Habibi Read online

  Critical acclaim for Habibi

  “Readers will be engaged by the character, the romance, the foreshadowed danger. Poetically imaged and leavened with humor, the story renders layered and complex history understandable through character and incident. Habibi succeeds in making the hope for peace compelling, personal and concrete.”

  —School Library Journal

  “[B]reaks new ground in YA fiction.”

  —Hazel Rochman, Booklist

  “This is the work of a poet, not a polemicist. The very title, an Arabic form of endearment that has been adopted into everyday Hebrew, bespeaks a vision of a gentler world in which kisses are more common than gunshots.”

  —Houston Chronicle

  “Nye’s prose keeps both feet on the ground, barefoot, while her eyes are fixed on the angels.”

  —Aramco World

  ALA Best Book for Young Adults

  ALA Notable Children’s Book

  Jane Addams Book Award

  New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age

  American Bookseller “Pick of the Lists”

  Judy Lopez Memorial Award for Children’s Literature

  Texas Institute of Letters Best Book for Young Readers

  Maybe the hardest thing about moving overseas was being in a place where no one but your own family had any memory of you. It was like putting yourself back together with little pieces.

  At home in St. Louis even the man at the grocery store remembered the day a very young Liyana poked a ripe peach too hard and her finger went inside it. She shrieked and the neighborhood ladies buying vegetables laughed. Forever after when she came into his store the grocer would say “Be careful with my plums! Don’t get too close to my melons!”

  It was a little thing, of course, but it helped her to be somebody.

  In Jerusalem she was just a blur going by on the streets. The half-American with Arab eyes in the blue Armenian school uniform.

  Who?

  If you purhcased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed,” and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  SIMON PULSE

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  Copyright © 1997 by Naomi Shihab Nye

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  SIMON PULSE is a registered trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Also available in a Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers hardcover edition.

  Designed by Heather Wood

  The text of this book was set in American Garamond.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First paperback edition June 1999

  20 22 24 26 28 30 29 27 26 24 22 19

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

  Habibi: a novel / by Naomi Shihab Nye p. cm.

  Summary: When fourteen-year-old Liyana Abboud, her younger brother, and her parents move from St. Louis to a new home between Jerusalem and the Palestinian village where her father was born, they face many changes and must deal with the tensions between Jews and Palestinians.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-689-80149-5 (hc.) ISBN-10: 0-689-80149-1 (hc.)

  [ 1. Family life—Jerusalem—Fiction. 2. Jerusalem—Fiction. 3. Emigration and immigration—Fiction. 4. Jewish-Arab relations—Fiction.] I. Title. PZ7.N976Hab 1997 [Fic]—dc21 97-10943 CIP AC

  ISBN-13: 978-0-689-82523-1 (pbk.)

  ISBN-10: 0-689-82523-4 (pbk.)

  eISBN: 978-1-439-11519-0

  “Damascus Gate” by Yehuda Amichai appears in Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai, Translated by Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell (Harper & Row, 1986)

  “Homing Pigeons” by Mahmoud Darwish was translated by Lena Jayyusi and W. S. Merwin and appears in Anthology of Modern Palestinian Literature, Edited by Salma Khadra Jayyusi (Columbia University Press, 1992)

  Thanks to Kevin Henkes and Andrea Carlisle for their friendship and advice, to Madison Nye for his technological expertise, to Anton Shammas for his inspiration, to Madhatters Tea, San Antonio, to Sarah Thomson and Susan Rich, and especially to my editor, Virginia Duncan, who knows both when to drink Vietnamese iced coffee and when to crack the whip.

  For my father, Aziz and my mother, Miriam who have loved us so well

  For Adlai, my brother

  For Grace and Hillary Nye

  For my Armenian friends in the Old City of Jerusalem

  And for all the Arabs and Jews who would rather be cousins than enemies

  For you

  Habibi

  I forget how this street looked a month ago, but I can remember it, say, from the Time of the Crusades.

