Hassan left the municipal hospital early. It was a Friday afternoon, the heat pouring through the windows, making the patients moan in pain and thirst and reducing rolls of medical tape to soft, useless masses of glue. He took his leave without a word to anyone, as was his custom, threading his way through the emergency room crowds, the hands reaching for him, touching him, grasping for his attention. There was no other way to enter or exit the hospital. Bodies bloody and dismembered came through these doors —sometimes on a stretcher, more often on foot — ragged clothes hanging at odd angles, fresh pieces of gauze distributed by earnest young women who helped soothe the patients as they waited and waited and sometimes died in the heat and stench of the ward.
Hassan held his breath as he passed, too many open mouths breathing death here, their inner rot expelled with every uttered word. Please, please doctor, please. He felt the hands tug at his clothes, too weak to bother brushing off, a single hand wrapped strongly round his wrist. He jerked around, could not tell which body owned the hand, pulled away.
“Ass,” he hissed as he walked on. He made a mental note to wash that wrist particularly well that evening. And inwardly he cursed his fate, a doctor once tapping on the chests of newborns to clear their lungs, now sewing fingers to their hands and staunching blood from leaky bodies. The hours spent in residency under clean hygienic lights, sterile tools, separately sealed, a life of schedules and temperance, of smiling into the faces of beautiful rotund women, their bellies huge with child, optimistic and self-absorbed, and reassuring them of things he knew that nature would take care of even in his absence. But doctoring was no longer a profession, not now, not here. Here, now, he was simply a surgeon, a mechanic on the assembly line working among hulls that should have been scrapped long before he ever saw them in consultation. Wretched dirty animals, he called them. And this thought ran through his mind as he rounded the corner and viewed the ward once more before he left the hospital: all these wretched dirty animals. Should have left when we had the chance, he thought, would have been better than this.
He walked slowly up the dusty street that led to his home, laboring under the weight of the afternoon sun, his briefcase in hand, its leather handles frayed and splintered from years of use. He scrambled from one patch of shade to the next, the heat blistering his feet through the flimsy soles of his shoes. A rotting goat carcass sat in the ditch, its smell of offal and sweet-sickly death perfuming the afternoon. The breeze scooped up a handful of sand to toss in his eyes as he scurried from shadow to shadow. Down the street he went, blowing the dust from his lungs to keep from screaming at the heat of the road under his feet, pausing before the chemist’s shop to see if Alifa, the neighborhood gossip, spied him from her window above, but there was no trace of her hand holding the curtain aside to watch the comings and goings of the street below.
“Doctor!” called Said, the chemist. “Good to see you!” The chemist’s shop displayed only a handful of sun-baked vials of expired tablets on dusty shelves. A bottle of aspirin brought from France sat alone in the window, the lettering faded.
“Good afternoon, Said,” Hassan said, tipping an imaginary hat to the old man. Old rituals for old men, for a time when he walked the streets with dignity, his shoulders not nearly as crooked as they were now. There goes the doctor. The obstetrician. The best obstetrician. Once that was the chant that whispered after him. Now he worked alongside the other drones, the surgeons, his arms covered to the elbow in gore, nurses holding his lunch above a patient’s inert body as he took a bite, no time to sit in the cafeteria, no time to linger over a cup of tea, only time to salvage the wounded who were badly losing on a battlefield as wide and broad as the city itself. So many enemies, so difficult to tell; how luxurious, Hassan thought, to live in a world of only good and evil. He lowered his eyes and continued walking home.
He slowed before the tea shop, dropped his bag, wondered if he had enough time to sit and drink a single cup. He stood in the blinding sun and watched a pair of businessmen in their suits, the sole pair of patrons sitting outside at one of the outdoor tables, their heads erect despite the heat, their faces dimpled with sweat, sipping tea. They shared a newspaper, wet moons of newsprint where their sweaty palms had held a page. Nostalgia swept across him with the ruffling of the breeze, a single breath of hot air that raced down the street and disappeared. He longed to join them, saw himself approach, sit down, the table shined to a high silver gleam, the dust turned to cool tiles, the unrinsed glasses turned to china. He must go at once, he thought. And, in his mind, he heard Dima’s shrill recriminations. It was true: being late might mean being dead. And she was expecting his arrival. He picked up his bag to continue his walk home.
“Mr. Al-Awad?” Hassan turned slowly to face the businessmen.
“Doctor Al-Awad,” he said.
“Oh, yes, yes, excuse me. Excuse me.”
