On the Hills of God Page 4

  “Thank you,” Amin said.

  “Where do you live?” the rider asked, looking at the setting sun as though to tell time.

  “This side of town,” Amin answered. “But I can’t ask you—”

  “You didn’t ask me, I asked you,” the rider interrupted. “I’ll take you home.”

  Yousif and Isaac helped him put Amin up on the horse. Fayez held the reins and turned the horse around and gave it a gentle slap. They headed toward home, all walking except Amin.

  Amin’s house was part of a compound in Ardallah’s oldest and poorest section, where women washed their clothes on their doorsteps and dumped the dirty water beside the unpaved road. This part of town was hundreds of years old. The compound of connected “homes” was like a ghetto. The thick muddy-looking walls had grass growing on them and looked as old as the Roman arch the boys had seen earlier that afternoon. Today some women sat in knots on the flat rooftops or against walls. They gossiped and darned clothes or combed and braided their waist-length hair. Smoke rose from behind an enclosure where a woman crouched to bake her bread.

  Yousif stepped over a dog’s dropping. He could smell the pungent stench of goats a woman kept in her small corral. Children jumped rope and played hopscotch.

  Amin’s mother, whom both Yousif and Isaac called Aunt Tamam, came running to meet them. She was a tall thin woman in her late fifties, wearing the traditional ankle-length dress with little or no embroidery—a sign of their poverty. Her hair was covered with a rust-colored scarf, and her face had a hundred wrinkles. Yousif could sense and understand her great anxiety. Some of the children must have run and told her about Amin. From the look on her face, Yousif knew she had not believed it was only a broken arm and had come out to see for herself.

  “Habibi, Amin,” she said, wringing her hands. “How did it happen?”

  Amin, still mounted on the horse, reached out with his good hand and took hers. “I fell off a stone wall.”

  “Where were you?”

  Amin glanced at his two friends and then at his mother. “I’ll be all right,” he told her. “Don’t worry.”

  The horse entered the narrowest path leading to the house, followed by a group of curious children.

  “Does it hurt a lot?” his mother wanted to know. “I wish it were my arm instead of yours.”

  The rider held the reins and stopped the horse in front of Amin’s house. Yousif and Isaac helped Amin dismount. The sight of blood made Aunt Tamam purse her lips and beat on her chest. Then she bent down, touched the ground, and kissed her fingertips, an expression of humility and gratitude Yousif had seen his mother make many a time.

  “Allah be praised,” she said, “it wasn’t more serious. Here we are worried sick about your Uncle Hassan—”

  “What about Uncle Hassan?”

  “It looks like he had another heart attack.”

  “Did father go to Gaza? Is that why he isn’t here?”

  “No, not yet. But I know he’s checking to see if he he should leave now or wait.”

  A wall of silence descended among them.

  “That’s the way it is,” Fayez Hamdan said, turning his horse around. “Trouble comes in groups.” The horseman left them standing in front of the house, taking with him all the blessings of a grateful mother.

  “I sent one of the children after Abu Khalil,” Aunt Tamam said as they entered the house.

  “Who?” Yousif asked.

  “The one who mends bones,” she told him.

  “But why?” Yousif asked, surprised. “Why not my father? You know he’s a doctor. Why didn’t you send after him?”

  For the first time the old woman’s face wrinkled with a genuine smile. “You don’t have to tell me who your father is. Dr. Jamil Safi is the best doctor there is, but this is too small a job for him. Abu Khalil has been mending bones all his adult life—and he’s nearly seventy.”

  Yousif shook his head. “My father will be disappointed. He loves Amin like a son.”

  “Believe me there’s no need to trouble the doctor with something as simple as a broken arm,” she assured him. “He’s too busy for this sort of thing.”

  Yousif was not convinced; he suspected she did it to save money. The poor, he knew, carried their pride like open wounds. But the old woman disappeared inside the dark cave of a house, and he could not talk to her.

  “I’m going to get my father,” Yousif insisted, walking away.

  “Please don’t,” Amin entreated, clutching his arm.

  Yousif couldn’t understand. “He would want to look after you.”

