On the Hills of God. Ibrahim Fawal

reaching them, the rider pulled upon the reins. He looked familiar, but Yousif could not place him. The horse whinnied, slowed down, circled, and then came to a full stop.

      “What happened?” the rider asked, addressing Amin.

      “I fell and broke my arm,” Amin answered, clutching his injured arm.

      “Let me see,” the rider said, dismounting. He handed Yousif the reins to his horse, saying, “My name is Fayez Hamdan.”

      The rider, Yousif observed, wore the traditional fellaheen robe, which folded around his body like a kimono and was tied with a black sash. A corner of the hem was raised and tucked under the sash, exposing the long baggy off-white sirwal.

      Yousif noticed that the rider had a dagger attached to his right side. He also had one front tooth missing and two others covered with gold. Yousif wondered what the man might have done with that dagger if he had discovered the spies.

      “An injured arm needs attention,” Fayez Hamdan said, pulling out a large red and white scarf and tying it around Amin’s neck like a sling. Slowly but deftly he lifted Amin’s arm and put it through the loop.

      “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