I still don’t know why I got a visa to come to the United States and my younger sister did not. I was eighteen when I flew to Chicago. She was sixteen and left behind.

Saying goodbye to Sabreen in the airport in Cairo was painful. We had already lost so much. We’d left Yemen together two years earlier because it had become too dangerous to stay. We had lived with distant relatives in Egypt for two years while we waited for our visas. And there I was, getting on a plane to the United States—without her. That was December 2014. I have not seen my sister since. The missing I feel—of her, of Yemen, of the way things were before the violence—is so big, sometimes I think it might swallow me up.

And that feeling makes my experience as a refugee in the United States more bitter than sweet.

But I knew I was one of the fortunate ones: When I arrived in this country, I had a home to go to, even though it was one I had never seen before. Because when I arrived, I was reunited with my mother, whom I had not seen in fourteen years.

My first day of school in Minneapolis was a Friday. I had been in the United States for only one week and did not speak any English. That morning was so cold that I wrapped my scarf around my face so only my eyes peeked through, and I still thought they might freeze into ice cubes. I had never been this cold in my entire life. I didn’t know weather like this was even possible. The wind cut right through the new winter jacket my mom had bought me the day before. I was so cold that I thought my blood would freeze as I walked the short distance from the bus to the school. And I remember being so relieved to walk into that building—a warm welcome.

I was even happier to see so many Muslim students! My idea of the United States was that everyone was white, but then I saw a Somalian girl wearing a gorgeous green hijab, and another wearing one in bright red, then another in blue. It was as if a vibrant rainbow were streaming through the hallways.

When I went to the main office to get my schedule, I felt a mix of excitement and intimidation. The school was huge and made up of several buildings. I did not know where any of my classes were—upstairs? down? this building or another?

I spotted someone who I thought could help me and gave him my schedule in desperation. He told me his name was Habib. I laughed, because that means “loved one” in Arabic, and it felt like a good sign.

Habib showed me to my first class, where my teacher introduced me: “This is Zaynab,” she said. “She just arrived from Egypt.” I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing.

Then a girl said, in Arabic, “So you speak Arabic?” and my heart, which had been clenched since breakfast, suddenly relaxed.

Her name was Asma. She was born in Somalia, where my mother was from, but had grown up in Egypt. And she stayed by my side that entire day. She was my guide and my translator, and she became my best friend.

I soon met a boy named Abduwalli. He was from Yemen but had left before the revolution, which meant he missed most of the bombings and death. He liked living in America and had no plans to go back to Yemen, which stunned me. I had been in this strange new place for only a week, and I could not imagine ever being as comfortable as Abduwalli seemed. I was also sure I would never stop missing Yemen.

I was born in Yemen. My mother is Somalian, and my father Yemeni. He left us when my sister was born. I was two years old. I have no idea why he left or where he went—all I know is that he got married again. In Yemen, a man can have four wives. So he took another wife and left us to be with her.

I don’t have many memories of my mom from Yemen. She left for the United States when I was around four years old. She got a visa through a lottery program and could not take us with her. I never missed her, though, or wondered why she couldn’t take us with her because my father’s mother raised us as if we were her children. We lived in Aden, one of the largest cities in Yemen. We had a big family. Lots of cousins, uncles, and aunts. The love my grandmother gave me and my sister was enough to make me not miss either of my parents.

Our grandma read to us and told us stories of our ancestors. She was so proud of our Arab heritage—we had a book of Arabic poems she would recite to us with a gleam in her eye. She was pure joy! My heart. So when she had a bad fall in September 2010, I was concerned. I was only fourteen, but I knew it was bad. She was in so much pain that my sister and I had to bathe and dress her, even feed her. She stayed in bed for a week but refused to go to the hospital. She insisted she was fine.

We believed her.

So I was surprised when I returned home late one evening, a few weeks later, to see people in our living room, all dressed in black. Some were crying. I smelled the coffee and saw that sweet dates were being served: This is what we serve when someone dies.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

My aunt looked at me, her face slick with tears. She just shook her head.

Someone said, “She doesn’t know?”

“Know what?” I was practically shouting. I knew that something terrible had happened.

I needed to know what.

I didn’t want to know what.

Then someone said, “Your grandmother died this morning.”

All the air was sucked from the room.

My grandmother was our everything. She played a major part in every dream I had for my future—the face I saw at my wedding, the one who would help me raise my children. Who else would teach me to give them the same love that she gave me and my sister? In all these dreams, my grandmother was with me, by my side, smiling. How could she be gone?

She was also the connecting piece to my father’s family—without her, my sister and I were adrift. Meanwhile, things in Yemen were growing increasingly unstable, so my extended family started to scatter and disintegrate. Some cousins went with their parents to other cities in Yemen, while others fled to Europe. My sister and I stayed with our aunt, my father’s sister. Her two daughters were older than we were and had also decided to flee. One had gone to Europe, the other to Syria.

