How I screamed yesterday! What a racket I made! I tried to run away from the emergency room, but the guidance counselor was strong enough to grab me by the arms. When I tried to break loose, I fell to the floor. She kept clutching me by my clothing and whispering, “You’re not a child. Stop screaming. Look what you’re doing.” I remember lots of people just stood around and stared at us, and the guard came but didn’t do anything, just stood to the side and watched me cry and scream. When my parents and Bassem arrived, I stopped at once.

The last thing I heard was what my father said to his friend about the Jewish whore. How I hated him then. And I hated the guidance counselor even more. She wanted me to stop loving Naomi, or at least try to love Salwa, an Arab girl at school. She was pretty and smart, that’s what the counselor kept telling me. So there I was, on my way back to Jerusalem with my parents. They’d gotten a call from my school, asking them to come with me. I wouldn’t be allowed back in school unless my parents and I met with a psychologist first. There wasn’t much time left — just one more day and one more matriculation exam — but the counselor said they couldn’t assume responsibility for me without the psychologist’s approval.

The psychologist said I was okay, I hadn’t really wanted to die, and the pills I took wouldn’t have hurt me. He believed me when I said I’d read in a book on pharmaceuticals that you need to take as much as 300 milligrams for it to work. He said the information was correct and he was inclined to believe that it wasn’t a suicide attempt. He wanted me to have the pills, but he’d give them to the guidance counselor, and she’d give me one a day, because I was still depressed, and it was a psychiatric prescription, after all.

I have to get back to school. There’s only one day left.

We didn’t talk on the way back to school. We got in the car, same as before. My father fiddled with the dial, looking for the music channel, and swore at Jerusalem for having such lousy reception. He stopped at a steak house for a hummus and a beer. Mother ordered chicken. I didn’t want anything. All I wanted was to get back there, so I could see Naomi. I didn’t have time to spare. My father looked at me and said, “This is too good for you.”

PART FOUR. Hitting Rock Bottom

Chest Pains

I’m walking up the hill that stretches between our house and the mosque, keeping my eyes to the ground, hoping the neighbors passing by have forgotten me by now. Maybe I’ve changed, and they won’t recognize me anymore. I don’t exchange the usual salaam aleikums. I shift my side pack from arm to arm. It’s heavy, and the trek up toward the taxi station is hard going. Normally Father would drive me there. Sometimes he’d take me as far as Kfar Sava, and the first few times, even to Jerusalem. But Father isn’t home now. He’s in the hospital.

When Mother got home, I woke up. She explained that Father hadn’t felt well the night before, and even though they didn’t find anything, they decided to keep him at the hospital for observation. She said there was nothing wrong with him and he’d be discharged soon. If she hadn’t needed to get to work by eight, she would have stayed there till they sent him home. She suggested I stop at the hospital to see him on my way to Jerusalem. I had to go through Kfar Sava anyway to catch the bus. “Sit with him for five minutes,” she said. She was always trying to mediate between Father and me, to improve our relationship.

Six months had gone by since I’d finished school, six months since my last visit home. Father had tried hard to be nonchalant at first, as if he didn’t really care what was happening with me, as if I could go to hell for all he cared. But when he recalled how I’d disgraced him, he’d go berserk and start shouting. “You, our greatest hope, aren’t you ashamed of yourself? Everyone in the village keeps asking me how far you’ve gone. What am I supposed to tell them, that you haven’t even taken your finals?” All the other parents are celebrating their kids’ acceptance into medical school or law or engineering, and my father has to tell people that the Jews haven’t decided yet what to do with my brain. He’s told everyone they’re afraid another country will kidnap me and use my talents.

I don’t have a place of my own in the house anymore. My older brother has put our two beds together to make a queen-size. Whenever I used to come home, Mother would separate the beds and make mine up. But this time she didn’t, and they didn’t clear any space for me in the closet either. I left my clothes in my side pack and slept in Grandma’s room. On a mattress, not in her bed. In the morning, I took my bag and headed for Jerusalem to look for a job. At night, I plan to crash at Adel’s. He’s in law school already, and he has a room in the dorms.

* * *

Mother called four days ago and said my cousin had been killed. “You’ve got to come home for the funeral and the three days of mourning.” She said he’d been playing ball with a few classmates, and it got on the nerves of their crazy drug-addict neighbors. The ball went over the fence and landed in the druggies’ house. The three brothers stormed out with knives and stabbed the kids. Ali was the only one who died. The other kids were injured, but they’re okay. My mother said Ali’s father was stabbed in the chest when he tried to protect the kids. He was in bad shape, but he’d been operated on, and he’d be all right. They hadn’t told him yet. They pretended Ali was okay and had been sent to a different hospital. The doctors said it would be dangerous to give him the news of his son’s death at that point. My parents went to visit him in the hospital yesterday. While they were there, at my uncle’s bedside, my father complained of chest pains. The doctors decided to do some tests. The tests were okay. Mother says it’s just fatigue.

I didn’t talk with my father during the days of mourning. He was too busy. Yesterday was the third day. The women sat in my aunt’s house, and the men came to ours. The relatives from Ramallah and Bakat el-Hatab slept over and joined us in greeting the people who came to extend their condolences. It was a tragedy. They talked about it on the evening news in Arabic: the cold-blooded murder of a boy playing ball. My job was to stand at the entrance with little cups of coffee and a large coffeepot and pour bitter sada coffee for everyone who arrived. My father just sat there the whole time. He cried at Ali’s funeral. Later I heard him say it was the first time he’d ever cried over someone who’d died.

I go up to the fifth floor, into the cardiology ward, and look for room 12. If my father asks, I’ll tell him my studies are going well and I’m about to complete my final. I really am studying. If everything continues smoothly, I’ll enroll in one of the departments at Hebrew University next year. Not anything exciting, because my grades aren’t high enough, but it hardly matters anymore. The main thing is I’ll have a degree.

My father is in the bed nearest the door, drinking coffee. He greets me with a surprised Ahalan, and I get the feeling he’s glad to see me. He asks if I’m on my way back to Jerusalem and says he’s got to have a cigarette. Then he asks me to go down to the newsstand to get him a paper, and we’ll look for a place where he can read the paper and smoke.

He looks fine, nothing out of the ordinary, hooked up to a flickering machine that’s monitoring something, and that’s all. I’ll get the paper. I’ll ask if he needs anything else, and then I’ll leave. I’m working today. Besides, I need to get away from this atmosphere. I’ve got a headache already.

Those three days were rough. It was the first time I’d seen a dead body. I hadn’t realized how much Ali had grown. The mustache over his upper lip was beginning to show. The body was naked, with an autopsy incision stretching from his stomach to his neck. Too bad I saw it. The incision had been sewn up hastily with coarse black thread. When the body washers ran out of water, they shoved a bucket in my hand and asked me to hurry. When I realized I couldn’t take it anymore, I got out of there and headed home. I said I was going to help set up the chairs and make coffee.