  “No doubt,” Amin said, biting his lip. “But like mother said, mending bones is not a big deal.”

  Pride. Yousif knew it in the silence that lingered.

  Aunt Tamam held a kerosene lamp atop the stairs they were about to climb. Although he had been to Amin’s house several times, Yousif still marveled at its simplicity. It was basically a spacious room that served as a bedroom, living room, and kitchen, plus a low-ceilinged basement used to raise chickens. Amin’s father, Abu Amin, was not only the town’s best stonecutter, but was also in charge of several men working on the villa Yousif’s parents were building. Why couldn’t such a man afford a better dwelling, Yousif wondered? Then he remembered that Abu Amin, a Muslim, at one time had two wives and two sets of nine children. He was lucky he could feed them, much less build them a house.

  As they ascended to the main floor, Yousif was struck by the darkness. Even in daytime three oil lamps were lit, since light from the one curved window that ran to the floor and from the two holes high in the opposite wall was hardly sufficient. Shadows hovered in every corner. A large mirror was hung at an angle facing the front door. It magnified the size of the room and made the shadows twice as ominous.

  Amin’s mother brought a mattress and laid it on the floor next to the window. There he sat, propped by a couple of pillows, apologizing all the time for the trouble he had caused his friends.

  Within minutes, Abu Khalil was at the door. Yousif glimpsed him in the mirror and watched him walk up the six or seven steps. Yousif and Isaac rose and made room for the sprightly old man who was dressed in plain, ankle-length, black dimaya. What impressed Yousif most was the matching rust color of the turban, the sash, and the ankle-length ‘aba. It contrasted well with black. For a few seconds, the tidiness of the diminutive old man seemed promising.

  Having removed his outer garment, Abu Khalil was even smaller than he looked. He knelt by Amin’s side and began inspecting the injured arm. It was broken in three places, he grimly announced: once above the elbow and twice below. Amin groaned.

  “It’s a bad accident,” Abu Khalil muttered, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette down to a butt he could hardly hold, “but I’ve seen a lot worse.”

  There was no ashtray around, so Abu Khalil ended up giving the butt to Yousif, who passed it on in turn to one of Amin’s little brothers. Yousif laughed as the little boy took a drag on the cigarette before pitching it outside through the open window.

  “Where’s that old mother of yours,” Abu Khalil complained, scratching his white beard.

  “Don’t you call me an old woman, you old goat,” Amin’s mother rebutted from one of the shadowy corners.

  “Hurry up and bring me what I need then,” he told her, blowing his nose boisterously, wiping his whiskers with a flourish, and then unwrapping Amin’s arm. The unsanitary way Abu Khalil went about doing things belied his tidiness and disturbed Yousif.

  “Aren’t you going to wash your hands?” Yousif asked.

  The old man glared at him, his small blue eyes clear as crystal. “Young man, I was mending bones long before you were born. You dare tell me what to do?”

  “I’m sorry, but—”

  “Aren’t you Dr. Safi’s son?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “I even mended his bones when he was knee-high.”

  “Medicine has changed.”

  The old man shook his head and, under his breat
h, cursed the new generation. But the exchange soon ended, for when Aunt Tamam came up with the ingredients and utensils, the old man rolled up his sleeves and went to work. He cracked a dozen eggs in a large wooden bowl and began to whip them with a large wooden spoon. Then he reached for a dish covered with white hair from a horse’s tail, took out a bunch, and placed them over the whipped eggs. Over this he sprinkled a cup of pulverized fenugreek they called hilbeh. Then he proceeded to mix and batter everything with the same spoon.

  Yousif was fascinated. “What’s that for?” He looked at Isaac and Amin; both shrugged their shoulders.

  “That’s how we make our plaster cast,” the old man grunted, without looking up. “It will soon get hard as a piece of wood.”

  Within minutes everything was ready for the old man to begin. He removed Amin’s shirt and untied the bloodied handkerchief over the broken skin. The mother tore a bed sheet and handed rectangular pieces to Abu Khalil. The old man spread the pieces of cloth on the floor, covered them with a thick layer of horse and black sheep hair, then poured on it the mix of eggs and fenugreek. Then he applied the plaster to the arm.