One of the businessmen got up from the table and walked towards Hassan, his stomach bulging from the waistband of his pants, his shirt colored a darker blue where his sweat had collected. He extended a hand to Hassan. “Doctor Al-Awad. It is a pleasure.” Hassan bowed slightly in acknowledgement; the man frowning slightly as he withdrew his hand.
“Yes?”
“I am Mohammed al-Wadi.”
Hassan nodded.
“I am your neighbor — your new neighbor.”
“I didn’t realize anyone new was moving to the neighborhood.”
“Oh, you know, it’s true, not very good circumstances. But the house is lovely!”
“Which house?” Hassan asked.
“Number 28.”
“Number 28. Oh yes.”
Hassan examined the man, tried to imagine how he could have leapt ahead of the others on the waiting list, tried to assess his allegiance, which wartime philosophy, if any, the man subscribed to. And Hassan recalled the long days of patience he and Dima had endured at the hands of his in-laws before they could move into their own home, children piling up in their room amid the clothes and coffeemaker and medical texts. Someone’s cousin, he thought, or someone’s lackey. Someone’s favorite — but whose, he wondered, for the house had been vacant only a month.
“Yes, we’ve just gotten married — I understand you’ve a wife and children, no? We should have dinner, perhaps, if your schedule permits.”
Hassan said nothing, let the man shift his bulk uncomfortably from one foot to the other. “A pleasure meeting you,” Hassan offered, “but I really must go.”
“Of course! Of course!” the man said. “A pleasure! It was a pleasure indeed!”
Hassan felt a bubble of fury rise in his throat as he continued his walk home, the sweaty gleam of the man reminding him of the indignities of his life, a life of ease stolen from his family by the whimsy of a king, now deposed, living comfortably in the Fifth Arrondissement. And the image of his childhood teas floated before his mind’s eye, homemade scones still hot sitting on a colorful plate, his nanny spreading the tablecloth while the black tea steeped in its pot, a linen napkin pressed carefully across his lap. Now, he thought, he had to squabble with the likes of that businessman over a chair at a dirt-floored café for a tea served in a cup washed with cold water and the pressure of a thumb. More wretched dirty animals. He ground his teeth and bowed his head and walked home.
No, Kamal thought, no reason for them to know, no reason to tell. Nothing had happened. They had watched from a distance. A hundred other witnesses. A thousand even. And what had they seen? A cart, a donkey, a dark green sedan, a knot of men, a flash of bills held high in the air, copper coins raining on their heads as they ran away.
“Where have you been?” his mother Dima asked. She was short and plump and youthful, a shine of perspiration coloring her face, making her eyeliner run by late afternoon. She stood in the kitchen chopping okra and eggplant, Kamal’s silent sisters, Yasmin and Kalifa, humbly slicing cucumbers into strips no wider than a hair.
“Out,” he said.
“Out where?”
“Just out.”
He struggled for a quick lie. “Faisal and I went for a walk.” He imagined the lie as a great cotton sheet snapped fresh from the laundry, billowing upwards and slowly wafting down to cover the half-eaten bones and bloody mess of his afternoon.
“In this heat?” She looked skeptical.
“Yes.” She eyed him cautiously, still believing that, as in her own time, a meaningful stare would beckon the truth from her fourteen-year-old son.
“Go take a bath,” she said, “you stink like that carcass in the ditch.”
Kamal gratefully left, the scolding twitterings of his sisters following him down the hallway, two crows gossiping, their straight black hair falling across their faces like a pair of glossy black wings.
He stood before the mirror, peeling his clothes from his skin, rings of dirt encircling his neck and wrists, giant smudges of oil wiped along his belly, a thin line of blood running down his side, already crusting over, a single bruise, in the shape of a thumbprint, blackening his collarbone. A light rap on the door; the heated water was ready; his sisters silently left him two buckets on the ground before the bathroom door, the steam noticeable only in the dank coolness of the bathroom. He filled the porcelain tub and climbed in, stretching out in the semi-darkness of the bathtub while he watched the steam rise and, in return, the moldy stalactites drip their guano into his bath. He lay completely still, his eyes closed, tried to slow the rabbit’s heart that fluttered within his chest, tried to find solace in the voices of his sisters and mother, the frying pan clattering against the stovetop, the slam of the door and the footstep of his father.
“Kamal!” called Dima. “Get out already! Your father’s home — it’s time to eat!”
“They’ve taken Suhayl,” Hassan said quietly. Suhayl was a colleague of Hassan’s, another doctor at the hospital. His words interrupted the silence of their dinner, the scraping of plates and swallowing of food.
“What?” Dima asked.
