resounded, producing general mayhem as more people pushed forward furiously toward the soldiers, I thought they had gotten him. Instead of heading directly over there, overcoming my fright, I began shouting again, calling on them to stop. They’ve killed him! They’ve killed him, I yelled over and over from where I stood, my fear now mingling with my anger at him and even a feeling of hatred. When the bullets stopped and the turmoil suddenly ceased, I saw him standing in between the two groups in an empty space. He stood alone, and motionless, shifting only those eyes of his as he stared at the ground in front of him. All the people around him were silent and still as well, as if they knew that only a short pause separated them from an encounter in which, they sensed, many of them would be killed.
This was not like shaking his cane in the faces of the card players or coming forward to slap a driver who had all but crushed a child to death. At times like that I would stand only slightly apart from him, waiting for him to finish his task. Indeed, as we walked away together after one of these incidents—companions, side by side—I would even have the feeling that together, the two of us, we had done what had to be done. But that time, in front of the soldiers with their rifles raised, it seemed to me that with every step forward he took, he was pushing me back, facing me with the prospect of plunging to that nadir I dreaded, the ultimate, lowest point of shame, fear, and ignominy.
That day I hated him. I hated the courage that had allowed him to transform his body—he was sixty years old at the time—into that of a young man, a body that could leap forward and jump high, oblivious to his turban and abaya and the prayer beads that never left his hand. At the same time, I was too abashed to go back and stand next to him in the moment when everything went still. It was the two men falling to the ground that had put a sudden halt to the clash between the two parties. He just stood there unmoving, staring at the two of them lying dead on the ground. Hovering there as if he wanted to prevent the men who crowded together a few steps away from coming any closer. He stood fixed in that pose for a long time. It made the soldiers nervous. They were already scared of what they had done. His silence kept everyone in a state of confusion and disarray, not knowing what to do with their anger, how to use it, or how to get rid of it.
I hated him and I hated that boldness of his that had caused the two men’s deaths. My first glimpse of the two men’s faces was in the newspaper a day or two later. They could not locate a photo for one of them anywhere in his family home. So the newspaper published a photo of him as a dead man. But the photographer snapped it only after they had lifted his head and chest off the ground to make it look as though he were sitting up, like his mate, who was there by his side but looking out from a different photograph.
The two of them had obeyed him so completely that they had left it to him to decide how far to go before stopping. And he went too far, stepping over the line that he should have kept them behind. But he—he—had saved himself by stopping at the last minute, the very edge beyond which any action would be reckless and foolhardy. He did not leave it to his anger or to his boldness to make that decision that would have led him to his own death. He knew he must stop here, at the limit beyond which the possibility that he would die became a certainty.
My son Ahmad grinned at me as he jabbed his finger at the white bandage wrapping his head. Then he pointed at my head and I realized that he was comparing his bandage to my wrapped turban, attempting to make a joke and suggesting that now he was just like me. As I gestured to ask him what was under the bandage, my wife said that one of the other lads had hit him with a rock and drawn blood. For his part, to show me his wound he raised both hands, wanting to slide the bandage off his head. No, no! I said, to stop him. I took his hand and steered him into my reception room so he could tell me how it had happened. My wife told me that the boys in the street were hostile and aggressive to him, and to his brother too. When I had him standing in front of my armchair, he used his hands and body to act out for me how the boys had kept him and his brother away because they didn’t want to include the two of them in their games. When they—he and his brother—went over to them the boys stopped them by waving their hands around and turning their backs to walk away all together without them. I thought of Jawdat, deaf like them and, like them, unable to speak. I remembered how my playmates had screamed into Jawdat’s ear, vying to see which one of them could get his voice into Jawdat’s head. After trying this out several times they invariably turned their backs and resumed their playing, keeping him out of their midst. Sometimes they insisted he stay a certain distance away; they measured that distance out by seeing how far the rocks they pelted him with would go.
The one who had hit Ahmad with the rock was much bigger—a head taller than Ahmad was. My son compressed his lips and turned his palms upward when I asked him if he knew who the boy’s father was. When I started pressing him to get answers to my questions, he answered with gestures that suggested the boy was very tall and liked to pick fights and always had a scowl on his face. My wife, who was standing near the door, inquired whether I was asking about the boy so that I could go and punish him. I turned to her as if to respond somehow, but then without saying anything—and she had paused there, waiting for me to speak—I turned back to my son Ahmad. I reached for the bandage on his head so that I could see the wound. It was hidden beneath his hair, and it hadn’t occurred to my wife to shave the area. No doubt she hadn’t made any effort to clean or disinfect it either.
He should have been taken to the doctor, I said, peering more closely at the wound.
I don’t have a car, I couldn’t take him.
And there’s no one around here who has a car?
She didn’t answer. I knew she would stare at my face for a few moments, from where she stood near the door, at an angle to me, and then would turn around to go into the kitchen.
Once again I asked him who the boy was and who his father was. And as he repeated the same gestures as before, interspersing them with repeated flourishes of his upturned palms to tell me he wasn’t sure, my younger son Ayman came in and began immediately to act out what had happened. He was more energetic about it than his brother had been, and he scowled dramatically as he acted out the way the stone shot from the hand of that tall boy and flew through the air to careen into his brother’s head.
Did you feel dizzy? Dizzy? I asked Ahmad, making motions as if to faint, moving as though I would drop to the floor.
He shook his head vehemently.
You, I said, pointing to Ayman, you know . . . . Then I completed my question about the boy’s father by making the same gestures. I had to appear concerned, and to question them with a sense of urgency, since that is what families do to make their children feel that they are able to protect them.
When Ayman understood what I was asking, his face took on a pensive expression, like he was trying to remember. To help him out and to show how concerned I was, I lowered my hands to my middle and pressed them in against my waist, trying to ask if the boy was fat or thin. Then I reverted to raising my hands over my head as his brother had done. In response to my insistence, little Ayman raised his hand to his head. His gestures said he would recognize the fellow from his thick disheveled hair, which he pictured for me by blowing air from his mouth while his hands circled rapidly and chaotically around his head.
That didn’t mean that I had really gotten Ayman to understand what I was asking. In fact, most often his movements were invented out of thin air because he wanted to convince us that he knew what question he was supposed to be answering. To make certain that I would believe him, he would give his gestures an extra volley of enthusiasm.
Looking in at us from the doorway, my wife said that most of the time the two of them played by themselves. I pictured them in my mind, standing together engrossed in their own silent play while several steps away, a group of boys made a racket with their shouts and their movements.
She stood there motionless next to the door, waiting for me to say something in response to her words. When I remained silent and kept my gaze on Ayman as if to tell him I was once again giving all my attention to what he was telling me, I heard her say, as she turned to go back to the kitchen, It’s not your concern. You’ve got other things to occupy you, after all.
It had not taken her long to get used to the idea of my being an invalid. The last time