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her about Amin. From the look on her face, Yousif knew she had not believed it was only a broken arm and had come out to see for herself.
    “Habibi, Amin,” she said, wringing her hands. “How did it happen?”
    Amin, still mounted on the horse, reached out with his good hand and took hers. “I fell off a stone wall.”
    “Where were you?”
    Amin glanced at his two friends and then at his mother. “I’ll be all right,” he told her. “Don’t worry.”
    The horse entered the narrowest path leading to the house, followed by a group of curious children.
    “Does it hurt a lot?” his mother wanted to know. “I wish it were my arm instead of yours.”
    The rider held the reins and stopped the horse in front of Amin’s house. Yousif and Isaac helped Amin dismount. The sight of blood made Aunt Tamam purse her lips and beat on her chest. Then she bent down, touched the ground, and kissed her fingertips, an expression of humility and gratitude Yousif had seen his mother make many a time.
    “Allah be praised,” she said, “it wasn’t more serious. Here we are worried sick about your Uncle Hassan—”
    “What about Uncle Hassan?”
    “It looks like he had another heart attack.”
    “Did father go to Gaza? Is that why he isn’t here?”
    “No, not yet. But I know he’s checking to see if he he should leave now or wait.”
    A wall of silence descended among them.
    “That’s the way it is,” Fayez Hamdan said, turning his horse around. “Trouble comes in groups.” The horseman left them standing in front of the house, taking with him all the blessings of a grateful mother.
    “I sent one of the children after Abu Khalil,” Aunt Tamam said as they entered the house.
    “Who?” Yousif asked.
    “The one who mends bones,” she told him.
    “But why?” Yousif asked, surprised. “Why not my father? You know he’s a doctor. Why didn’t you send after him?”
    For the first time the old woman’s face wrinkled with a genuine smile. “You don’t have to tell me who your father is. Dr. Jamil Safi is the best doctor there is, but this is too small a job for him. Abu Khalil has been mending bones all his adult life—and he’s nearly seventy.”
    Yousif shook his head. “My father will be disappointed. He loves Amin like a son.”
    “Believe me there’s no need to trouble the doctor with something as simple as a broken arm,” she assured him. “He’s too busy for this sort of thing.”
    Yousif was not convinced; he suspected she did it to save money. The poor, he knew, carried their pride like open wounds. But the old woman disappeared inside the dark cave of a house, and he could not talk to her.
    “I’m going to get my father,” Yousif insisted, walking away.
    “Please don’t,” Amin entreated, clutching his arm.
    Yousif couldn’t understand. “He would want to look after you.”
    “No doubt,” Amin said, biting his lip. “But like mother said, mending bones is not a big deal.”
    Pride. Yousif knew it in the silence that lingered.
    Aunt Tamam held a kerosene lamp atop the stairs they were about to climb. Although he had been to Amin’s house several times, Yousif still marveled at its simplicity. It was basically a spacious room that served as a bedroom, living room, and kitchen, plus a low-ceilinged basement used to raise chickens. Amin’s father, Abu Amin, was not only the town’s best stonecutter, but was also in charge of several men working on the villa Yousif’s parents were building. Why couldn’t such a man afford a better dwelling, Yousif wondered? Then he remembered that Abu Amin, a Muslim, at one time had two wives and two sets of nine children. He was lucky he could feed them, much less build them a house.
    As they ascended to the main floor, Yousif was struck by the darkness. Even in daytime three oil lamps were lit, since light from the one curved window that ran to the floor and from the two holes high in the opposite wall was hardly sufficient. Shadows hovered in every