There is no school for them. Neither here nor in Sidon, I said, raising my voice so that she would hear me, even if she was already standing in the kitchen.
I noticed that I was constantly watching myself. I was studying me just like a man who has to keep close watch over another man. Out on the street, holding onto my sons, one in each hand, I would have appeared—to someone who might see me from the window of our house, for example—as a timid man. My gait would have told them as much: I looked as though I were trying to conceal or erase every step I took with the step that followed it. I had to drag my sons forward with me, to urge them to go faster, in order to make it clear to them that my intention was to punish the tall boy or at least to face his father directly and speak to him in a commanding, even ominous, voice.
Where were you when he hit you with the rock, where? I asked, illustrating my intention with what I hoped was a suitably threatening expression to go along with my words. We were in the middle of the wide square, about where I figured Ahmad had been when he was struck. I thought he hadn’t understood me, so I repeated my question and acted out the scene: the rock being thrown, sailing through the air to hit his head. But he just went on staring at me with that brooding, hooded gaze of his.
I started pressing for an answer, even though I was very aware that I wasn’t the kind of man who would take the issue to its logical conclusion anyway. From above, from the balcony of our house, which sat high on its stilts and was now behind us, we would have been a strange sight, standing out there in the middle of the square. Me, my back stooped as my hands grasped both boys firmly, and them balking, both of them, trying to stand their ground and making no response to the flailings of my hands or my expression as I brought my face down and very close to Ahmad’s. Here? From here? Is this where he threw it and hit you? I began asking, pointing across the square with a sweep of my arm. Here? Or there, was he over there? My finger now indicated the narrow lane at the end of the square. He made no answer, nor did his brother, who had been so full of zeal when we were still in the house. Ayman had understood his brother’s reluctance. Perhaps he knew, with that sort of tacit accord that they shared, that it was better for them to remain reticent.
I tugged on their arms and then I let them go so I could show them my fists, closed and taut. They would sense the strength there and not be afraid. Their fear upset me so much that now I really wanted them to lead me to this lad. I started dragging them over to where the houses began, forgetting—or not caring—how we would appear to anyone who happened to be observing us, especially if they were able to study our faces. Now the two of them walked obediently, complying doggedly with the fierce tug of my hands. When we reached the head of the lane I pointed to one of the houses and asked, Here? Is this the one? Turning to the house facing it, I repeated my words. Dragging them, I walked the entire length of the little street. My anger was growing as I turned from one façade to the next and pointed, again and again. It did occur to me, as furious as I was, that I would not know what to say if anyone opened their door and saw me like this, propelling my two sons along in front of their home.
Did you find him?
She had left the door open so that she could ask her question the instant I appeared at the top of the outside steps. I didn’t answer. My fury had tired me out because it had pulled me away from the person I was. Anyway, she didn’t say another word. She meant her contempt to just hang there in the air, an oblique presence, fleeting enough that I would not really even be able to respond.
It wasn’t that she was ignoring my illness or forgetting its presence. When I lingered in the doorway to the reception room she waved to the two boys to stay outside rather than going in with me. He wants to be alone, she muttered in a tight voice that they would not even have heard as she turned to shepherd them along in front of her to another room, away from me. No, it isn’t that she overlooked or forgot my sickness. The way I saw it, she had demoted my illness from the position it ought to have gone on occupying, there at the front of her brain, and had left it to find its own little corner in that confused and complicated mass of thoughts at the very bottom of her head.
Your father didn’t stop vomiting until mid-afternoon, she commented, this time not even coming near the doorway.
And now? Is he still vomiting?
Go and see for yourself.
The children, all three of them, were massed in that narrow space at the end of the corridor, leaving the door closed between him and them. I stopped there a moment to pinch Hiba’s cheek. She was sitting on her little chair, submitting to the slow advance of the large comb that Ayman was pulling through her hair.
I’m here, Father. I’ve come.
Everything around him looked clean. He sat slumped over, but his dishdasha wasn’t soiled and there was nothing on the floor directly in front of him. But I did catch a whiff of vomit that soap and water hadn’t succeeded in suppressing. When I bent over, wanting to get close to him, and brought my face near his, the residue of that odor got stronger.
We will change your dishdasha, Father, I said, keeping my eyes on his face as though I was waiting for him to agree.
He didn’t answer. That is, he didn’t make any of those usual responses of his that I understood and that told me what he wanted. He didn’t raise his head, for instance, even that minimal movement that let me know he was awake and had heard me and understood what I had just said. He kept his eyes lowered, fixed somberly on the fabric of his dishdasha where it covered his legs.
We’ll change the dishdasha . . . we’ll do that now, we’ll get you a clean dishdasha.
In his periods of alertness he would give his body an almost imperceptible shake, which meant that he was preparing himself for what I was about to do. This time, though, he remained exactly as he was, hands gripping the armrests, head bowed as though he were deep in thought or had fallen asleep sitting there.
This smell, we’ll get rid of it, I said, which was my way of declaring that we would do that but at the same time of asking—as I did with everything I said to him—whether he agreed.
We’ll bathe you right here, I said, twisting back to look at him as I was already turning to go out.
A few moments later I came back in, shutting the door behind me. The water is heating up, I said. Just a few more minutes and it will be hot. I didn’t know if he could smell his own vomit, but with his head bent like this it would be hard to escape that smell, hovering there around the lowest part of his chest. I wondered whether keeping his head bent so low was his way of announcing that he had decided to shut down all his senses, or at least to bolt the door against the possibility that anything might reach him by means of his senses.
Here’s the water. Hot water.
I set the little plastic tub down on the floor in front of him, as close as I could to where he sat. And we’ll keep the door closed, I said as I retraced my steps to shut it. When I came back, ready to take off his dishdasha, he jerked his head upward—so suddenly that it seemed as if this movement was unexpected even to him—and he looked straight at me. But seconds later, his expression seemed to say he regretted this moment of alertness. He shut his eyes again after seeming to glance momentarily at the objects nearest to him.
I’m going to lift you now. Help me to raise you up.
He was so light that it only took one hand to keep him lifted slightly off his seat. After I had brought his dishdasha up above his waist I sat him down again, his legs exposed. The bare skin attracted his attention. He stared at his legs. Maybe he was surprised by how pale they were or how thin they had become.
I took him unawares, too, telling him to lift his arms so that I could pull the dishdasha off him entirely, tugging it from his chest and over his head.