Jehad stiffened. “I’m not leaving my family in this situation. So you can just stop, Nahr!”

Jehad’s insistence eventually brought Sitti Wasfiyeh and me around to leaving, but by then it was too late. The American invasion was already under way. We stayed put, waiting for our future to emerge from the blasts, news reports, and innuendo. I could feel the sun setting on our lives in Kuwait, and when the Americans arrived, the sun indeed was gone. For months it was blacked out by blankets of soot. From the Highway of Death, Iraqis had managed one last act of defiance. They set flame to oil wells, which heaved unstoppable plumes of smoke into the sky that not even the sun could penetrate. It looked and smelled like the end of days, an apocalypse sucking us into hell.

With Iraq out of Kuwait, the United States paraded its military through our streets. By then we had already heard enough of Kuwaiti rage against Palestinians to know that we were not welcome to join them in street celebrations—not that I wanted to welcome the Americans. But Mama did.

In one way or another, Palestinians would have to pay, not only because some collaborated with Iraq, but also because we were a convenient proxy for vengeance against Saddam. Despite warnings from everyone, Jehad refused to leave or go into hiding. “I didn’t do anything,” he said. “What do I need to hide for? I wasn’t even in the country during the occupation. I’ve only been back a few weeks.”

No matter what reason or evidence we presented, despite the stories of disappeared Palestinians, my brother’s belief in the essential goodness and fairness of human beings blinded him to danger.

“Kuwaitis aren’t monsters. They’re not going to do anything to me. I can prove I wasn’t even here,” he insisted. “Come on! Iraq arrested five thousand Palestinians for joining the Kuwaiti resistance. They know the difference.”

“How can you be so smart and so stupid at the same time?” I cried. I knew more about the nature of humans—of men, in particular.

A day later, I saw from my window the police and a military jeep driving on our street. I ran to fetch my brother but by the time I reached the bottom of the stairwell, they already had him on the ground in handcuffs, beating and kicking him. I tried to intervene. An arm swung in front of my face against a black sky in the middle of the day. My heart throbbed. My cheeks pushed against glass. A car window? I bit my tongue. Then I lay stiff with pain on a plastic chair at the police station. I knew some time had passed, but only later understood it had been ten hours. I had no memory of being beaten, but my body bore the evidence. They gave me an injection and demanded to know where my sister Nahr was. But I—Yaqoot—swore I only had one brother. That is all I remember, except for the occasional faces that appear in my dreams reenacting disjointed versions of that day. When it was over, Kuwaiti authorities had my fingerprints, in lieu of a signature, on a document testifying that my brother had collaborated with Iraqi authorities during the occupation.