Free On the Hills of God by Ibrahim Fawal

Amin?”
    Yousif expelled his breath. “Pretty bad. He has developed gangrene.”
    “Oh, I’m so sorry. Is his arm in real danger?”
    “Absolutely. Maybe even his life. Father says if they can’t stop the gangrene from spreading it might kill him. Mother, can you believe all this?”
    “No, I can’t. It happened so fast.”
    “It’s that Abu Khalil. Every time I remember his blowing his damn nose while working on Amin’s hand . . .”
    “It’s just meant to be, son,” his mother said. “The death of the uncle, the trip to Gaza. None of this helped. It just piled up on poor Amin.”
    “If anything happens to him I don’t know what I’ll do.”
    “God forbid, nothing is going to happen to him. I’ll keep him in my prayers. And call me whenever you can. I’ll be right here.”
    “Mother, will you send a word to Isaac?”
    “No need to. I’m sure he’ll be back. He said he would.”
    After he hung up the receiver, Yousif sat in the hospital administrator’s office, thinking. The bright summer day began to grow dusky in his eyes. How quickly and mercilessly, he thought, could life turn on the least suspecting. A few days ago Amin was in pink condition, eager to catch lovers in the act. Now his arm was broken and his hand black and blue. Who would have thought this could happen overnight? Who would have thought one’s own life could be threatened when least expected? No wonder people did not trust happiness.
    They spent the night in Jaffa. But Yousif did not sleep. Early the next morning he called his mother again, sounding more and more depressed. The gangrene, he said, could be stopped only by amputation. That was in the morning. By late afternoon, Amin’s left arm had been cut off above the elbow.
    A curtain of gloom descended on the doctor and his family when they sat that night on the balcony. Yousif’s heart and mind throbbed with sorrow for Amin, as he looked around the circle of friends and relatives. Several neighbors were there. One was a barber who catered to the villagers. He was big enough to be a wrestler and his mustache was as thick as the Kaiser’s. His wife wore the traditional ankle-length costume, took snuff, and cackled like a hen. Another visitor was a man who had spent most of his life in Brazil. Now that he was nearsighted and his mouth was slightly twisted from the ravages of Bell’s palsy, he had come to retire in Palestine. He struck Yousif as pathetic, for he seemed an outsider—a stranger—in both “homes.” His wife was Spanish, had big dimples, and spoke the few Arabic phrases she knew with such a heavy accent that she was almost unintelligible.
    Cousin Salman, the bald-headed shopkeeper, looked smaller than usual, for he sat with his arms folded and his eyes glued to the floor. Salman specialized in potions for the lovesick and was known as the druggist for the superstitious. Of all their relatives, the doctor enjoyed this nephew’s company the most. Salman amused him with stories about customers who’d come for potions to stop their husbands from cheating or to make a certain man or woman fall in love with them. But tonight, Salman was as sorrowful as one of his jilted lovers.
    Sixty-year-old Uncle Boulus, Yousif’s mother’s only brother, was also deep in thought. A prosperous grain merchant who lived a few doors away, Uncle Boulus was known for his sharp business nose and considerable common sense. This intelligent and respectable man loved to sit at his doorstep, where people from all walks of life would stop and chat with him, sometimes unloading their most intimate burdens. If Uncle Boulus had something to say tonight, Yousif reflected, he was keeping it to himself. Uncle Boulus sat in silence, flicking thirty or forty yellow beads as though they were a rosary. Those worry beads were his trademark, for Yousif never saw his uncle without them.
    But of all the night visitors, none impressed Yousif as much as cousin Basim, who happened to be in town. Basim