We were living with our aunt in Aden when the revolution officially began at the beginning of 2011. It was influenced by uprisings in Tunisia that led to a regime change a few weeks earlier. Inspired by this result, activists in other Arab countries took note, and protests spread quickly—to Syria, Yemen, Egypt, and Libya. These Arab Spring protests demanded change. In Yemen, the people wanted our president, who had been in power for thirty years, to step down. The protests were peaceful at first, but the police started telling people that if they walked in certain areas, they risked being shot. That was when the anger boiled over. Stories circulated of innocent people being killed—even children coming home from school. When my uncle was shot on his way home from work, we knew no one was safe.

I was in class in early 2012 when I overheard two teachers talking about a bomb threat that had just been called in to our school. I thought, This is it. We are all going to die! The police arrived and deactivated it, thankfully. That is why I can tell my story.

No one knew who had called or what group had planted the bomb. The world was upside down. That moment marked the beginning of what news reports were calling “indiscriminate bombings.” I called it bombs randomly falling from the sky with no one ever knowing when or where the next one would strike.

No one knew who was dropping the bombs because there were so many warring factions—the government, the revolutionaries, and the terrorist groups that wanted to take over the country.

One December morning, I woke up to the noise of explosions. My bed trembled with the entire building. I ran to the window and saw a cloud of dust and smoke rising in the air in the distance. I heard the crackle of stones falling and the desperate cries of people screaming.

Everyone in my house was awake by then, in shock.

“That could have been us,” my aunt said.

Soon thereafter, I was awakened again by another big blast. This time our entire house shook violently. I felt a warm liquid seep across the sheets and glanced at my sister lying next to me. Her eyes were stretched wide, and I realized that she was so frightened that she had wet the bed. I was too scared to be mad at her. I ran to the window and saw that our neighbor’s top floor was gone, disintegrated into a pile of rubble. Then we heard the screams, so close, so anguished, that I thought someone must be hurt or worse.

My aunt was still struggling with the death of my grandma—the added stress of these “indiscriminate bombings” made her even less stable. Something broke inside her that day. She started talking to herself and having these long crying bouts. She was supposed to be our caretaker, but instead, my sister and I had to take care of her. She did not seem connected to the reality of what was going on around us.

That was when I decided to contact my mom.

I had not spoken to my mom in years. Yet I knew she would help. When I finally talked with her, she told me to go to Egypt, where my grandmother’s second cousin lived. Many Yemeni people were fleeing—to Egypt, Italy, and Greece. Anywhere was better than staying in Yemen. The only place I had ever known, my home, had become too dangerous.

My mother said she would send money to buy tickets to Cairo. To be honest, I didn’t want to go. I was afraid of an unknown future in a strange place. Yemen had become terrifying, but at least it was familiar. It was my home. It was also the last place I saw my grandmother alive. Leaving Yemen somehow felt as if I were leaving her.

As we packed for our journey to Egypt, I took all the last things my grandmother had touched, like her clothes, which still smelled like her. I took the Arabic poetry books I had won at a reading competition in school, as well as my own clothes, documents, and pictures. Finally, I folded up the quilt that had been on her bed, where she had died. It was the last thing she had touched. I could wrap it around myself if I ever needed a hug, I thought as I placed it in my bag.

We flew to Cairo, which was my first trip on a plane. I was scared but knew we had no choice. We moved in with a distant relative who lived in Barty in the Alf Mascan section of Cairo. I hated it there. It was dirty and smelled as if dead animals were rotting in the streets. At least we would not be there too long, I thought. My mother had been in touch with the US embassy, and my sister and I went together to apply for visas. Egypt was temporary.

Four months later, the embassy called me in for a health check. They did a bunch of tests and took some blood; the next time they called me in, they told me I had TB.

I said, “What’s TB?”

I had no idea.

I had been coughing for two months straight and went through a period when I had a fever every night and would wake up in a cold sweat. I had stopped eating and lost a lot of weight, but when I went to the hospital to see why I was so sick, I was told it was no big deal. Nobody ever mentioned tuberculosis.

The house where we were staying had a computer, so I googled tuberculosis and learned that people can actually die from it. I had survived so much by then that to die from an illness felt particularly cruel. I told my second uncle, in whose house we were living then, what the embassy had said. I thought he would give me advice. Instead, he shouted, “Get out!”

“Why?” I said, stunned. “What have I done?”

“You’re going to make us all sick!” He was screaming now.

He stormed around the house, gathering my things and throwing them at me. “Pack your things and get out!” he yelled.

I left the house in total shock. I did not even tell my aunt or sister what had happened, because I did not want them to get sick. Instead, I told them the embassy needed me to do more health tests. I told them I was going to stay at a nearby hospital. I lied. If they knew I had been kicked out, they would want to come with me, and I did not want to put them at risk.

