Fadi

We waited outside the critical care ward of a Tel Aviv hospital while doctors inside prepared him. The doors swung open mechanically, controlled by a switch behind the nurses’ desk. On a stretcher, covered by a thin sheet, they wheeled him out of the unit. He had been shot in Gaza three days before, caught in the crossfire of an emerging civil war. Dead at the age of twenty. Moments later, our friend Abu Fadi came through the doors holding a pair of mint green smocks for us to wear.
His son was shot by the Israeli Army during Thursday’s incursion into Ramallah. An undercover special forces unit had attempted to capture or kill a man from Kt’ab al Aqsa, the armed wing of the Palestinian Fateh party. Fadi lay in an induced coma for five days, struggling to survive three bullet wounds. He is a young photographer working in Ramallah, and a friend of the activists who work in Bil’in Village.
“His color today is not good,” his father worried from the doorway. “Try to talk to him.” Nadav and I leaned in toward the bed, afraid to touch him. His body is covered in soiled bandages. Two nights before, they removed one of his kidneys, now he is fighting a severe liver infection. Thick tubes reach down through his mouth and into his chest. They are taped awkwardly into his mouth to hold them in place as the respirator clicks back and forth, pushing air into his lungs and then waiting for it to release slowly and laborously out.
“Say something to him,” his father says. I don’t know where to look. Can he hear me?
Say something.
His neck is craned in my direction. Nadav’s mint green cover is coming untied. I mended it earlier when he accidentally tore the string from the papery fabric.
Say something.
If I was laying in this bed I would want to hear the sounds of encouragement, the sounds of friends telling me I look good, the doctors say I’m going to be fine.
Say something.
I watched the invasion on Al Jazeera. The picture kept jumping and skipping from the shitty signal. That always happens on Al Jazeera.
Say something.
My mouth is dry. My wallet is still in my pocket. My passport already looks old. I should find a better place to keep it. Stop fidgeting. Why are my hands so clammy? Open your mouth,
Say something.
I want to touch him. If I can’t talk I can at least let him know there is someone here. I don’t know you, Fadi. Nadav, tell him I want to help him. Tell him he can trust me.
Say something.
I want to lay next to you in that bed. We can just lay there together and wait for this stranger to go away. Give our friends a chance to be comforting. They speak Arabic.
Say something.
Sing. Tell me a joke. Tell me anything. Put your dirty hands on my face and let me feel you here. I can’t see you but I can hear. I can’t speak, it’s these tubes, I’m not asleep. I’m trying to show you a sign. It’s not the respirator, I just moved my leg. I know you’re here.
I said nothing. I escaped the room. I walked out of that hospital, that prison. Abu Fadi is not allowed to follow. He is illegal in Tel Aviv, no permits, no permission. His son is struggling to survive and he is a prisoner there until Fadi and he go back to the West Bank.
The elevators are controlled remotely. Guards patrol the gated compound. Abu Fadi will sleep in the Fonduq downstairs with the parents of the others from the West Bank and Gaza. They cannot leave either. None of them are legal in Israel. Each wounded person is allowed a single relative to stay in the hospital until they can be deported back to the places they were shot. Abu Fadi will see the mother of the murdered boy they just wheeled past me. He will comfort her. He will console and empathize. He will do what today I cannot. He will say something.