Read On the Hills of God for Free Online

like rust, was spreading on Amin’s torn shirt. Isaac’s shirt was stained from contact. The hill was steep and the road above it was several fields away. Not for a second, though, did Yousif stop thinking of the strangers they had left behind. What they were doing there preyed on his mind. He wished Amin had not fallen; he wished he had a chance to track them.
    “Your timing is lousy,” Yousif said to Amin, walking beside him. “Next time you decide to break an arm, make sure we’re not following spies.”
    “I’ll remember,” he said, wincing.
    By the time they reached the main road, the three were out of breath. Amin looked wan. There was no sense in wishing for a car, Yousif thought, for rarely did vehicles travel that deep in the countryside. But he did wish for a mule or a camel. None was in sight. Things were always plentiful until they were needed, Yousif reflected. But he dismissed the possibility too soon; a rider on a horse was coming their way. It was obvious from the rising column of dust that he was in a big hurry.
    “We’ll ask him to take us back,” Yousif suggested.
    “I wish he would,” Amin replied, his face contorted.
    Upon reaching them, the rider pulled upon the reins. He looked familiar, but Yousif could not place him. The horse whinnied, slowed down, circled, and then came to a full stop.
    “What happened?” the rider asked, addressing Amin.
    “I fell and broke my arm,” Amin answered, clutching his injured arm.
    “Let me see,” the rider said, dismounting. He handed Yousif the reins to his horse, saying, “My name is Fayez Hamdan.”
    The rider, Yousif observed, wore the traditional fellaheen robe, which folded around his body like a kimono and was tied with a black sash. A corner of the hem was raised and tucked under the sash, exposing the long baggy off-white sirwal .
    Yousif noticed that the rider had a dagger attached to his right side. He also had one front tooth missing and two others covered with gold. Yousif wondered what the man might have done with that dagger if he had discovered the spies.
    “An injured arm needs attention,” Fayez Hamdan said, pulling out a large red and white scarf and tying it around Amin’s neck like a sling. Slowly but deftly he lifted Amin’s arm and put it through the loop.
    “Thank you,” Amin said.
    “Where do you live?” the rider asked, looking at the setting sun as though to tell time.
    “This side of town,” Amin answered. “But I can’t ask you—”
    “You didn’t ask me, I asked you,” the rider interrupted. “I’ll take you home.”
    Yousif and Isaac helped him put Amin up on the horse. Fayez held the reins and turned the horse around and gave it a gentle slap. They headed toward home, all walking except Amin.
    Amin’s house was part of a compound in Ardallah’s oldest and poorest section, where women washed their clothes on their doorsteps and dumped the dirty water beside the unpaved road. This part of town was hundreds of years old. The compound of connected “homes” was like a ghetto. The thick muddy-looking walls had grass growing on them and looked as old as the Roman arch the boys had seen earlier that afternoon. Today some women sat in knots on the flat rooftops or against walls. They gossiped and darned clothes or combed and braided their waist-length hair. Smoke rose from behind an enclosure where a woman crouched to bake her bread.
    Yousif stepped over a dog’s dropping. He could smell the pungent stench of goats a woman kept in her small corral. Children jumped rope and played hopscotch.
    Amin’s mother, whom both Yousif and Isaac called Aunt Tamam, came running to meet them. She was a tall thin woman in her late fifties, wearing the traditional ankle-length dress with little or no embroidery—a sign of their poverty. Her hair was covered with a rust-colored scarf, and her face had a hundred wrinkles. Yousif could sense and understand her great anxiety. Some of the children must have run and told