Fuad’s eyes are sore.
His lungs sting.
His nose itches from the powerful tear gas.
His skin rashes.
His smile is wide.
Fuad coughs, but his smile is wide.
Adrenaline fills his blood.
“Let’s go throw Molotovs at the fence,” Khalid said.
“Are you nuts?” he asked.
“Coward,” Khalid said.
“I’m no coward,” he said.
“Then let’s throw Molotovs at the fence,” Khalid said.
Fuad didn’t want Khalid to think him a coward. He didn’t want to throw Molotovs at the fence either.
But he went.
And they did.
The soldiers at the watchtower fired tear-gas grenades at them.
Fuad still feels the burning in his chest when he breathes, his eyes are still red and puffed.
He feels like a hero.
He goes home.
He wants to tell his father.
He won’t tell his father.
He and his father seldom talk anymore.
He loves his father. He’s sure his father loves him, but there’s bad blood between them.
There’s death between them. His sister’s. His mother’s.
There’s the shame of his father crossing the fence, asking the Jews for help. His asking everyone who would listen and most who wouldn’t if they’d please, please, please go to the Jews, get tested, donate their bone marrow.
How could his father have been so stupid?
No one would do that.
Accepting the Jews’ help is almost as bad as helping them. It borders on collaboration.
No one here will taint themselves like that.
How could he not see that? How?
“Dog,” Raffoul said months ago.
“What?” he said.
“Dog,” Raffoul said again.
Raffoul spit at him.
“Zionist dog,” Raffoul said.
He pushed Raffoul.
Raffoul fell hard on his ass.
Raffoul got up. He tried pushing Fuad back. Good luck with that. Raffoul’s puny hands on Fuad’s massive chest. What a joke.
He kicked Raffoul on the knees, as he’d seen the Israeli soldiers do when fighting hand to hand with demonstrators.
Raffoul’s knees gave. Raffoul fell. He grabbed Raffoul’s head by the hair. Punched him once. Punched him twice.
“Call me a dog again,” he said.
Punch.
“Go ahead. Call me a Zionist dog again,” he repeated.
He felt the rock on his back.
He felt the stick on his kidney.
He let go of Raffoul.
“Zionist dog,” Omar said. Omar’s broomstick hit his balls.
He bent over.
Raffoul picked up the stone Omar had thrown. He hit him with it on his right ear.
He stumbled. He fell.
They both kicked him. Omar kept hitting him with the broomstick, Raffoul with the rock.
They called him a Zionist dog every time they hit him.
He curled. He whimpered.
He didn’t cry.
He didn’t call for help.
He thought they were right, so he whimpered and curled and didn’t fight back.
They’d been his friends since grade school. They stopped being his friends the day his father crossed over, tainting them all with his shame.
Fuad understands his father. He’d probably do the same if Amal had been his daughter.
And if he’d had his father’s balls.
But she wasn’t. And he didn’t. And he knows it.
His father is a brave man.
His father crossed the fence. He asked for help. He kept asking when he knew no help was coming.
He admires his father.
He’s ashamed of his father.
Sometimes, courage is weakness, and cowardice is strength.
He didn’t want Khalid to think him a coward. He knows he is.
A brave man knows he’s brave even when others call him a coward. Him? He knows he’s not brave. He knows he’ll never be brave. He’ll never have the guts his father had in crossing the fence.
What’s courage worth in the face of Allah?
His fate is in Allah’s hands.
Allah wanted to take Amal, so He did.
Allah wanted to take his mother, so He did.
What was his father’s will against Allah’s?
Nothing. It was nothing. Nothing but shame and sorrow.
Friends and neighbors scorn his father and him. They don’t invite them over for a cup of coffee or to share a plate of olives and dates as they used to.
After the fight, Raffoul and Omar didn’t even look at him. Fuad died with his mother and sister as far as they’re concerned.
No one came to the wake.
Just him and his father.
Yet, somehow, they still buy his father’s bread.
In the morning, in the evening—lines outside their bakery.
They buy pitas, rugelach, baguettes.
They buy the round, soft bread sprinkled with za’atar and dripping with olive oil for which his father is famous, the recipe in their family for generations.
The Baghdadis have been selling their za’atar bread for hundreds of years, so far back no one remembers who the first baker was.
They won’t sell it after Abdo is gone. His father is the last Baghdadi baker.
Why be a baker when you can be more?
He knows Allah has a big plan for him. Something big, something bright, something far from the bakery.
In Allah’s hands, he need not be his father’s son.
He’ll be something.
Anything.
A man, maybe.
Whatever, other than a baker. Other than his father’s son.