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before them.
    Doors snapped opened and shut. Many people walked out as others entered, some leaning on wooden sticks or on the arms of family members. Those who sat waiting cradled their pained faces with their hands.
    The color white was everywhere, and it mixed with the cold smells and the fog of fear that hung in the corridors. Squirming in Father’s arms, I cried that I wanted to go home. But he begged me to let a doctor examine my foot, promising me a giant piece of sesame candy if I did.
    Before I replied, a male nurse with a thick mustache and a warm voice like my father’s came to see us. My parents explained
to him what had happened to my foot. Nodding, the nurse led us into a room where a doctor soon joined us.
    The doctor cradled my foot. He raised and lowered it, twisted it right and left as though it were his, smiling all the while even as I cried.
    â€œHad you waited any longer, this foot would have been damaged permanently,” he said. Mother began to explain that we were in a shelter, that she had been unable to do anything. The doctor reassured her that he himself was a refugee and understood the plight of parents during war.
    I was to stay a night at the hospital for initial treatment and supervision. My parents promised they wouldn’t leave me, while my brothers inched closer, determined to spend the night with me wherever I was going to be.
    The doctor disappeared behind a curtain as we spoke. When he returned, he hid one hand behind his back. He then turned me on my side, and an injection took away my awareness of all that followed.
    The next day, I woke up in an enormous room full of strangers. All in beds. Some lay under spiderwebs of white cloth that suspended their arms or legs. Some had their heads bandaged. The eyes of those who were awake stared listlessly into space.
    I felt the blankness of the hospital sheets spread over me, covering my world with white. My parents had promised not to leave me. Why weren’t they here?
    I moved my body, but one of my legs was bandaged so stiffly it made me lose my balance if I tried to sit. I screamed and flailed my arms in outrage and frustration, hitting the
bed beside me. Dozens of eyes turned to look at me. The doctor I knew came running to assure me that my parents would return at the end of the day. I waited.
    My father, Basel, and Muhammad did come, my dad holding out a giant bar of sesame candy. He said getting the candy was the reason they had left. That made me happy. And the doctor said my foot would soon improve. He handed Father a sack of tablets, bottles, and ointments. We were to go home but would have to come back several times for follow-ups.
    â€œWhere is Mother?” I asked. I wanted her to be at the hospital, too. My father understood my disappointment. “We’ll be home in no time; she’s waiting for you,” he assured me, and he tickled my cheek until I smiled. But I worried that Mother did not want to see me as much as I wanted to see her. There was only one mother in our house, and all of us wanted to be with her all the time. But she had four of us. Perhaps seeing any of us would do for her. Now she was with my sister. My dad, however, was different. With him I felt important, loved just for being myself.
    Later, back in Hamameh’s kitchen, when it was time for Father to drive to Abu Omar’s house for the night, I clung to him and would not let go. He tried to pry my hands off, but I exploded in such distress that he had to stay by my side. Finally, he left me, ran out, and began to drive off. But Basel and Muhammad, wanting to help me, followed so close to the wheels that he stopped and turned around, the headlights circling the inside walls of the kitchen.
    When my dad returned to hold me, his eyes filled with
tears. “I feel so torn,” he said. Then he decided: he would take me with him. I joined him in the truck and looked back with thanks at my brothers, who leaned against the