  In his own primitive way the old man was an expert, Yousif begrudgingly admitted. He worked deftly and without wasted motion. His bony and yellowed fingertips were sensitive to the slightest imperfection. He massaged the arm and pulled at it from the wrist and tried to set the shattered bones in place—one at a time.

  “Aaaah . . .” Amin screamed, closing his eyes and gnashing his teeth.

  The scream jolted Yousif and made him turn his head away. Isaac looked about to faint. But the old man and Amin’s mother took the agony in stride. The old man broke an empty sugar box into long narrow pieces and made a splint out of them. He wrapped more cloth and mix around the supportive wood, then put the mended arm through a sling he had tied around Amin’s neck.

  At the end of the operation, which had taken no more than fifteen minutes, Amin’s mother brought a pot of Turkish coffee for the old man. Abu Khalil seemed satisfied with a job well done and was now rolling another cigarette. He chuckled at the sight of Amin’s mother holding the coffee tray and looked around the room as if to tell the young boys, “she must be crazy.” Everyone laughed, even Amin, whose pain seemed to be easing. Yousif liked the old man’s sense of humor, his long white beard, and his impish blue eyes.

  “If I had known that’s all I was going to get for my effort,” the old man chided the mother, “I would’ve stayed at the coffeehouse.”

  “What on earth do you mean, Abu Khalil?” the mother asked, setting the coffee tray on a small straw chair before him. “It’s good fresh coffee. Let it rest a minute before you pour it.”

  “Mama,” Amin said, impatient. “He wants a drink. A glass of arak, not a cup of coffee.”

  “I see,” she said, catching on and smiling. “A drink, here? In a Muslim home?”

  No one answered. Yousif knew that some Muslims drank and sneaked bottles of liquor to their homes as much as the Christians did, if not more. Abu Khalil himself was a Muslim, and he had been known to polish off many a glass.

  Finally, she turned to the old man and shook her head. “You drink too much,” she reproached him. “It’s not good for you.”

  “You talk too much,” Abu Khalil told her, his small eyes twinkling. “It’s not good for you.”

  They all laughed and the old man’s chuckle was the loudest.

  Four days later Amin’s arm had to be amputated.

  4

  It was getting fairly dark when Yousif and Isaac left Amin’s home on the day of the accident. Yousif couldn’t wait to get home and tell his parents what had happened. After parting from Isaac at the wheat presser, Yousif ran the last two blocks home. At the wrought-iron gate, he paused and took a deep breath. The scent of the roses in the garden permeated the air. He was glad to see his father’s green Chrysler parked in the driveway.

  Yousif sprang up the steps two at a time. While still on the balcony he could hear the radio blaring an Abd al-Wahhab song, “Ya Jarat al-Wadi”, one of his favorites. But the first thing he did when he burst into the house was head for the living room on his left and turn the radio off.

  He found his mother in the kitchen getting supper ready. Fatima was with her. The noisy primus, a portable one-eyed stove, was flaming red, and the tiny kitchen was so hot that he could see sweat running down his mother’s neck. But she seemed happy enough—even in her faded, blue, short-sleeved dress. With the sleeves of her black ankle-length dress rolled up and pot holders in both hands, Fatima was about to produce one of his favorite dishes, makloubeh.

  “You wouldn’t believe what happened,” he began, breathless.

  Fatima got too close to the primus and jerked away from the heat.

  “Mother . . .” he said.

  “Step back, son,” his mother cautioned, concentrating on what she was doing. “I’ll be with you in just a minute.”

  He flattened himself against the wall to make room for their maneuvering between the sink and the cooking counter.

  “Amin broke his arm,” he blurted, kicking himself for his poor timing. He didn’t want his mother and Fatima to drop the pot between them or to get scorched. But they did not seem to have heard him.

