Stitched Together

One week ago, Brother Andrew and 12-year-old Kareem came into my room at 8:00 PM.

Brother Andrew calmly asked, “William, do you want to go to the hospital?”

A pause. Then a smirk. “What kind of hospital?” 

A large splinter was embedded in Kareem’s right thigh, close to his groin. We asked him “When?” and he said “Tuesday,” but the injury looked much older than that. His skin completely covered the splinter, and he wasn't in any pain. Something must have happened at home over Easter or even Christmas break, and he didn’t tell anyone for whatever reason, and no one had noticed it (or at least its gravity) until just now. 

Our regular Thursday night meeting was about to start. “Yunan will go with you,” Brother Andrew said. Yunan is the 13-year-old son of a Deaf Jordanian Christian couple who work at the school. He speaks Arabic and a fair amount of English.

Five minutes later, Yunan, Kareem, and I made the six-minute walk in the dark to the hospital in Salt. I held Kareem’s hand. 

This was my first visit to the hospital. One of my fellow volunteers, a former nurse, recently said, “I would never go there if I needed medical attention.” 

Yunan spoke to a man standing at the front door, who instructed us to walk down two flights of stairs. Then Yunan spoke to a woman behind a desk, who pointed us towards an empty room ten feet away. Five minutes later, a man entered the room, and Yunan explained the situation to him. The man directed us to another empty room, where we waited for another five minutes. Then a man who looked more like a physician entered, and Yunan explained the situation once more. The physician’s hands told Kareem to pull down his pants. After inspecting the injury, the physician said a few more words to Yunan and then directed us towards another room. As we were walking to this third room, Yunan said to me, “They’re going to take it out now.”

The room was small. A pulled curtain divided it into two sections. The left one was already occupied. As we entered the right section, we were immediately joined by two physicians. The men motioned Kareem onto one of those long elevated seats, a cross between a bed and a weight-lifting bench. It was pressed against the right wall, a foot away from the far corner. Two low tables were close by, covered with lots of medical instruments. The physicians began rummaging through them. 

That’s when Kareem started to cry.

Was your body ever cut open as a child? 

Did you receive local anesthesia, so that you were awake to feel the fear?

Could you speak the language of the men who were handling your body? 

Did their angry hands crudely tell you to lie down and be still? 

While the two men were still rummaging, Yunan told me “I can’t see the blood” and then started to leave the room. I stopped him and asked if he could ask the physicians if it was okay if I held Kareem’s hand during the procedure. 

He did. They said yes. 

After squeezing into the far corner, I clasp Kareem’s hand once more and place my left hand on his forehead. His anxious eyes look up at me, but only for a second; he is desperate to look down at the large hands that will soon invade his body. They are dabbing his upper thigh with some yellow liquid. He starts to squirm. They speak angrily in Arabic. Pointless. The tears continue as Kareem struggles to sit up. One of the physicians tries to pin down Kareem’s chest with his elbow. My left hand, which was resting on Kareem’s forehead, is now pressing down hard. 

Finally, Kareem makes eye contact with me again, and I can sign to him (sloppily, because I’m simultaneously pinning him down). 

“It’s very important that you stay still. If you move around, then there will be more problems later.” 

“Is there a lot of blood?”

“No, just a little.”

His blood is dripping directly onto the uncovered dark blue seat. A woman on the other side of the room is shouting in pain. In that moment, I am glad that Kareem is Deaf. 

Our eye contact is now sustained, and he begins to calm down. My smile is pained at first. But then he smiles back. Knowing that he has derived some comfort from my presence and touch, I now smile freely. My left thumb gently brushes back his hair. I blow him a kiss with no hands. He giggles. 

The procedure lasts about ten minutes. 

“You did a great job,” I tell him afterwards. 

And he did. All five of us did. 

Alhamdulillah.