1
I DON’T REMEMBER a knock. Nobody let her in. Yet there she is like magic, a fortune teller with a face as soft and brown and wrinkled as last year’s apple, sitting at our sofra, holding Mama’s hand. She’s wearing a dimije, the traditional full trousers favored by grandmothers and village women. She is both. Her jacket is embroidered with vines and flowers. I can tell from here that her jacket is a little dusty, a little threadbare, but it is still beautiful. I wonder if she made it herself when she was young.
Mama catches me peeking around the corner and gives me a look that sends me back to the other room. We’re at the home of Tetka Fatma and Tetak Ale, my aunt and uncle. I go back to sitting on a cushion between my two brothers, pulled this way and that. Dino wants me to play with his little toy cars. My older brother, Amar, sitting at the table, wants me to help him learn more Chinese characters. No one studies Chinese here in Bosnia and Herzegovina! Russian, yes. English, maybe. But my brilliant brother wants to learn something no one else knows. He’s memorized a thousand characters already.
I push the cars, I hold up flash cards … but my ears are pricked to listen to the fortune teller. How strange that my practical Mama will let her read her palm. I make one of the little cars race across the carpet just so I can chase it and get close enough to hear.
“This is all nonsense,” Mama scoffs. “There’s no such thing as magic. There’s only reality, and we make our own fortunes by hard work.” But she doesn’t pull her hand away. The old woman with lines in her cheeks like deeply plowed furrows in a field bends over Mama’s palm. I’m a little afraid of her. I’ve never seen anyone so ancient, outside of the tapestry in Tetka Fatma’s living room that hangs just above their heads. It shows an old man from centuries past smoking a pipe in front of a shop, wearing traditional Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) clothing. This woman could have stepped out of that very painting to join us from generations ago. But her voice is gentle, and maybe those lines come from a lifetime of smiles.
“You are worried about someone you love,” the fortune teller says.
Mama gives a nervous little laugh. “That’s an easy one. Everybody is worried about someone.”
“It is a child.”
I hear Mama’s breath catch.
“I tell you that your worry will end.”
Mama gasps, and for an instant her eyes light with hope. “He’ll be well again?”
“Soon the one you love will be free of all pain.”
Mama snatches her hand away, and just then Tetka Fatma comes bustling in, taking the old woman to the kitchen to give her coffee and hurmašice syrup cakes before sending her on her way. Tetka Fatma feeds everyone: family and neighbors and stray kittens. Mama gets up quickly and rushes into another room, her eyes glistening.
I feel tears in my own eyes, tears of joy. Can it be?
“Amar, did you hear?” I whisper.
He gives me his sweet smile and gathers up his homemade Chinese flash cards. Then he picks up his long, long legs with his long, long arms, one at a time, straightening and settling them until he can haul himself to his feet. He stifles a grunt, a moan of pain. Then, with agonizing slowness, he forces his body to limp and shuffle across the room.
But in my mind’s eye I see him healthy at last, free of the disease in his body. I see him running up stairs, riding his bike like he used to do when he was younger. He’s starting high school in a couple of weeks, and the world will be opening up for him. Thinking about what awaits him—success in school, his first girlfriend, a fulfilling career—I realize that what I hope for is not necessarily for him to be well and strong, but for the world to see him as he really is. I want others to look beyond the physical and see his brilliance, his uniqueness, his kindness. I want those bullies who plague him to wake up one day and see that he is a person of value. Yes, I want him to be free of pain, but even more than that, I want him to be free from prejudice.
My brother Amar has Marfan syndrome. He told me that the American president Abraham Lincoln had it, too. “So see,” he tells me when I fret, “not only will I turn out just fine—I may even be president someday!” But if Lincoln had it, he had a mild version. My brother’s bones have grown so fast that his muscles and joints can’t keep up. He gets weaker every year. Now, his friends have to carry him up the stairs at school.
But worse than the pain, worse than the legs that won’t cooperate and the arms that aren’t strong enough to hold his heavy books, Marfan syndrome affects his heart. Each heartbeat is sluggish and slow. He can’t go more than a few steps without losing his breath.