  “In the name of the Cross,” his mother prayed, as she always did at the start of anything remotely serious. She covered the deep pot Fatima was holding with a large aluminum baking tray. Then both women entangled four arms to turn the whole thing upside down. They were both relieved that it didn’t spill. His mother tapped the bottom and the sides of the pot and waited for a few seconds before lifting it slowly. To their satisfaction and Yousif’s utter amazement, all the contents of the pot, to the last grain of rice, were now on the tray. Standing about a foot and a half high, with a circumference of about thirty inches, the makloubeh looked delicious. Yousif loved the aroma of its rice, cubed lamb meat, potatoes, cauliflower, and an assortment of spices. The pungent steam that arose filled his nostrils and made him ravenous.

  “Now, what were you saying?” his mother asked, turning the faucet on and washing her hands. “I couldn’t hear a word you said.”

  He waited for her to turn the water off and look at him.

  “What is it?” she asked, her eyes narrowing.

  “Amin broke his arm,” he told her.

  “Oh, my God!” she exclaimed, her fingers touching her lips.

  “Haraam,” Fatima said. “What a pity!”

  “Where’s father?”

  “In the bathroom,” his mother answered, her crimson face turning pale.

  He left them stunned and went to look for his father. The bathroom door was open and the doctor was shaving. He was wearing a purplish robe and his thin, receding hair was wet. He had just taken a shower.

  “Father, Amin had a terrible accident,” Yousif told him.

  His father, whose old-fashioned razor was poised to slide down his lathered chin, stopped and stared. “What kind of accident?”

  “He broke his arm. I tried to get them to let you set it, but they called old man Abu Khalil instead.”

  “Hmmmm!” the doctor said, pouting. “Was the skin broken? Did he bleed at all?”

  “See,” Yousif answered, pointing to a spot of blood on his shirt.

  “That’s no good,” the doctor said, stirring his stubby brush in a fancy cup of scented shaving soap.

  “And that old fool Abu Khalil kept blowing his nose and working on Amin’s arm without washing his hands.”

  “I’ll have to stop by and give him a shot,” the doctor said, lathering his face.

  Five minutes later the three-member family sat in the small dining room for dinner. The gloom was palpable.

  “How did Amin break his arm?” his father finally asked, wiping his glasses with a linen napkin.

  “A stone wall collapsed under him.”

  “Where were you?” his mother wanted to know.

  “In the woods. By the Roman arch.”

  Bot
h parents looked at each other and then at Yousif.

  “What were you doing there?” his father inquired.

  “Following some tourists. At first they looked like lovers. Amin, Isaac, and I thought it would be fun to see what they were up to.”

  His mother looked flabbergasted. “It would be fun?” she asked.

  “We thought we might catch them kissing or—” he admitted.

  His father eyed him sternly. “I’m dismayed. Didn’t it occur to you that you might’ve been intruding?”

  Yousif felt embarrassed, but he was too excited to let them reprimand him.

  “But wait,” he said. “What these tourists were really up to was espionage.”

  Again his parents looked at him in amazement. “You certainly are full of news today,” his mother told him, passing a small basket of bread.

  “I’m convinced they were Zionist spies,” Yousif insisted. “Why did they need cameras and binoculars and tripods and duffle bags if they were just on a romantic outing?”

  “What did you think they needed them for?” his father asked, chewing.

  “I thought they were surveying these hills for military purposes,” Yousif said. “But Amin fell and we lost them. I wish to God he hadn’t.”

  Throughout the meal Yousif told them about the compass and where he had found it. To him, it was conclusive evidence that those who dropped it were more than just ordinary Jewish tourists.

  His mother shook her head at his seemingly incredible theories. “You need to take a shower and get dressed quickly. It’s a quarter to seven already.”

  “Dressed for what?” Yousif asked, glancing at his wrist watch.

  “The special show at Al-Andalus Hotel. Have you forgotten?”

  “It totally slipped my mind,” Yousif said. “Isaac mentioned it this morning.”

  He had meant to go back and be with Amin, but the thought of joining his parents at the hotel garden seemed irresistible. Besides, there was a good chance Salwa might be there. He would be able to tell her about Amin and his afternoon adventure. He might even get a chance to dance with her. For the last two weeks he had been tutoring her ten- and twelve-year old brothers, Akram and Zuhair. Every time he went to their house, he had been able to see her. But seeing her was nothing compared to their dancing together.