It was hard to find a place to stay. In Egypt, a seventeen-year-old girl cannot rent a house by herself. People wondered, Why are you alone? Whom will you be bringing back to the house each night? Are you a good or bad girl?

Finally, I found a room in a house in the Aldoqqi section of Cairo. It was closer to the embassy, which was convenient because I had to go there daily for six months to get both pills and injections. The embassy officials needed to know I had completed my treatment before they would give me a visa. While the tuberculosis may have been subsiding, I started to feel sick from all the medicine. At least I was no longer contagious, so I went to see my aunt and sister, who had by then moved to another relative’s house. I never told anyone how sick I really was.

I finished the treatment by mid-December, and the embassy said that I was finally approved to go to the United States. I was about to turn nineteen on December 27—this was the best birthday present ever.

“When do we leave?” I asked.

“Who’s we?” the agent responded.

I said, “My sister!”

The agent looked perplexed and said, “I only have clearance for you.”

The feeling of panic that started spiraling throughout my body was familiar.

I spelled my sister’s name—S-A-B-R-E-E-N—and asked the agent to double-check her records.

I was sure they would find her paperwork. It would be approved. We would be fine.

The agent checked the computer and said, “I don’t see anything in the system.”

My heart sank.

Then she said, “Wait a minute—here she is.”

I was so relieved. I knew it had to be a misunderstanding.

“Her application was rejected.”

Those words were far worse than “You have TB.” Not quite as painful as “Your grandmother is dead.” But close.

“Why?” was the only word I could muster.

The agent shrugged and said, “All I know is that your application has been approved.”

As I left the embassy that day, my head was full of questions: What had gone wrong? Did we make a mistake in the paperwork? Does she have some sort of sickness? Maybe I gave her TB? Why me and not her? And as I considered each scenario, I thought, We can fix this. She will get approved. This is just one more obstacle.

I called my mother first to share the shocking news. I could not even get excited that I had papers—my sister’s not having papers negated that. My mom assured me it was a glitch. “We will work this out,” she said.

Telling Sabreen was painful. She wanted to go to the United States even more than I did. When she was young, she was obsessed with the TV show Hannah Montana, and even before the troubles started in Yemen, she’d say, “One day I’m going to go to the US. That’s where Hannah lives!”

She remained remarkably calm. No tears or even anger. Instead, she said, “I will be fine! I’ll stay with our cousins and apply for another visa! I will come as soon as I can.”

I held my sister tight and could feel the tremble in her body. She was fighting the same urge I was. If we both began to cry then, we might drown.

A neighbor drove me and my sister to the airport in December 2014. When I checked in, I was told I had to leave two bags behind. I had packed four—two big and two small. They contained my entire life, but they exceeded the weight limit. The agent told me I needed to pay two hundred dollars to take them with me. I had twenty dollars, which I hoped was enough to buy food over the next forty-eight hours it would take me to get from Cairo to Minneapolis.

My flight was about to leave, and I had to decide: I left the heaviest bag with all my books and the journals I had kept since I was very young. I had wrapped them with my grandmother’s quilt. That bag also had the only family photos I have of me and Sabreen as kids. I handed the bag to Sabreen and asked her to please keep it safe for me.

And then it was the time I was dreading. I had to say goodbye to my baby sister. Once again, she did not cry. Once again, I felt that deep tremble inside her bones, which matched mine. As we embraced, we whispered in each other’s ear, “This is only temporary. I will see you soon.”

“Maybe one or two months, tops,” I said as I pulled away.

“Yes,” she said. I could feel tears coating my eyes and tried to blink them away.

“I will wait for that.”

Boarding that plane should have felt like freedom. Like hope. Like a dream come true. Instead, my heart felt like lead, heavy in my chest. I buckled myself in my seat and pressed my forehead against the window. I did not want anyone to see me cry.

Once I got to the States, Sabreen and I stayed connected through FaceTime and were literally counting the days for her to join me. I told her about my new school and friends, the food, and how cold Minnesota was. She smiled at every detail, and we talked about all the places I would take her once she arrived—like the Mall of America! I had never been to such a place! With so many shops and different types of people!

Each time we spoke, however, her enthusiasm dimmed. We had not heard any news from the American embassy, and we were starting to worry.

After three months, Sabreen announced that she was tired of waiting. She had heard of refugees paying to have boats take them to Italy. She said she wanted to do that with a group of friends. She said that if she went to Europe, it would be easier for her to get her visa to come to America.

I had heard about the boats, too—and of people dying trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea. But my sister was adamant. She said, “I promise—this is going to be safe. It is a big boat. It even has bedrooms and a bathroom!”

She told me it cost two thousand dollars per passenger, so I thought, Wow! It must be safe! That was a lot of money.

My mom started saving—she was a nursing assistant and took overnight shifts to save up for the journey. She sent the money the following month.

And then we waited for news.