There were no bones in my legs. For days, the only things holding me upright had been fear and a constant rush of adrenaline. I was in a safe spot now, and the adrenaline was gone, but the need to keep going remained. Until I’d found my dad, the nightmare would continue.

The massive glass and bronze door thunked into my back and I realized I’d come to a dead stop in the doorway. The hotel lobby was a huge atrium surrounded by floor-after-floor of white marble balconies reaching up to a multicolored skylight. Free-standing clear glass elevators zipped up and down. I only gave these things a quick glance, though. What really grabbed me was the mass of people crowding the hotel lobby. Whole families huddled together on the floor, holding each other close, brother clinging to brother, sister to sister. Mothers clasped their children tightly, as if they were still protecting them from the horrors they had just witnessed. All but the youngest children stared into space, seeing nothing except the pictures in their mind. I knew what they were experiencing, because I’d seen the destruction and the cruelty first hand. I’d seen families torn apart, and worse. Hard to believe that only eight days earlier, little more than a week, I’d been an ordinary American kid thinking the anger I carried around in my brain was somehow important in the scheme of things. 

About half of the men in the hotel lobby had on dishdashas, the long robes worn by most Arab men in this part of the world. No one gave me a second glance, as I was wearing a dishdasha myself, the color of desert sand. I had discarded my American jeans and tee-shirt days before, hoping I would escape notice as I fled across the desert. It nearly worked.

Almost all the women wore black silk abayas, so that nothing was showing but their eyes. A few wore western clothes, but the dresses were wrist and ankle-length. Silk scarves covered their heads. It was obvious I’d made it out of Kuwait and into Saudi Arabia where the dress code for women was super strict. What had been my home near Kuwait City was a bare hundred miles away, but it felt like a thousand – a thousand miles of the worst that both nature and man could dish up.

Here in safety, in this luxury hotel, the last week should start to become a fading nightmare. But it had been no dream. The evidence was in the crying babies and in the faces of the refugees huddled on the floor. I could see more evidence when I looked at my bruised and scratched arms and the desert filth that covered my body. And in the memory of new friends found and, all too quickly, lost. Oh yes, it had been very real.

Toward the back of the lobby, the piles of people on the floor gave way to throngs of men milling around, jostling for space. I could barely move. How could I find Dad in all this mess, even if he really was here? Someone shoved a shoulder into my back and I spun around to see a thin Arab man wearing a dishdasha and a red and white checked cloth kuffiyeh fastened to his head with a black band. He backed into the crowd that had shoved him into me, bobbing his head and saying aasif, aasif, sorry, sorry. I gave him a little that’s okay wave and pushed further into the swarming mass.

It didn’t take long to realize some of these people hadn’t bathed in days. They were probably wearing the same underwear they’d put on the morning the Iraqi troops rolled through the streets of Kuwait City with their guns aimed in every direction. They might have fled to this place and this hotel hoping to find beds and showers, but there were too many people and too few beds.

I finally figured out where the hotel’s front desk was. Near one wall the crowd was especially dense and they were all facing the same direction. Getting there seemed hopeless. I had to pass through another sea of people sitting cross-legged on the floor. I almost tripped over a small boy who was clinging to his mother’s abaya. When I stumbled to avoid the little boy, I caught a glimpse of my shoes and almost laughed for a crazy second. The Nikes I obsessively washed every week and scrubbed to gleaming whiteness were covered in desert dirt. I couldn’t even see the blue swoosh. At least I still had them. Shoes were the only items of my own clothing I had left. Even my underwear had been discarded along the way.

If Dad did manage to get a room here, maybe I can find a house phone and call him. By the elevators I discovered a small room with lots of telephones. It also had lots of people waiting in line trying to use one. About half of them were Arabs, and the rest looked like Americans or Europeans. I figured the phone lines between Saudi Arabia and the rest of the world were probably totally jammed.

One of the blue in-house telephones was miraculously free. When I picked it up a man answered, in both Arabic and English, “Sabaah al-Kheir. Good morning. May I help you?”

“I’m looking for someone who might be staying here.”

“The name please?”

“Connors. Alan Connors.”

After a pause, “I’m sorry. We have no one by that name registered.”

“Maybe under his company name. It’s Peterson Construction.”

“Ahh. It is possible. I believe that company reserved a block of rooms, but they are all assigned to individuals. I have no way of knowing . . .”

“Hey, thanks anyway.” I slammed the phone down, then felt bad about it. It wasn’t the operator’s fault.

Back out in the human cattle-pen, I decided to collar someone, anyone who was speaking English. Maybe he could help or at least suggest what I should do next. I settled on an older man wearing a maroon windbreaker and a Houston Astros baseball cap. He looked puzzled when I talked to him. I guess he was wondering why a boy dressed like I was sounded so American. I was just starting to explain my predicament when I saw a familiar figure inside one of the down elevators. Short military haircut. Shoulders thrown back rigidly. Dark brown-framed glasses. No doubt about who it was. Dad!

I left Mr. Astros in mid-sentence and shoved my way across the room. I shouted at my father when he came out of the elevator, but in all the noise, he didn’t recognize my voice until I was almost on top of him. Even then he didn’t seem to know me in my Arab clothing. When he did, he didn’t say a word. Instead, he did something he hadn’t done in years. He just grabbed me and hugged me tightly. He hung on like he was afraid I was going to get whisked away again. Like I was going to disappear just like I’d done eight days before. A woman nearby cocked her head at the sight of a grown man hugging a sixteen year-old boy with such feeling. Then she nodded and smiled. She might not have known exactly what was happening, but she could see the tears on my father’s cheeks. She could never know just how rare, how unprecedented, those tears were. I hadn’t seen any emotion but frustration and anger on Dad’s face since the winter day my brother died.

