When death is so close at hand, the terror never leaves you. The drones buzz overhead, and in strike after strike, my family has been taken. My cousin Ahmed was a farmer, out riding his motorcycle when the drone struck. Days later, his younger brother, Salman, a 14-year-old child, was killed while tending sheep for his mother while she was in mourning. She was too grief-stricken over Ahmed’s death to tend the sheep herself…

In December 2013, the Obama administration launched hellfire missiles at my uncle’s wedding in Bayda province. Weddings in Yemen are not so different from those in the USA: joyous occasions, celebrating the union of two families. The idea that this gathering was a threat to anyone, much less Americans thousands of miles away, is painfully absurd.

I survived, but 12 others didn’t. The bride and groom were injured but survived. What should have been my uncle’s happiest day was instead filled with carnage. This was my first encounter with America and its deadly drone program.