“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.”

It sickened me to turn to Abu Moathe, but I was out of options.

I called first to gauge his mood. If I didn’t get a good vibe, I planned to call Abu Nasser, the panty sniffer. But Abu Moathe seemed happy to hear from me and said to hurry over. He would tell the guards to let me into the bank.

Two armed guards managed the throngs of people pulsing impatiently outside, allowing only a few in at a time. I shoved my way through to the guards, flashing my ID. “Abu Moathe is expecting me,” I said.

Inside, I was shown to the manager’s office, where Abu Moathe walked around a large wooden desk to greet me.

“Salaam, my friend. Your visit honors me,” he began with the customary flattery, then called on someone to bring us drinks. “What can I offer you?” he asked. “I recall you prefer tea to coffee.”

“Tea would be lovely. Thank you very much, Abu Moathe,” I said, and he ordered the old woman standing timidly at the door to bring two glasses of tea.

He walked around me to close the door, brushing his fingers across my shoulder. “To what do I owe the honor?” he asked.

The old woman came in with the tray of hot tea and placed it on his desk as I explained that I needed to withdraw my money to pay our rent and to get my brother out of jail. I told him my brother was innocent, arrested even though he had been in Jordan studying during the occupation.

“Then how could they arrest him if he was out of the country?”

I stuttered, “He, he, he came back at the end of the first semester, a few weeks before the liberation war.”