But there’s hope. We’ve been trying a new medicine to help protect his heart. My cousin Meli, a nurse, comes over twice a day with her huge needle to give him shots. I hold his hand while he bends over so she can inject him in the muscle of his buttocks. His backside is covered in bruises, all colors from fresh blue to dark purple to fading sickly yellow. He pretends it doesn’t hurt. He’s gotten really good at that. But I feel the pain for him.
The medicine must be working. I really believe the old fortune teller. Soon we won’t have to worry about Amar anymore. His pain will be gone.
I know he heard the fortune teller, too. Like me, he must be filled with hope now. So why does his smile have a tinge of sadness?
2
OUR APARTMENT BUILDING is ugly, a brutal rectangle with tiny windows. It is gray and yellow concrete, the color of an old bruise, and was made in the days of the Communist leader Tito, all function and no form.
It is also beautiful because, for as long as I can remember, it has been home.
Tomorrow, we are leaving it.
We’ve scrimped and saved, dreamed and designed. While we could smell our neighbors’ roasted chickens and the grilled spiced meat kebabs called ćevapi, we’ve mostly eaten beans and onions to save money. While my friends parade in new Levi’s jeans and designer sneakers, we mend holes in our old clothes. I remember when I was little I had pretty dresses, puffy fluffy things in bright yellow and pink. For years now, though, I’ve had nothing but hand-me-downs from Amar.
But it is all worth it because our new house is ready for us now.
Mama and Tata designed it themselves. Everybody has their own bedroom, and each bedroom has a balcony. I want windows everywhere, Mama told the architect, so natural light streams into every room. It is our dream home, and I see it as part of the miracle the old woman foretold. Everything in our life is about to change. The suffering is over. I feel bouncy with hope.
Amar does, too. He wants to be outside, even though I can see thunderclouds in the distance. “It’s nicest just before a storm,” Amar says. “I love the breeze, the fresh smell that comes with the first raindrops. That smell even has its own name: petrichor.” I help him downstairs and outside to the cement Ping-Pong table next to our apartment for a game. It is in a shared space that several apartments can use. Painted bright spring green, the table is the most colorful thing I can see from here.
Amar has to lean against it while he plays. He’s really good. He sends me a backhand shot with spin that I catch but slam way too hard, sending it off the table. He laughs while I run after it.
“You shouldn’t just hit it as hard as you can, Amra,” he tells me. “That’s not how you win. You need subtlety.”
Then his laughter breaks into a wheezing choke, and I have to pretend I don’t notice because he hates it when people worry about him.
Suddenly I hear crowing and shouts from outside a nearby apartment, a building even grayer and uglier than ours. It’s the despicable twins, Milorad and Ratko, mirror images of evil.
“What do you think it will be today?” Amar whispers when I run back with the ball. “Will they call me spider, crab, or grasshopper?”
“They better not dare call you anything,” I say, glaring at the twins. They’re like angry bees, always wanting to sting. Amar is their favorite target. They call him names, mocking his long, skinny limbs, his stretched face. They seem to feed on his pain, getting bigger and stronger and meaner whenever they manage to make him miserable. He learned long ago to deny them the satisfaction. Now he ignores them when he can, shrugs off the insults, the pinches, the punches. He laughs at them, which drives them to worse and worse cruelty.
“Hey, cripple!” one of them shouts.
Amar ignores them but says to me in a conversational voice, “Cripple, huh? I hoped for better. I wish they knew bigger words. I wouldn’t mind being called an arthropod or arachnid for a change. At least that would be entertaining.” He lifts one long, skinny leg like a grasshopper, gives me a grin that turns into a grimace of pain. “Maybe I could teach them a better vocabulary?”
“Why aren’t you dead yet?” the other twin shouts across the street. I see a couple of heads look out of windows, but nobody says anything, nobody does anything. I think even the grown-ups are afraid of Ratko and Milorad. Or they don’t think Amar is worth defending.
Amar wants me to ignore them, hoping they’ll get bored and go away. But I can’t help shouting back, “Just wait until my brother gets better. You won’t dare say anything then! He’ll beat you up!”
