It pained me to see my mother beg. I hated those men. Now I hated Kuwait. I hated their emirs and their people. I hated that I had pledged allegiance to them in school, danced for their Independence Day.

“Look at this!” one of them shouted, holding up the bag of Chanel lipstick, reading the receipt. “They shop in London for expensive makeup.” The rest of them went to look at the bag.

“Open this!” another barked, pointing to the safe. Mama and I looked at each other. I kissed Sitti Wasfiyeh and got up to open it.

Most of what I had saved over the past year had already been deposited in our bank account for Jehad’s university, and just the day before I had used most of what was left in the safe to pay the lawyer. The police took what little remained, along with my gold shabka.

“You clearly have plenty to be shopping in London for lipstick. You probably don’t need this,” an officer said, smiling as he took the bag of Chanel lipstick, tucking our money and gold into it. He picked up the few notes of Iraqi currency and balled them in his fist. “You can keep these,” he said, throwing them at me.

My grandmother cried like I’d never seen. She looked so small, vulnerable and helpless, the creases on her face filling with tears, like small rivers. As the men were leaving, she said in a quivering, tired voice, “Why, my sons? Why did you do this? This is haram, my sons. It’s haram. Why do you treat us like this?”

One of them, a young man who had seemed uncomfortable in his skin, turned to her, his eyes downcast. “I’m sorry, khala,” he said. I’m sorry, Auntie. But he was quickly shoved aside by the man who had confiscated our savings. “Go ask Yasser Arafat why!” He spat on our floor and left.

The landlord stayed behind to remind us, “Two more days. Six months’ back rent. All of it or you’re out. No partial payment.”

As the banks slowly unfroze accounts, hordes of people pushed and pried their way into the branches, and most ATMs were out of order or out of money. Remarkably, the restored Kuwaiti government announced that all bank accounts would be replenished to what they had been on August 2, the day time stood still, as if the past six months never happened. Some banks managed to get people to form lines, but mostly it was chaos. I waited five hours without success to access my account. The second day I camped outside the bank and managed to get a turn when it opened, but they would only allow me to withdraw a small amount, not enough to pay the landlord.

I left the bank and went to ask Um Buraq for a loan.

“Nahr,” she said. Um Buraq only called me by that name when she communicated grave matters. “I wish I could help. But I don’t know if I’m safe right now, and I need to hold on to every penny. My husband came this morning and made me give him all my gold jewelry. That cunt of a man wants to take a third wife, to ‘celebrate liberation’! He said he would turn me in to the police as a collaborator if I didn’t. The way things are right now, they’ll believe him, since I’m sure some of my cousins in Iraq have kids in the military. The government’s announcement to replenish accounts to what they were the day before the invasion means they will deposit back the money I gave to Deepa. But it’s going to take some time. I’ll give you whatever I can then, but for right now, I just can’t. But if I were you … I hate to say this … you should ask Abu Moathe for help. At a minimum, he could make sure you got all your money out of your bank account.”