“He was easy,” he continued, his voice low. Suhayl the Perfect, Hassan thought, Suhayl whose arms were soaked in gore to his armpits, who cooed to the filthy near-dead, the animals Hassan was only too glad to shake off at the end of the day, with the affection of a mother.
Dima shook her head, worried for the ears of her children.
“No,” he said, “they should know.”
He glanced awkwardly around the table, briefly examining his daughters and son. “What’s not to know these days?”
He chewed before he spoke again. “Suhayl — you remember him, don’t you?” He waited for a nod of acknowledgement. “Suhayl’s been taken. Sometime last night. Probably early this morning. Could have been earlier — he had a couple of days off and left early his last shift. No one can be certain, of course, because he lived alone. No wife keeping tabs. But he didn’t show today and when we sent ‘round the jobber, he wasn’t there and his house was a shambles.”
“Ransacked?” asked his mother.
“What do you think?”
She turned her eyes to her lap.
Hassan paused. “But he’ll be fine!” he said brightly, world-weary sarcasm edging his voice. “He’s too useful to kill. I mean, all of them need surgeons — who the hell knows who took him? Too many bloody sides to keep count. The Volunteers? The Rebels? Everyone needs help these days — why not kidnap one of ours? Fat lot of good he’s doing them back at the hospital. Why not borrow him? Why not recruit him? I’m sure he volunteered,” he said. “What the hell do they need anyone for anyway? It’s hardly as if we’re winning this war. Haven’t they killed all of us already? I mean, hell, the number of filthy wretches I see each day … ”
“Hassan,” Dima hissed, frowning.
And Hassan stopped, closed his eyes, cradled his head in his hands, and gazed at his plate, remembering Suhayl. He was not the image of a doctor: plump, a second chin already developing, his arms grown flabby like a woman’s and his character equally as soft and round and gentle. But it had been his hands, the enormous delicacy of his hands, the smooth, slenderness of his fingers and perfect fleshiness of his palms — it was Suhayl’s hands that made him a surgeon devoutly followed by the crippled, the maimed, and the ugly. And the war had created many of them. Hassan recalled Suhayl sewing toes to a woman’s hand, a desperate choice, singing quietly to his woozy patient, her drugged laughter rising above the din of screams and wails that filled the ward. So perfect, so perfect, so good, thought Hassan, so bloody fucking good in all he did, the surgeries, of course, but the petty attentions to the patients, too, even the dying, the near-death, the shouldn’t-waste-your-time-or-our-resources.
The family sat at the table in silence as they watched Hassan, his hands digging at the roots of his hair, its curls twisting oddly between his fingers, uncovering its grayness. He grew still, his hands squeezing his head tightly, a small moan escaping his body, long and low, sustained; a wail of frustration and sorrow and fury. The pang of sorrow could not quite contain the pang of guilt Hassan felt trickle into his grief: A shiver of perverse delight crept over him as he realized that the zookeeper of the wretched dirty animals was gone.
Kamal sat at the table, felt his heart lighten, its rabbitty flutter begin again, and pushed the tines of his fork into the palm of his hand to keep himself still. The image of his afternoon swelled before him: money changing hands, held high in the air, as the man’s head was forced low, shoved into the back of the sedan. This is how it’s done, Faisal had said. How war is waged and populated, how we live and die. The man, a stranger, but like all men with shaded eyes and little beard and arms folded back like a pigeon’s wings, scrambled in his captors’ hands. Two calls to his family, hissed forlornly as he stumbled to the car, but when they did not answer, he straightened his back, regaining his dignity despite the ashy dust graying his hair. And the man’s family wept and counted bills as Kamal and Faisal watched him disappear in a cloud of red silty earth churned free by the tires of the car and when the family realized their shame had been witnessed by two boys, they pelted them with coins, the traders’ laughter only increasing the family’s zeal.
“Open up!”
“Open up!” called the voice again. Hassan rolled over and looked at his alarm clock: three a.m. It was a man’s voice, serious and loud, a fist pounding steadily on the wooden door, the iron knocker dancing in response.
“Bloody fucking hell,” Hassan said.
And Kamal heard his mother whimper to his father in the next room, please, please, please, don’t go down there, ignore them. He heard his father stir, the floorboards creak beneath his feet, and gripped his coverlet fiercely, even in the sweltering nighttime heat.
“Open up!” yelled the voice again. Neighboring shutters could be heard opening on unoiled hinges.
“No!” Dima said. “Let it be.”
“They won’t be going away,” Hassan said.
