Baghdad, Iraq
c. 1933
On the worn stone pavement outside the school gate, he sees a group of Muslim boys fighting - a swirl of fists and yellow dust and cruel feet. Panic escapes from the mouth and eyes of a small Jewish boy trapped at their center, the target of their rage.
Dropping his books to the ground and jumping in, he throws himself in circles, hitting and kicking back, matching pain for pain, until he finds himself alone, his arm hanging twisted and throbbing at his side.
At home, he hides his swollen wrist from his mother as she serves him dinner from her post in the kitchen, losing himself among his brothers and sisters, not wanting to be kept from the school picnic the following day.
He spends the picnic in quiet misery, the pain in his arm growing larger and heavier as the day passes. It turns out it is broken.
