Free Sabra Zoo by Mischa Hiller

pigeonholed me, and the truth was I didn’t feel one thing or the other. Maybe, I thought, sucking half-dissolved sugar from the bottom of my glass, I had the perfect name. Maybe it wasn’t my problem at all, but everybody else’s. I was interrupted by Eli tugging at my sleeve, telling me she had to get back to work.
    At the hospital the English film crew was on the kids’ ward filming the photogenic girl having her prosthetic refitted. There were more medics around the bed than the girl had ever seen, even when she came in with her leg dangling by cartilage several weeks before. Youssef was heckling in English from his bed.
    â€˜Have my picture! I can speak the English. I love England. I love Manchester United.’ He sniggered as the girl tried to walk with the prosthetic.
    I told him to shut up, asked him whether he was going to try walking himself rather than just mocking others.
    â€˜I have nowhere to go,’ he said. ‘Anyway, I prefer the wheelchair.’ He’d discovered that he could shoot around in a wheelchair, terrorising those who couldn’t move as quickly.
    â€˜You need to exercise your legs. Eli will be angry with you,’ I said.
    The cameraman rearranged people around the girl’s bed.
    â€˜Eli is going home soon. Anyway, she doesn’t get angry.’ Youssef started to throw roasted nuts at the gathering around the girl’s bed, making bomb-falling noises to accompany their flight. One landed on the producer’s head.
    â€˜What do you mean?’ I asked, taking the bag of nuts from him.
    â€˜She’s never angry, she’s too soft.’
    â€˜No, not that – what do you mean she’s leaving soon?’
    Youssef’s face lit up. ‘You don’t know that your girlfriend is leaving,’ he said in an annoying sing-song voice.
    I could feel my ears get hot. ‘She’s not my girlfriend,’ I said, loud enough for the soundman to look round angrily and ask for yet another take.
    I found Eli with Samir in the lobby. She was laughing at some joke of his a little too enthusiastically.
    â€˜You want a lift back to town?’ Samir asked me. I told him I’d meet him outside but he stayed where he was.
    â€˜I need to speak to her alone,’ I told him in Arabic.
    â€˜ OK , I understand,’ he said in English, winking and grinning at Eli.
    â€˜What was that about?’ asked Eli, pointing at Samir’s back.
    â€˜Is it true you’re leaving soon? When are you leaving? You didn’t tell me you were leaving.’
    She put up her hands to shield herself from my barrage. ‘Relax. Did you think I was staying for ever?’ Her voice was low, her tone even, and this calmed me down, made me realise that I was being unreasonable.
    â€˜I’m sorry. I didn’t ask when you were going home before. I forget that you have a life waiting for you outside this,’ I said, gesturing at the lobby. She nodded. There seemed to be more women and children camped in the lobby than before. I couldn’t understand why they were here.
    â€˜I’m due to leave on the fifteenth. I’ve been trying not to think about it.’ She pulled at her obsolete wedding ring. ‘It will be difficult to go.’ I studied a small blemish on her right iris. She looked at me with questioning eyes. I wanted to kiss her; instead I stuffed my hands deep into my pockets. Despite myself, I was leaning towards her. Eli looked at me with concern, pulling back.
    â€˜Let’s talk later,’ she said, looking around, worried about how this would look. I was behaving like the teenager I was. I heard a siren outside, a screeching of tyres then screaming and shouting. These were not good sounds. Four men, one of them Samir, were rushing into the lobby with a stretcher. A shrieking teenage boy was on it, his right leg ending below the knee in a stub of bone and blackened flesh. His left leg was intact but a bloody