The shutter fell open. “What do you want?” Hassan called. And, “Would you please be quiet?”
His words hung in electric air, silent yet living, every ear pressed to its door, every hand to its shutter, a collective breath waiting to be expelled. Even the cicadas had grown silent.
“How many are there?” Dima whispered.
“Two — no, three, maybe,” Hassan said quietly.
“We’ve got a sick child here!” the voice below called.
“Tell them to go to the hospital,” Dima hissed.
“There’s a hospital nearby,” Hassan offered out the window.
“Full up,” the voice said.
Kamal felt a hot trickle of pee run down his leg and sink into the mattress, his heartbeat churning in his ears. Don’t tell, the trader had said, his hand tucked under Kamal’s chin, don’t tell now, will you? The things that happen when people tell, they’re very bad, worse than this. Faisal had cleared the fence, his form fading into the shimmering heat of the junkyard, only Kamal was left behind, his throat held by the trader’s hand.
“No,” Dima hissed again. “Tell them to go away.”
“I’m afraid I can’t help,” Hassan said. “Did you try the chemist’s down the street?”
A shutter thumped open elsewhere on the street, a sweaty hand no longer able to grip the slippery iron strut.
“You’re a doctor, aren’t you?” the voice chided. “We need an examination, not a pill or powder.”
“Tell them to go away and find another hospital!” Dima said.
“What the bloody hell do you think I’m doing?”
“Tell them again! Tell them to go away!”
“Open up! Open up!” the voice called from below, angrier, the gate being rattled, the broken pin that once held the wrought iron in place scraping against the crumbling concrete step. And then a human cry rose from the dusty street, a single wailing note that echoed in the night.
“Shit,” Hassan said.
Kamal heard two sets of footsteps careening down the stairs, his father and mother, his mother’s voice calling after his father, telling him no, no, no, it is a ruse, a trick, let them call all night but don’t let them in!
Two men and a boy stood in the dim light of the entryway.
“What do you want?” Hassan asked. Dima stood in the shadows of the stairwell, watching the men, her hand fiercely clutching the wall.
“We’ve come for some help,” the first man said, gesturing towards the boy. The man was tall and thin, with large hands and feet, wearing glasses, a sliver of a callus running down his forehead, skin worn away from much devotional prayer. “May we come in?”
Hassan bent to examine the boy and stood up. “I don’t see anything wrong with him.”
“What kind of doctor are you?”
Hassan paused before answering. “Not a very good one.” He ground his teeth as he spoke: it was a denial of all he was, his schooling and his work, his pedigree and his profession.
“Really? That’s not what we’ve heard.” The man paused. “He’s got a fever, maybe more. Feel his forehead!”
The second man stepped from the shadows, his face red from sun and heat, a handkerchief clasped in his hand. “We heard you’re very good, sir — one of the best. The best. Please.”
Hassan paused before answering. The best? His pride flickered at the mention. “It’s not true.”
Hassan felt a tooth crack, bits of it float in his mouth. We should have left, he thought, we should have left years ago, gone to Brussels or Stockholm or Frankfurt and suffered the indignities of immigrants: the disapproving frowns as we tried to move our tongues around their awkward language, the rustle of passengers changing seats, clearing out, when we board a tram, the air sniffed around us as if an animal lived down the hall. It would have been better than this, he thought. But he had ignored the war, pretended it happened elsewhere, had gone on his rounds as if the wounds he treated were commonplace everywhere, that the wretched dirty animals were typical patients, that countries like France and Australia had whole teams of doctors dedicated to limb reattachments and shrapnel removal.
“I cannot help,” he said. “I really can’t. This boy has no broken bones, no missing digits.”
“Ah … you’re a surgeon then, are you?” the first man said.
“Yes.” By default, he thought. The tooth gave way again; he felt it tilt wildly in his jaw.
The man nodded. “We heard you were the obstetrician, the best one here. Surely you know something about pediatrics, too — you can help this boy.”
Hassan said nothing, felt a twinge of pride. The disdainful smirk of the grocery boy, the children’s tears from schoolyard taunts, it would have been worth it, Hassan thought, better than this.
Gravel crunched beneath tires outside, doors opening and slamming closed, gasps and sighs punctuated the night silence, sounds of a scuffle, the loser in pain, and the front door burst open with a rush of air. Suhayl stumbled forward, his arms held high behind his back, two men accompanying him, his lip blubbering red with blood, his forehead blown open above the eye, his left eye swollen shut, the blood already dried and crusty on his neck and chin.
“Oh God, please,” Suhayl said.
So this is how it’s done, Hassan thought. Shit.
