If you know me at all, you may have heard that it has been a trying day. My family is exceptionally close. My siblings are my best friends. My younger brother is currently in the fall of his junior year at Georgetown University, double majoring in Arabic and Psychology. Last night he was arrested in Cairo for joining the protesters in Tahrir Square.

My family issued the following statement to Georgetown University’s newspaper earlier today:

To The Georgetown University Community,

First, we would like to thank everyone for your continued support for Derrik. Seeing the outpouring of love and concern from his friends at a school he cherishes has been valuable moral support for us. We are hopeful that Derrik will very soon be able to thank you himself.

At present, we know very little about the situation, though we are in contact with The State Department. To that end, we would like to thank the people — many of whom from Georgetown — who made phone calls to help bring attention to this situation.

We thank you again for your continued support while we hope for his prompt return home to us.

Sincerely,

The Sweeney Family

I would like to add to that my endless thanks to everyone on Twitter and Facebook who has been diligent in getting the word out. I can’t really say how much it has actually accomplished, but it made me feel a little less alone. I sit here, thousands of miles from anyone in my family, and I am scared. I am scared for my brother and more terrified still by the idea that this can be no more than an insignificant fraction of the abject terror he is surely feeling right now.

He’s my baby brother and one of my very best friends. Some of my best memories, my best stories, are the ones that I’ve had with him. When we were little kids we used to joke that we were twins falsely separated by a few years. (Or maybe that was mostly just me, disrupting the natural order of older/younger sibling admiration.) When I go on big adventures, he is the first person I want to invite. He is absolutely brilliant, witty, and at the risk of employing cliches, simply loves life. He is the ultimate champion of positive thinking; he simply will not stand for the idea that any of us lack autonomy in our own lives and circumstances. Can you imagine living with such a powerful and wonderful force as your younger sibling?

As I sit here, shaking, nauseous, in shock, intermittently crying, and a thousand other things, my heart goes out to the families of the other two boys detained alongside my brother. My thoughts are with everyone suffering through the violence in Cairo right now. I wish I knew how to send you more than thoughts.

To everyone else, again, my family and I thank you for your support.