“No I won’t!” Amar calls out affably. “I’m a pacifist.” In a lower voice he says, “Amra, hush! It doesn’t matter what they say or do to me, but you…”
Before he can finish, the twins start crossing the street. The closer they get, the bigger they loom. Over their heads, the sky begins to darken.
“Just ignore them and keep playing,” Amar says calmly, and serves me the ball. My anger and sadness are building inside me like a geyser. I’m going to erupt in tears. Why can’t they leave him alone? Hasn’t he suffered enough?
The world is blurry. I slam the ball as hard as I can, wishing it was the twins’ faces. The ball flies high over Amar, right at Ratko. He snatches it midair.
“Give it back!” I shout at him.
“It’s okay,” Amar whispers.
“It’s our last ball,” I mutter, then yell again at Ratko. “That’s ours!”
To my surprise, he holds it out. It lolls in his palm. “Here you go,” he says. But when I reach for it, at the last second, he lets it fall. It gives one bounce … then he crushes it under his foot.
I breathe hard, telling myself I will not cry. I see a flash, and the darkening sky lets out a dangerous rumble.
Milorad and Ratko walk past me, one on each side, chuckling like they just told the best joke. Be calm, Amra, I tell myself. None of this matters. The fortune teller’s words nestle inside me like a secret treasure. Soon we’ll be in the new house, and Amar will be free of pain. Be like Amar. He lets the hateful words flow over him. You can, too.
But I’m burning with rage when they start imitating the way Amar walks. His legs don’t straighten all the way or bend properly, so sometimes he has to tug on his pants to force his legs to move where he wants them to go. The twins lurch and stagger, cracking each other up. Amar catches my eye, and though I fume, I do nothing.
When they come up right beside him, though, Milorad says, with almost casual cruelty, “You don’t deserve to be alive, you stupid cripple.” Ratko adds, “I hope you die soon, moron.” I want to scream at them that Amar is brilliant, the smartest person in Bihać. Amar’s so smart he could change the world. Amar’s so kind he could bring world peace. But these bullies think he’s worth nothing just because his body is sickly.
Words can’t hurt you, Amar always tells me. I know he’s wrong. Words, ideas, hate can kill people. I know that instinctively. But I try my hardest to be like him. To be good and kind and patient. To forgive.
Then the brothers bump into him as they walk past, and that I will not forgive. They jostle him hard, back and forth like a pinball game, and he falls to his knees with a cry while the twins walk on.
I roar like a lion, and when they turn, I see real fear in their eyes. They’re older, bigger—but I am an almost-six-foot-tall kid full of fury. I am a wrecking ball that smashes into them, demolishes them.
This feels good, releasing my anger. I don’t even know what I’m shouting, curse words I’ve heard on the street, never in my home. All the words of insult and hate I’ve heard from the twins themselves. I hope my words burn into their brains forever. They run in different directions to distract me, but I zero in on one—I can’t tell them apart now—and slam into him, knocking him against the gray wall of his apartment building. His hair is shaved, and his ears stick out like perfect handles, so I grab them, squeezing like a vice, and slam his head against the cement wall over and over and over. It makes a ringing sound like the school bell.
“Never make fun of my brother again!” I scream as I bang his head. “Say it! Say it now! ‘I will never make fun of Amar again!’” Bang!
He stammers it out: “I—I’ll never make fun of him again.”
“Swear it!” Bang!
“I swear it!”
I let him go, and the twins run back to the safety of their apartment. And I know, as certainly as I’ve ever known anything in my life, that they will never tease Amar again. That no one will ever tease him again. I won’t let them.
I feel powerful, just for a moment. I’ve defended my brother. I’ll always keep him safe.
I think this, even though I know it’s not true. This was one moment, not his whole life. I can’t protect him from everything that awaits him. I wish I could be his hero, but what I wish even more is that the entire world would change so he could always be recognized as the hero he truly is.
The rain starts to fall in such hard, stinging drops that I can’t even feel the tears on my cheeks.
Copyright © 2024 by Amra Sabic-El-Rayess
