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.

Somewhere during that time at the police station, I awoke to the sound of men screaming in other rooms, and later to Mama crying, beseeching the police. Sounds are what fill those days in my memory. They echo through the facts, the images, the pain of a fractured rib, the desire to take my brother’s place in their torture dungeons, the anguish of unmistakable endings—the end of innocence, of a home, of health, of days with daydreams and nights without nightmares.