Habibi

by Naomi Shihab Nye

  I probably shouldn’t even talk about it now.

  Rafik Abboud

  TWENTY-NINTH DAY OF SCHOOL

  I wish I could press my mind as flat and smooth as I press my shirt.

  “People talk about their first day of school or their last day, but they never talk about their twenty-ninth day,” Liyana said to Rafik. They were sitting on the short wall in the backyard cracking pumpkin seeds between their teeth, tossing shells into the lilies.

  Liyana had been counting. Her twenty-nine-day Armenian friends acted very kind to her. They seemed genuinely glad she was among them, as if grateful for a newcomer to liven things up. They liked it when she mimicked popular songs from the radio in the schoolyard. Liyana had never been shy to sing in front of people. Why was singing any more embarrassing than talking was?

  She’d learned they were supposed to stand formally when a teacher entered the classroom. She tried clicking her heels together, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. She learned that Armenian boys are dashing and have a mischievous glint in their eyes. A boy named Kevork said, “We heard Americans are wild. Are you wild?”

  By the twenty-ninth day, Liyana’s papers had proper headings, and her navy blue uniform had lost its bright gleam, its sharp pleat. She kept her silver ring in her pocket and slipped it on every day as she left school. On the twenty-ninth day, she forgot to remove it in the morning and the “directress” snapped at her as the girls stood in line for their “daily checkup.”

  On the twenty-ninth morning, the teacher called roll by last names only: Hagobian, Melosian, Tembeckjian, Yazarian, Zakarian. Liyana was last—Abboud—even though alphabetically she should have been first. She was the P.S. in the roll book. Her new friends added “ian” to her name to tease her.

  On the twenty-ninth morning, her class discussed the isosceles triangle as if it had just been invented. Babgen Bannayan got in trouble for not bringing in his history research on the Colossus of Rhodes for the third day in a row.

  Mr. Bedrosian, the English teacher (though he liked his students to call him a “professor” as if they were in college), wore his gray suit, the only suit he seemed to have besides his black one. Small threads dangled from the hem and the buttons. He could use some mending. He spoke about William Blake and John Keats with veneration in his voice, though Liyana wished he would pick somebody a little more modern to talk about soon. Liyana wondered if he lived alone.

  On the twenty-ninth day a funeral procession passed slowly beneath the open classroom windows. The students heard the low voices of the mourners growing louder and louder as they approached. Liyana didn’t realize what the sound was at first since she’d never heard it before. Everyone in the classroom was silently reading. She stood to look out the windows and stared right down into the face of the first dead person she’d ever seen.

  A woman’s petite body wrapped in white was being carried in an open coffin high above the heads of the mourners. Her head looked small, precise, with pale wavy hair and closed eyes in purplish skin. Liyana felt magnetized. Had the dead woman studied geometry? Did she have a happy life?

  Mr. Bedrosian said, “You will please take your seat, Miss Abboud.”

  By the twenty-ninth day, Liyana knew exactly where to go for lunch, either out into the sunny walled courtyard to buy sesame bread from the vendor with the huge tray on his head—she ate it with hard-boiled eggs and cheese and apples—or home with her new friends to eat their mothers’ folded spinach pies. Here, in the slowest country on earth, the students had a whole hour-and-a-half lunch break.

  Or Liyana could stroll by herself into the streets of old Jerusalem beyond the Armenian Quarter to walk among the shops. She pretended she lived in a different time. She squinted her eyes. She liked the falafel sandwiches at a place called Abu Musa’s Falafel House.

  On the twenty-ninth day, Liyana gave directions to French tourists. She carried an old lady’s giant sack of onions up some steep and crooked steps.

  On the twenty-ninth day she did something slightly bad. She didn’t come back into school the minute the bell rang after their long lunch. She couldn’t stop thinking about the dead woman. Had she died suddenly? There certainly were a lot of people in her funeral march.

  Liyana lay on a low wall outside the school, her head swimming in a pool of sun, body hidden by a tangled vine from anyone who might approach. She thought, How close this peaceful wall is every day while we are trapped inside.