And the man holding Suhayl’s arms pulled them aloft, Suhayl shrinking in pain. “Join them,” he croaked. His arms were pulled higher still. “Us! Us! Join us!” His arms were released and he collapsed onto the dusty tiles of the entryway.
“We need doctors, surgeons,” the man explained. “And this one — so clever — did a nasty thing.” Hassan bent to inspect Suhayl, his breathing shallow, his face drooped against his chest.
“Suhayl,” Hassan said.
“Join them anyway,” Suhayl whispered.
“What?”
And then Hassan noticed Suhayl’s hands, bloody and limp, fingers wobbly and swollen, splayed at erratic angles, broken. Hassan felt his bowels move, fully realized what had happened, why they had come.
“He sabotaged himself. Broke his own bloody hands to spite us.”
Hassan stared at Suhayl, his body limp on the floor, the dusty tiles turning blue and yellow from the drool spilling from his mouth. He had been such a good surgeon, Hassan thought. And he saw Suhayl and the woman trading toes for fingers, her breath stinking of something vaguely tubercular, her eyes glassy and red-rimmed with untreatable disease, Suhayl stroking her head as he finished his song and his stitching. So good to them, he thought.
“But he told us you were available,” the man said. Hassan felt his hands grow cold and rubbery as he considered this statement. He stared at Suhayl’s heaving form lying on the dirty tiles. Fury flickered through Hassan’s body and he suppressed a desire to kick Suhayl, squarely, in the ribs; suppressed the imagined satisfaction he would feel to hear the crack of a single rib beneath his foot. So this is how it’s done, Hassan thought. He had lived with his head down, believing that he could avoid the war if he failed to seek it out, but it found him, had come seeking him out.
“Mr. Al-Wadi said you have a wife, three children?” the man asked.
The businessman. The neighbor. The snitch. Ah, Hassan thought. He paused before answering. “Yes.”
“We can arrange for five thousand for them.”
Suffering round a lousy heater in the midst of winter; cheap flimsy housing in a ghetto; a job far beneath him, as a technician cleaning beakers, emptying trash in a hospital, it would have been worth it, he thought, better than this. He paused. Would it? Five thousand, he thought, enough for them to get out, not enough to live on. And he pictured Dima tailoring clothes, pushing a pramful of children, not her own, for extra cash; cleaning bathrooms and kitchens in an elegant home that would have been theirs if only they had left sooner, before this, before the war.
“Will you volunteer?” the man asked, offering the bills, folded into a wad, to Hassan.
He bowed his head and closed his eyes. Yes, Hassan thought, as if there were a choice. But yes, he thought, it will be okay, better than this: no busboy job, no shit-hole apartment, no humiliation while he stood on a corner, his hand waving wildly to hail a taxi in a cold winter rain; no anxious mothers herding their children away from his family’s approach, their funny clothes, their peculiar talk. No longer working for the state, his eyes averted as if the war did not rage around him. He would work for the winning side, the ones who killed and managed to avoid death themselves. He imagined himself the Volunteers’ best surgeon, called upon to perform miraculous repairs, kept like a king, their special envoy, a magician serving their corporals, their generals, their elite. He would drink a cup of tea each afternoon, starched linens dressing the table, the cups fragile, hand-painted, imported from a civilized place. It will be okay, he told himself, better than this.
“Yes,” he said.
Dima appeared from the stairwell, wailing, striking Hassan while she cursed him, his body absorbing her blows.
“No!” she screamed. “How could you? How could you? How could you do this?”
“It’s for the best,” Hassan said. He looked at his wife and felt a pang of remorse: her eyes rimmed with tears, her lips trembling with fear and love. It looked nobler than it was, he realized, as he kissed Dima’s forehead again and again, to volunteer, leaving her to scratch out an existence on a cold continent with their children in tow. How difficult to be Dima, he thought, facing all that hostility in a foreign land alone. It will be okay, he told himself, better than this.
Kamal scrambled to his bedroom window, unlatched the shutters and watched his father’s figure disappear, his head forced low, shoved into the back of the waiting sedan, heard his mother’s wails echo down the silent street, saw, in moonlit silhouette, her upstretched hand, bills clasped firmly in her angry fist, watched as the car pulled away, his mother standing in the street as she fingered the bills one by one, her sobs filling the night sky. He sat on his bed and realized there was no longer any reason to quiet his heart with its rabbitty flutter.
Dear Reader,
In The Fray is a nonprofit staffed by volunteers. If you liked this piece, could you
please donate $10? If you want to help, you can also:
