Displaced by Dean Hughes

Author:Dean Hughes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Published: 2020-09-08T00:00:00+00:00

12

“Can you hear what I’m saying?” Garo was asking, his face close, his labored breath brushing Hadi’s cheek.

Hadi opened his eyes. It took him a second or two to remember where he was. He was sitting in a wooden chair behind Garo’s fruit stand. “Yes,” he finally managed to say.

“Thanks be to God,” Garo muttered. “We must clean you up and get a bandage on you to stop the bleeding.”

And then Hadi remembered. “I have to hurry,” he said. “I have to find my father.”

“Why must you hurry?”

“Someone might hurt him.”

“The same one who hurt you?”

“Yes.”

“What’s happening, Hadi? Who did this to you?”

“I can’t talk about it.”

“All right. But we have to take care of this before you do anything else.” Garo moved around Hadi in his composed way, as though life for him, regardless of what was happening, was a matter of deliberate motion, always steady. “Rest for a minute. I must go into my house and get some things to bandage you, or you won’t make it to your father.”

Hadi thought he couldn’t wait. He feared that Kamal had forced Malek to tell him where Baba worked and was already on his way to the Dora intersection.

But he did wait—partly because he wasn’t sure his legs would carry him and partly because his friend Garo was taking care of him. He also knew that it was better not to walk down the street all covered in blood.

Garo appeared after a few minutes. Hadi hadn’t known that Garo lived in the building behind his fruit stand. But he came from there, carrying a small pail of water and some white rags. “Let’s take your jacket and shirt off,” he said.

“It’s okay. Just wash the blood away.”

“Your clothes are full of blood too. I’ll get you something else to wear.” He was unzipping Hadi’s jacket, so Hadi helped him, and they took off his jacket, then pulled his shirt over his head. Hadi finally saw how soaked with blood his clothes were, and that scared him. He didn’t know how much blood he could lose and still live. He didn’t know whether he was still bleeding.

“Nothing bleeds so bad as the head,” Garo was telling him. “But now that I see the wound, it’s not so bad as you might think. You’ll be all right.”

And then he wet one of the rags and began to wipe Hadi’s hair and neck. When he rinsed the rag in the pail of water, it turned pink immediately. Hadi found himself settling back in the chair. The warmth of the water and the gentleness of the old man’s touch were soothing to Hadi.

“My family lived in Aleppo before they came here,” Garo said as he worked.

This took Hadi by surprise. Garo knew that Hadi had lived in Aleppo, but Garo had never mentioned that his own family had lived there.

“Do you know about the Armenians, Hadi?” Garo asked.

“I know they live in Bourj Hammoud.”

“Yes. And I am Armenian. At one time, in this part of the city, we were all Armenian, but that’s changed.

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