Chapter One
They'd been home only a couple of months when he'd fallen sick, not that he'd admitted his illness. Ali would never do such a thing. Mahmoud watched his younger brother from the other side of the campfire. Under his dark tan and newly growing beard he'd grown very pale the last couple of days and the elder man knew that he had a fever, as Ali wouldn't let him anywhere close to him. He sighed loudly, irritating the ill man.
"If you're going to say it, say it."
"Say what?" Mahmoud questioned, giving his younger brother a look that, if he'd not appeared a "cut-throat Arab" as Russell had once called him, might have been called innocent.
Ali snorted and set his coffee cup down on a rock. "You know well enough."
"That you're ill? Yes."
"It's nothing," the younger man said with a wave of his hand. He stood and began to move about the small camp, seemingly unable to sit still. "Nothing at all."
"Is it now?"
Ali glared at his elder brother, finding a new place to sit and started to roll a cigarette. Mahmoud watched him carefully. "I'm not deaf," he murmured quietly. "I hear you coughing at night and I'm certainly not blind to the fact that you've been far less… energetic the last couple of days. All I wish to ask is if it is serious. An honest answer, Ali." A simple cold, perhaps? Mahmoud wished that were it, but he knew that was not likely. Ali had always seemed immune to mundane things such as that.
"An honest answer?" the younger man echoed. He forced a smile onto his lips. "I'll be just fine, of course."
"You know…" Mahmoud muttered, almost inaudibly. "I'm not sure I'd know quite what to do if something happened to you."
"Happened?"
"Don't be a fool, Ali."
A grin spread across Ali's face. "And don't make you repeat it, right?"
Mahmoud frowned. "Be ready to break camp in twenty minutes," he answered as he stood and moved away.
Mahmoud winced in the night as he heard Ali's hacking cough from the bed pallet next to him. The younger man's breathing had sounded ragged and had given into coughs a moment before, stretching out until now. He shuddered, pulling his single blanket closer to himself, even in the warm night. Mahmoud sat up, trying to make out the shivering form in the darkness of the night. "Ali?"
The struggling breaths quieted for a moment and a weak reply came. "Yes?"
There was a moment of silence as Mahmoud tried to put his thoughts into words and nothing came. He stared at the spot where the younger man lay and said nothing. It was Ali who reached forward in the darkness, his keen eyes surely seeing his elder brother's masked worry. His hand stopped just short of Mahmoud's shoulder. "It's just a cold," he murmured.
"I'm not a fool," Mahmoud hissed suddenly, taking the younger man by surprise.
"What…?"
"I've a good mind to take you back to England," the elder Hazr muttered quietly, knowing well enough the younger held a shocked look upon his face. "I've seen the way you've been the last week and a half, steadily going down. How far before you are going to take note of it?"
"To England, though?" Ali questioned in a very quiet tone. "We just-"
"Palestine is everything that England is not and everything that I love, but I do not claim that the doctors can do much."
"It's really nothing, Mahmoud."
"It's more than you're giving it credit for."
"But to England?" There was a quiet sadness in the younger man's voice that Mahmoud did not miss. "It'll pass. It's simply-"
Mahmoud let out a low grunt of frustration. "And if it's not?"
It was Ali's turn to let out a sigh of irritation. "I'm not a child, Mahmoud," he stated simply, eyes cutting through the darkness and watching the elder man on his pallet. "Do not watch over me as such." There was a pause of no words between them before Ali fell back against his bedroll. "Do you wish me to go so badly?"
"I never thought we'd return to England," Mahmoud admitted quietly. "Certainly not so soon, but I'd much rather do so than to see you waste away."
"I've never known you to be so over dramatic, brother."
"And I've never thought you to be so blind."
Silence reigned between them for a moment. "If I go to England, will you let it rest?" Ali growled at last.
"I will."
The younger Hazr let out a sigh as he turned away from the other. He knew that if the roles were reversed, he would have pushed even harder than Mahmoud just had. His temper would have flared and he would have demanded that his brother get to a doctor that instant if at all possible. First to a military doctor there for instant treatment and then, more than likely, he would have gutted it up to go back to England. He shuddered inwardly. He'd felt like a different person in England when they'd been there and he hated it. He wasn't himself there, but here… Better to go to England for a while than to loose Palestine forever, isn't it? something seemed to remind him. That in mind, he drifted into a restless sleep.
A/N: Yeah, I just had to start this, but a warning to anyone who might read it: This takes backseat to my Phantom of the Opera story. Just a warning. Don't expect regular updates, but they may come. Who knows? Let me know what you think.
TS