After the Last Border by Jessica Goudeau

Author:Jessica Goudeau
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2020-08-03T16:00:00+00:00

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The missile had hit the bedroom where Jebreel was sleeping. It was a small missile, or he might not have lived. Still, he credited Hasna for saving his life, as well as his father, who built a home intended to last. When Hasna moved the cupboard in their bedroom to hide her gold, she placed it in such a way that, when it fell, it protected him from the worst of the shrapnel. The walls, with their huge basalt stones quarried from the mountains around Daraa, absorbed the impact of that missile. He should have died. Instead, he lost his left arm from the elbow down, a portion of his cheek, his ear, and part of his torso. The doctors told him later the major miracle was that he did not lose any of his organs.

Malek, Laila, and Hamad—sleeping on the other side of the house—were bruised and dazed, but otherwise fine. They had gone to the field hospital with Jebreel, sitting with their relatives who were still in the neighborhood while doctors stabilized him that night. When a relative had secured an ambulance for Jebreel, they had not been allowed to go with him across the border—the Jordanian government only allowed those with life-threatening injuries to cross the border seeking medical help. Instead, they slipped out of town to call Hasna, journeying as close to the border as they could so that they could get some cell service. Jebreel was rushed to Irbed, where Samir’s friend, a surgeon, was waiting for him; by the time Jebreel’s ambulance arrived, Hasna, Amal, and Samir had been at the hospital for several hours.

The doctors in Irbed performed a series of surgeries on Jebreel; he was one of many patients from Syria rushed over every time the government shelled its citizens. The Jordanian government provided health care for refugees despite the exorbitant cost to their small country. Surgeons amputated what remained of his arm, stitched his face and his side, grafted skin to partially fill in the portions of his flesh the missile had destroyed.

Hasna nursed him faithfully, rarely leaving his side while he was in the hospital. When the doctors released him after his first surgery, she took him back to the apartment in Irbed. That first dinner, she helped him sit down at the seat at the head of their table; his body leaned to the left and she helped to stack pillows on that side to cushion his still-healing stitches.

She placed the dishes down for most of her family to eat together for the first time in years; the ache for Laila and Malek and Hamad was almost physical, a cavernous emptiness she felt just beneath her rib cage.

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