  Voices from the classrooms reached across the hedge. Her Arabic teacher on the kindergarten floor hit a short stick on the back of a chair for rhythm, teaching the little ones another useless sentence. Please hand me the bellows for my fire. “And who has a bellows anymore?” Liyana wanted to shout. How many bellows would they ever have to ask for?

  Liyana wanted to say useful things: Tree, stump, soup, cloud. She wanted to say, No way! Let’s get out here!

  On the twenty-ninth day, she nodded an apology when she entered late. She could still feel the quiet leaves unfurling inside her mouth.

  The kindergarten students stared at her in wonder when she appeared daily for fifty minutes after lunch and stuffed herself into one of their miniature wooden desks. All the little faces turned in her direction. She felt like a giant lost from her homeland. They wore white pinafores. Their cheeks were glowing and peachy. They must have thought she was a very slow learner.

  Sometimes, when it was her turn to answer and she stayed silent, they whispered hints to help her. She couldn’t even tell them how grateful she was. The teacher, who reeked of sour ash, rapped the tiny backs of his students’ hands when they made a mistake. Their rosy faces puffed up with tears. He didn’t hit Liyana, even after the twenty-ninth day’s tardiness, though she made more mistakes than they did. Did he fear she’d knock him over backward? Well, she would.

  Liyana had already started drafting a letter to the editor for the daily English/Arabic newspaper in Jerusalem, pronouncing such behavior primitive and unacceptable. Would the school expel her if it got printed?

  On the twenty-ninth day of school Liyana decided she could forget about Jackson if Atom, the boy who sat across the aisle from her in regular class, smiled at her a little more.

  WHAT YOU CAN BUY IN JERUSALEM

  I keep my eye on the mother-of-pearl dove earrings in the shop window, waiting for them to fly away.

  You can buy gray Arabic notebooks with soft covers just the right size for folding once and sticking in your pocket. Liyana’s class used them at school and she’d started using them for her own writings. She liked how the place for a “title” was on what English speakers would call the back. She even started writing in one back to front.

  You can buy miniature Christmas cards that say “Flowers from the Holy Land” and include a flattened burst of wildflowers. The blue flowers turn out best, pressed.

  Postcards show the Old City behind its golden wall and the inside of the Dome of the Rock through a fish-eye lens and the giant water jug at the Kfar Kana Church and the craggy olive trees in the Garden of Gethsemane and the mosaic floor of Hisham’s Palace. Liyana found some dusty black-and-white postcards at the American Colony Hotel gift shop that said “Palestine” instead of Israel and she bought them, too. They showed camels, steep cliffs, the skinny Jordan River, donkeys, and Bedouins in tents. A crooked sign on the stationery store said, SPECIAL BIG GOODIES SALE GOING FAST AND NOW.

  You can buy glass vases handblown in Hebron and olive-wood rosaries and creamy white mother-of-pearl star pins and shiny brocade from big bolts of cloth at Bilal’s Tailor Shop. You’d almost never see anyone in the United States wearing clothes made of such cloth unless it was a high-society person or a Barbie doll.

  Liyana liked to finger the rich brocade. Bilal gave her scraps from the ends of bolts. She had red and purple, gold and silver. She was learning to sew small pillows at home. She made one for her troll. Poppy had gone to school with Bilal’s father long ago, so Bilal told Liyana she could have his shop when she got older. He s
aid he wasn’t planning to get married or have any children.

  Why not?

  Because I’m too ugly.

  He wasn’t ugly.

  Liyana stared at him when he wasn’t looking.

  You can buy millions of little decorated cups, with tiny saucers, for Arabic coffee and tea.

  You can buy painted Palestinian plates and roasted chickpeas and olive oil soap made in Nablus with a red camel on the package and saffron, that spice that costs a lot of money in American grocery stores, very cheaply. You can also buy vials of holy oil and fancy jars of water from the River Jordan (stamped: For External Use Only, so you don’t get carried away and drink it) that has a Certificate of Authenticity in Arabic, German, and English on the side of the box. It also says the Bishop of Jerusalem of the Arab Episcopal Church authorizes it. Liyana thought you were supposed to dab it on your temples if you were having an extremely hard day.

