On the Hills of God. Ibrahim Fawal

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 breath, 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