“How did you get here?” Dad asked finally, pushing me back so he could look at my face. He barked out the question like an accusation. His tears had lasted about as long as water on a hot plate. Then, as he kept on studying me, his face softened again. It was like his emotions were waging their own war inside him. I gave him a sad smile and held his arm, hoping to hang on to this new Dad and keep the old, cold one at bay.

Besides, I was shaking and really did feel like I might end up on the floor. “I was so scared. I’ve seen things…”

Dad’s grip got even tighter. “Pull it together. You’re here now… but how?” His eyes wandered over me and he fingered the sleeve of my dishdasha. “How?” he asked again.

“There were some people that . . .” I pulled myself up straight. “First tell me why you left Kuwait without finding me.”

He took his glasses off and wiped his hand across his face, like he does when he gets emotional. “I didn’t think I did. I thought you were already on your way out. A stupid, goddam mix-up.”

“I don’t understand.“

“The minute we realized the Iraqis had invaded, Peterson decided we oughta get all the company Americans and their families out of Kuwait. We got together some busses and started hauling people down here. It was just supposed to be till the whole mess blew over. We figured Saddam’d wise up and pull back within a few days.”

“Yeah, right.”

“ Everybody thought they would. Even the American Embassy people.” Dad shook his head, looking disgusted. “I went to the site and helped shut down some equipment. Then home to get you. Getting there was hair-raising, ‘cause the roads were already full of Iraqi soldiers.” He gave me a dark look. “But then, you weren’t there. I waited almost three friggin’ hours and you still didn’t show.”

“You knew I’d gone to Brian’s.”

“There was no answer at his house, either. I called the company to tell ‘em you were missing and I couldn’t leave. Then someone checked a list and said you’d been picked up early in the day and were already on the first bus heading south. Heading here. I was so damn relieved. I was mad as hell, though.”

“I’ll bet.”

Dad wiped his face again, and turned away to look out into the crowd. “After three hours, there was no reason … no reason to think what they’d told me about your being on that bus wasn’t true. Of course, when I got here…when I got here to Dhahran, I found out it was some other kid on their goddam list. You can’t imagine how I felt. But I was screwed. There was no way to go back. I would have walked -- I would have crawled if I had to -- but by then the border was sealed.”

I stared at Dad. Sure, he’d want to go back for me out of a sense of duty. But he was talking like he really had been desperate. For me.

I said, “I couldn’t figure out why you’d leave without me. Everything I thought didn’t make sense.“

“The phones into Kuwait were still working for two days. I managed to reach the Barthelmy’s. Brian said they were holed up in their apartment because the street was crawling with soldiers who seemed to be grabbing all kinds of people and shoving them into vans. But he said he hadn’t seen you since the night before the invasion.”

“That’s right.”

“ For two days I called our house. For those two whole days, no answer…we were sure you were captured or lying in a hospital somewhere …or dead.” Dad was quiet for a moment, then swung back to me and said, “So now, tell me how -- no, wait. There’s time for that. First we’ve gotta call your mother.”

Dad dragged me onto the elevator and up to a room on the eighth floor. When we went in, two men jumped up from where they were sitting by the window. I’d met both of them before at some Peterson Construction picnic.

Dad said, “Lookie here what I found.”

“Jeff!” said one of the men, rushing over to shake my hand. The other one threw his arm around me, even though I didn’t know him very well. Being caught in an invasion and missing for a week behind enemy lines will do that, I guess.

Dad said, “Listen guys. I need to make me a phone call. You suppose . . .”

One man said, “Suddenly, I need a bite to eat. What do you say, Bill?”

Bill, who still had me in a bear-hug, said, “Absolutely. I’m starved. The room’s all yours, Alan. You and Jeff take all the time you need, hey?”

It took Dad maybe ten minutes to get through to Danbury, Connecticut, where my mom and sister were visiting my grandparents. When he finally got Mom on the line, he just said, “I got him.”

I tuned out the next part of the conversation because I was all choked up thinking about how it must have been for Mom half a world away, not knowing if her son was alive or dead. Of course, if she hadn’t left Kuwait on vacation a week before Dad could get off work… if she‘d stayed so we could all go together, I would never have gotten into the mess I did. Attaway, Jeff. Spread the blame. I banged the palm of my hand against my head.

Dad was saying, “I’ve got a couple more days here in Dhahran ‘fore I can join you. We’ve got about fifty families that still need transportation somewhere. A bunch of them are stretched out all over the lobby with nowhere else to go…Yeah. Pretty damn fancy for a refugee camp, but that’s what it is.” He listened for a long time and looked over at me. “Sure, I was worried sick, too. Yeah, I know. But he’s alive. He’s standin’ right here and he’s very much alive.” His voice got hard then. “Of course, whether he stays that way or not depends on the story he has to tell.” He looked me straight in the eye and said, “He probably thinks he’s going to talk his way out of this one. It’s gonna be interesting just how good he does in the next few minutes.”

I had no idea of how good I’d do, but my mind was clear on what I‘d say. Out in the desert, I’d wrestled with the question, of whether I should give him a short and sanitized version, one that would make me look like I floated through the week. Or should I hang it all out for him? The things I did? The things that were done to me?

My resolve faltered for a second, but then I straightened up as he came over to me, still speaking into the phone. “Here, Marie, have a word or two with him. After that, he’s all mine.