  You can buy sweets and treats, gooey, sticky, honey-dipped, date-stuffed fabulous Arabic desserts on giant round silver trays. Some have layers of sweetened, toasted shredded wheat. Some are packed with white cheese or walnuts or pistachio nuts. The bakery shops have little low stools and low tables out in front of them. Liyana liked katayef best—a small, folded-over pancake stuffed with cinnamon and nuts and soaked in syrup. She took home three half-moons of katayef in a white cardboard box.

  If you asked the price of anything, the shop-keeper would say, “Foryou….” and pretend he was giving you a great deal, but you knew he would say that for anybody.

  DISPLAY

  Is the whole world really looking?

  Liyana combed her long wet hair out on the open front balcony of their house where the breeze smelled sweet as olive oil. Up the road, white sheets ballooned like parachutes from neighbors’ rooftop clotheslines. She wondered if Jackson had kissed another girl in the same movie theater by now. She tried to remember the way his crisp shirt collar stood up against his neck. She wondered if Claire had a new best friend. Her recent letter, on a blue air-letter sheet, didn’t say so. Far off, Liyana could see a girl with red hair running at the refugee camp, carrying something large in her arms. Was it Nadine? Then Poppy called her back inside.

  “Please,” he said urgently. “Don’t be so public about it. You’re making a display. Comb your hair in the bathroom. Comb it in your own bedroom! Don’t do it out there where all the taxis and shepherds can see you.”

  Sometimes he sounded as if she were breaking his heart.

  Liyana’s father still talked about shepherds as if they were everywhere. Now and then an ancient shepherd in a dusty brown cloak would pass Sitti’s house up in the village, tapping a wooden cane against the stones. He didn’t even turn his head to notice Liyana and Rafik staring at him from the doorway. All he cared about were his goats and sheep with painted red or blue bottoms so he could find them if they got mixed up with other animals. Maybe his own dusty memories followed him up the path.

  But Poppy acted as if their modern apartment on the Ramallah road was still surrounded by shepherds. Poppy saw what used to be there.

  Maybe, Liyana thought, he’s afraid a shepherd will fall in love with me and come ask for my hand. I will never ever give my hand away. Even the phrase disgusted her.

  Sometimes she heard her father say, “We are Americans,” to his relatives—when she walked the village streets alone just for exercise, pretending she was giving Jackson a tour, or when she flipped the round dial on Sitti’s radio, or when she slouched in the corner of Sitti’s room with a book in front of her face.

  Americans?

  Even Poppy, who was always an Arab before?

  Of course there was never any question about their mother being an American, but Rafik and Liyana walked a blurry line.

  Liyana tipped from one side to the other.

  The minute Poppy told her to stop combing her hair on the balcony, she toppled onto the American side, thinking, If I were at home on a beach I could run up and down the sand with just a bathing suit on and no one would even notice me. I could wear my short shorts that I didn’t bring and hold a boy’s hand in the street without causing an earthquake. I could comb my wet hair in public for a hundred dumb years.

  LIT UP

  She turned a corner and everything changed.

  “You keep getting me in trouble,” Liyana’s friend Sylvie sighed on one of their lunchtime walks from school to the falafel stand. That morning Liyana had urged Sylvie to defy the “directress” who ordered her to remove a tortoise-shell clip from her hair. Liyana whispered, “This is getting ridiculous! Say no!” and Sylvie peeped, “No” in a thin voice that caused her to get a detention note. She would have to stay after school.

  Sylvie pointed to the Armenian man with giant keys dangling from his belt who locked the door of the Armenian Quarter every night at 10 P.M. He opened it again at 6 A.M.

  Sylvie said, “Last week, I was running up the street fast from a movie at the British Library. This man saw me coming, but the time on the clock was 10:01 and he locked the door right before I reached it. He would not let me come in! I had to walk to the house of my aunt in the new city to sleep—a long walk in the dark! My mother was so mad. She said I can’t go to movies anymore.”

