Saddam's brashness, and the criminal abandon with which his officers looted Kuwait, stripping even the marble from its palaces to add to Saddam's own, revealed for all to see his nature as an unworldly and power-mad brute.
The hayfeverishly fresh scent of Rema's shampoo was filling the air and through that brashness I squinted at this woman, and at that small dog, acknowledging to myself only that something was extraordinarily wrong.