“All right,” Laurie said finally.
Exactly eighteen minutes later, Hillel made a turn into a village with a dirt street and a handful of concrete cube-style houses sprouting rebars for further expansion. There were some shops, including a smoke shop, a small general store, and a spice shop. There was also a school with lots of kids in uniforms.
“The easiest way to do this is to visit the mukhtar,” Hillel said over the voices of the children.
“What’s a mukhtar?” Jack questioned back.
“It means chosen in Arabic,” Hillel said. He closed the vehicle’s windows so as not to need to shout. “It refers to the head of a village. He will know Jamilla Mohammod for sure.”
“Do you know the mukhtar here in Tsur Baher?” Jack asked. He was sitting in the front passenger seat. Laurie was in the back, with JJ in his car-seat carrier.
“No, I don’t. But it doesn’t matter.”
Hillel parked and then ran into the general store. While he was gone, several of the schoolchildren wandered over and stared up at Jack. Jack smiled and waved at them. A few of the children self-consciously waved back. Then a man came out of the store and waved the children away.
A moment later, Hillel reappeared from inside the store. He walked over to Jack’s side of the car. Jack lowered the window.
“There’s a sitting area in the store,” Hillel explained. “It’s the local hangout, and conveniently the mukhtar happens to be here. I asked about Jamilla, and he has sent for her. If you want to meet her, you are invited inside.”
“Terrific,” Jack said. He climbed from the car and opened the sliding door for Laurie and JJ.
The interior of the store was stacked with all manner of goods from floor to ceiling, from groceries to toys, from hardware to computer paper. The sitting area Hillel had mentioned was in the rear, with a single window looking out on a hardscrabble backyard supporting a covey of skinny chickens.
The mukhtar was an elderly man in Arabic dress, with sun-baked leathery skin. He was contentedly puffing on a hookah. He was clearly pleased to have company and quickly ordered tea all around. He was also eager to hear that the Stapletons were from New York City because he had family there and had visited twice. While he was busy explaining which part of Brooklyn he’d visited, Jamilla Mohammod walked in. Like the mukhtar, she too was in Arabic dress. She wasn’t completely covered, but her dress was black, as was her knotted scarf. Her exposed skin on her hands and face was also about the same color and consistency as the mukhtar’s. Life had been a struggle for both, it was clear.
Unfortunately, Jamilla did not speak English, but since the mukhtar did to a degree, Jack spoke to Jamilla with the mukhtar’s kind intervention. He first asked her if she had any experience as a healer. Her answer was some experience but mostly with her own children, of which there were eight, five boys and three girls.
He asked her if she’d ever been sick. Her answer was no, although the year before she’d been hit by a car in Jerusalem and had been in the Hadassah hospital for a week with broken bones and blood loss. Jack then asked her if she would try to cure his child by placing her hand on his head and declaring him cured of his cancer. Jack pulled out several hundred dollars in cash and placed it on the low table. He said it was consideration for her efforts. Jack then took JJ from Laurie and approached the woman.
For the moment JJ was seemingly pleased to be the center of attention. He cooed contentedly as Jamilla did as she was asked. The mukhtar translated as Jamilla said that she wanted all illness cast from the child’s body from that moment on. It was obvious she was self-conscious and unaccustomed to such a role.
Laurie looked on, she too feeling self-conscious. Jack had told her what he was planning, and although she thought it somewhat embarrassing, she also thought it harmless, and if Jack seriously wanted to go through with it, she wouldn’t stand in the way. Now, as it was actually happening, she truly didn’t know what to think. Jack was the opposite. When he’d thought about doing it, he wanted to go through with it as a way of leaving no stone unturned. There was something mystical about the ossuary, and he wanted to take advantage of it. Now that the faith healing was actually being attempted, however, he felt silly, like he was grasping for straws. Well, he was grasping for straws.
“Okay!” Jack said suddenly when he felt the affair had gone on a bit too long, and he pulled JJ back from Jamilla’s touch. “That’s terrific! Thank you very much!” He picked up the money, handed it to Jamilla, then started for the door. All of a sudden he wanted to be away, to forget the situation. He knew that his actions were motivated by desperation, just like that of other desperate patients forced into the hands of alternative medicine. But the reason Jack wanted to get back out to the car quickly was because he was afraid he was about to cry.
All right,” Dr. Urit Effron said. He was on the full-time staff of the Hadassah University Hospital in Ein Kerem, Jerusalem. “Here come the images from the Siemens E-Cam, and we’ll have a better idea why your son’s urine yesterday was normal for catecholamine metabolites.”
Jack and Laurie strained forward. Both were intensely interested. The previous day, leaving the town of Tsur Baher, they’d driven back to Jerusalem, where they decided to go to the emergency room at the Hadassah hospital. The episode with the faith healer had started them talking about JJ, especially since he’d been acting so normal. What they had decided to do was see if they could get an antibody level for mouse proteins done while they were on the road so that they could recommence treatment as soon as they got home.
What they learned was that they would have to return to Memorial in New York City for that test, but the pediatric oncology resident who saw them offered to do the blood tests available to see how active JJ’s tumors were in light of his doing so well. To everyone’s astonishment, particularly his parents, the results had come back normal. At that point the resident had offered to repeat the definitive test for neuroblastoma called an MIBG scan.
Having learned a significant amount about the test and its risks and benefits when JJ had been diagnosed, both Jack and Laurie were eager to repeat it. They wanted to know where they stood after the first go-round with treatment at Memorial hospital. After the injection of the short-half-life radioactive iodine the day before, they had returned for the scan to be done. At that moment, the first images were coming from the machine.
“Well, there you go,” Dr. Effron said, “the homovanillic acid and the vanillylmandelic acid were normal because there are no more tumors.”
Jack and Laurie ventured a glance at each other. Neither wanted to speak, lest the trance they were in would burst and they’d be forced back to reality. It seemed JJ had been cured!
“This is very good news indeed,” Dr. Effron said, looking up from the screen to make certain the parents had heard. “Three cheers for Memorial. Your son’s one of the lucky ones.”
“What are you trying to tell us?” Laurie forced herself to ask.
“Neuroblastomas, particularly with very young patients like your son, can be unpredictable. They can just suddenly resolve — cure themselves, if you will. Or they can respond to treatment like this. Were your son’s rather extensive or widely spread?”
“Very widely spread,” Laurie said, beginning to allow herself to accept what she was seeing, no tumors, and what she was hearing, that JJ was cured. Had it been spontaneous as Dr. Effron suggested, or had it been the mouse antibody from Memorial, or had it been Jamilla, Laurie had no idea, but at the moment she truly didn’t care.