  Liyana marched up to the man and asked, “Why do you need to keep that door locked, anyway? No one else’s neighborhood is locked.”

  He stared at her as if she were a thief digging for secrets. “Security,” he said gruffly, and turned away. She hated that word. Now Sylvie was embarrassed and walking back to school early without her. Maybe it was an excuse. She still had some leftover homework to do.

  Just outside the Quarter’s huge door, on the path to Jaffa Gate, sat the Sandrouni family’s famous ceramics shop. Poppy had pointed it out to Liyana as a landmark. The Sandrounis painted beautiful tiles, lamps, and bowls with blue interiors, and scenes of Jerusalem—domes, towers, and pointy trees.

  Liyana, feeling suddenly bereft without her friend, saw a crowd of tourists heading in there, so she turned and followed them, as if she were part of their group. No one noticed her.

  The tourists began buying like crazy. They pointed and flipped credit cards, speaking a language Liyana couldn’t identify—Danish? Dutch?

  Liyana’s eyes fell upon a small, shapely green lamp, exactly the color of the green grass she missed back home in the United States—who ever thought about grass when you had it? Who ever thought about missing a color? The lamp would be perfect for reading in bed.

  Then she looked at the price tag. She couldn’t understand it because the writing was so fancy, like calligraphy. She motioned to a boy standing behind the counter with his arms folded, near the reams of tissue paper and stacks of cardboard boxes. He raised his eyebrows and walked over to her.

  He smelled like cinnamon. Liyana thought he might be one or two years older than she was.

  “Excuse me, how much does this cost? Can you read it?”

  He stared at her school uniform, speaking English smoothly. “You are not—with them?”

  He pointed to the group.

  “I am not!”

  “You are—with who?”

  Then she felt like Crispin Crispian in that old children’s book by Margaret Wise Brown, the dog who belonged to himself.

  “I am with myself.”

  He smiled broadly. “I am also with myself,” he said. “I like to be with—myself.”

  His hair rolled back cleanly as a wave at the beach.

  “You do?”

  “Almost always.”

  “You don’t get tired of your own self?”

  “Never.”

  “You don’t get lonely for other people?”

  He looked around the crowded shop. “How could I? Other people are everywhere.”

  They both laughed.

  “Do you go to school?” Liyana asked him.

  “Of course,” he grinned. “I am a—scholar. I do my homework every day. But right now—I am—eating lunch.”

>   “So am I!” she said. “I am eating lunch, too.”

  Neither of them had any food.

  “By the way,” he said, “I can’t read this tag either.”

  He called over a member of the Sandrouni family, who quoted something equaling about sixty-five American dollars. Too much! Liyana still had to translate prices into dollars in her head for them to make sense to her.

  “Thanks.”

  “Do you want it?” he asked her.

  “Well, I want it—but I can’t afford it. Maybe they’ll have a sale.”

  The Sandrouni man placed his hand on the cinnamon boy’s shoulder. “Has he been telling you stories? Has he promised to give all my precious cargoes away for half price?”

  Liyana laughed and thanked them both and stepped back outside toward Abu Musa’s where little cakes of falafel were frying. Abu Musa slid her crispy planets of falafel into pockets of warm, fresh pita bread and Liyana bit down hard. She was starving.

  That night at dinner she said, “Poppy, today I fell in love with a lamp.”

  INTERVIEWING SITTI

  Prepare for an unexpected visitor heading toward your door.

  Back in the United States, Liyana’s classes had oral history assignments where they were supposed to go home and ask their oldest relatives or neighbors what the world was like long ago. What did you eat? What did you do for recreation? How did your mother cure a headache? They could write the answers down or tape them, then choose the most interesting parts and compose a paper.

  Of course Liyana always picked Peachy Helen, but Peachy would protest. “Honey, you think I remember that far back? I barely remember what happened yesterday! Let’s just forget about it and share some scones with lemon curd, what do you say?”