So Abd al-Wahid came, and I examined him. My diagnosis was liver cancer. But Dr. Amjad disagreed, as usual. He said the man was suffering from the onset of cirrhosis of the liver and prescribed some medication. I suggested to his son to take him to al-Hamshari to be sure. Father and son left with Amjad’s prescription and my advice, and it seems that after a few days of Amjad’s medication, they decided to go to al-Hamshari Hospital. There the man underwent exams that showed he was suffering from liver cancer. They came back to me carrying the report. They’d undoubtedly read the report and discovered the case was hopeless, since it ends with the recommendation that the patient be taken home to rest with strong painkillers.
I read the report while the two men sat in my office, their eyes trained on my lips. People are strange! They think doctors are magicians. What was I supposed to do for them?
“You must take the medication regularly,” I told the sick man.
I told the son he could phone me if there were any developments.
The son made a move to go, but Abd al-Wahid didn’t budge and asked me, with trembling lips, “Aren’t you going to put me in the hospital, Doctor?”
“No,” I said. “Your condition doesn’t warrant it.”
As he spoke, he bit his lower lip; he was wrung with pain, and his eyes were tearing. I don’t know what the eyes have to do with the liver, but I could see death like a bleariness covering his eyes. And the man with his red face, his little potbelly and his sixty years didn’t want to leave the hospital.
“I don’t want to. No. I’ll die,” he said.
“How long we live is up to God,” I said. I didn’t hide it from him that his case was serious because I believe the patient has a right to know.
“How much time do I have?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Probably not much.”
“Why won’t you treat me here?”
I explained that we didn’t have the means to treat him and that, anyway, his case didn’t require a hospital.
He said he didn’t want to go home: “You’re a hospital, and it’s your duty to treat me.” He looked at his son for support, but the son stood in silence and looked at me with complicit eyes, as though. . I won’t say he was glad his father’s end was near, but he was indifferent.
I stood up to mark the end of the consultation, and then, without any preamble, the son began abusing me. He said he wouldn’t take his father because it was the hospital’s duty to care for difficult cases, and he threatened me, saying he’d hold me responsible for any harm that might come to his father.
I had to explain our situation again and tell him how, since the Israeli invasion of ’82 and the massacres, blockades, and destruction that had come with it, we no longer had the necessary equipment.
“Why do you call it a hospital?” screamed the son.
“You’re right,” I told him. “But do you want to change the name of the place now? Go and take care of your father.”
The son took his father and left, and I forgot about the incident. I didn’t even tell you about it.
Yesterday there was a surprise. I was in your room when I heard Zainab scream. I went out and found myself face-to-face with Abd al-Wahid. He had come to the hospital barefoot and in his pajamas. I saw the man standing there and Zainab on the ground, pulling her skirt over her thighs while he mumbled incomprehensibly.
Zainab said he’d shoved her and tried to go up to the rooms.
From where he drew the strength when he was already in the jaws of the angel of death I don’t know. I only know he ran into the hospital and started climbing the stairs to the rooms. Zainab, running after him, tried to ask him what he wanted, and he responded with an incomprehensible babble, almost a howling, and when she tried to stop him he shoved her to the ground.
When he saw me, he ran toward me shouting, “I beg you, Doctor, put me back in the hospital.” He grabbed my hand and tried to kiss it, saying he didn’t want to die.
“Don’t treat me if you don’t want to,” he said. “But I don’t want to die. People don’t die in hospitals. I implore you, Doctor, for pity’s sake, don’t send me to die at home.”
It was then, Father, that I burst into tears inside but started to laugh. I was laughing, Zainab got up, and the man was trembling. When I asked Zainab to prepare him a room, he seemed to fly with joy. I saw him climbing the stairs behind Zainab, in his dirty white pajamas, his feet hardly touching the stairs, as though I’d saved his life or promised him a place in Paradise.
Believe me, I never saw such joy in all my life. Naturally, nothing changed. His joy disappeared when he lay down on the bed and the pain renewed its onslaught. His son’s wife came to be with him. I think he heard his wife ask me when he would die and then start grumbling when she heard me say she had to take care of him and give him his painkillers regularly.
“Regularly!” she exclaimed, not having expected to hear this word. “You mean I have to stay here all the time?” she said, gesturing in my face.
“Of course,” I said. “Everyone knows that here it’s up to the family to look after the patient.”
“We’ll take him home,” she said. “Home’s better.”
When the man heard the word home, he started to cry.
I said, “No. Abd al-Wahid has to stay in the hospital.”
Hearing my reply, he relaxed on the bed and eased himself into his pain, as though he’d found comfort.
Abd al-Wahid, Father, will die in flight from his death. He’ll die without knowing it. He didn’t want to stare death in the face; he came here so he could close his eyes before dying.
No, please.
Please don’t misunderstand me. I just wanted to apologize because I neglected you for a while, and I don’t mean to compare you to him or to my father. I don’t know if my father saw his death in the muzzle of the gun or whether he shut his eyes before he died. I told you, I don’t know much about the man. My mother said one thing and my grandmother another, and I’m not that interested in the subject. I just want to know why my mother ran away.
You don’t know a thing about my mother, so listen at least to what I’m about to tell you. My mother ran away because she’d gotten into a bad marriage, because of a certain Jew. This is how my grandmother told it — my grandmother who seemed somewhat pacified after my mother ran away. From then on, my father’s horrendous death no longer constituted the mainspring of her life. From then on, she relaxed, tenderness softened her face, and she never stopped abusing this Jew. I was young and incapable of making sense of things, so I didn’t understand that when she abused “the Jew” she was talking about a specific person. Later I discovered that “the Jew” was the catalyst for my father’s marriage to Najwah, my mother.
My grandmother said my father had to go to work young. His sisters were married and the UNWRA assistance wasn’t enough, not to mention that he hadn’t done well at school. So he started work at Shukri’s pharmacy in Bab Idris. Then he found work in a sheet-metal factory at Mina al-Hesn that belonged to two Jews, Aslan Durziyyeh and Sa’id Lawi. That was where the scandal occurred.
My grandmother said they arrested my father and threw him in jail for more than two weeks. “Poor thing, he was just a child. True, he was tall and mature, but he was only sixteen. He liked reading a lot but was a troublemaker at school, so he went to work. At the pharmacy, his wages were a joke: seven lira a week, and he worked from dawn to dusk. I asked him to put up with it so he could learn something useful.”