girl back home in Baghdad. I think all he ever wanted was to be her husband, her provider and protector, the father of her babies. He didn’t lie or try to mislead me, and the way he spoke of her made me love her too. I didn’t mind when he called me by her name, or that he pretended my body in his arms was hers. Sometimes I imagined I really was her. I thought it was the closest I would ever come to being loved by a man.

Then the Americans rolled in on their monstrous tanks, smiling from their perches, flowers thrown at them from all sides. I don’t know what became of Mubshir. I’d like to imagine him with his girl, but I’ve seen enough of our world to know better. Charred corpses of fleeing Iraqis burned stiff in every conceivable configuration littered the desert sand for miles and miles in what became known as the Highway of Death.