  (Pardon me, you dropped this. Is it yours? This stone? Not that one, that one fell nine hundred years ago.)

  From “Damascus Gate,” by Yehuda Amichai

  Where do you take me, my love, away from my parents from my trees, from my little bed, and from my boredom, from my mirrors, from my moon, from the closet of my life … from my shyness?

  From “Homing Pigeons” by Mahmoud Darwish

  Is a Jew a Palestinian? Is a Palestinian a Jew? Where does one begin to answer such a question? I will say this: we are cut from the same rock, breathe the scent of the same lemons & olives, anchor our troubles with the same stones, carefully placed. We are challah & hummus, eaten together to make a meal.

  Anndee Hochman

  KISS

  The secret kiss grew larger and larger.

  Liyana Abboud had just tasted her first kiss when her parents announced they were leaving the country. They were having a “family meeting” at the Country Time Diner in St. Louis, the place Liyana and her brother Rafik felt embarrassed in because their father usually returned his dinner for not being hot enough.

  Of course no one knew about the kiss, which Liyana was carrying in a secret pouch right under her skin.

  Dr. Kamal Abboud, whom they called Poppy, jumped right in. “What do you think about moving to Jerusalem and starting new lives?” His face cracked into its most contagious smile. He was handsome and lean, with rumpled black hair and dark eyes. Liyana’s best friend, Claire, always said he looked more like a movie star than any of the other dads.

  Liyana’s mother, Susan, filled in the gaps, as usual. She had long brown hair, which she usually wore pulled back in a straight ponytail, hazel eyes, and a calm way of talking. “Our family has reached a crossroads. You”—she opened her hand toward Liyana—“are going into high school next year. You”—she pointed at Rafik—“are going into middle school. Once you get into your new schools, you will feel less like moving across the ocean. This is the best time we can think of to make the big change.”

  The kiss started burning a hole up through Liyana’s smooth left cheek where it had begun. The blaze spread over to her lips where the kiss had ended. She could imagine her lips igniting over the menu.

  “Wow!” Rafik said. He combed both his hands backward through his curly black hair, the way he always did when he was excited.

  “Liyana, what are you looking at?” Poppy asked.

  She hadn’t smiled back yet. Her eyes were fixed on the floral wreath hanging over the cash register and her mouth tried to shape the words, “Maybe it’s a bad idea,” but nothing c
ame out. She felt the same way she did after the car accident on an icy road last winter, when she’d noticed the Magic Marker stain on the seat instead of the blood coming out of her elbow. Stunned into observation.

  Leave the country?

  Of course it was a rumor Liyana had been hearing all her life. Someday her family would leave the United States, the country her mother and she and her brother had been born in, and move overseas to the mixed-up country her father had been born in. It was only fair. He wanted to show it to them. He wanted them to know both sides of their history and become the fully rounded human beings they were destined to be.

  “You know,” Poppy said, “I never planned to be an immigrant forever. I never thought I’d become a citizen. I planned to return home after medical school. I didn’t know”—and here Rafik picked up the familiar refrain with him, like the chorus to “America the Beautiful”—“I’d fall in love and stay for so many years.” Rafik covered his heart with his hand and closed his eyes. Poppy laughed.

  Poppy wanted Liyana and Rafik to know Sitti, their grandmother. He would transfer to AlMakassad Hospital in Jerusalem—he’d been in touch with them by mail and fax. Liyana and Rafik would have doubled lives. When Liyana was younger, she used to think this sounded like fun. That was long before last night’s kiss.

  The biggest surprise about the kiss was it didn’t come from Phillip, the person on Liyana’s right at the movie theater, who might have kissed her because they’d been good friends for years and she had a crush on him, but from Jackson, on her left.

  Jackson was in her social studies class. Liyana liked the way he smelled—like Poppy’s old bottle of English Leather. They’d traded notes about Mali and Ethiopia, and she complimented him on his enormous vocabulary. Sometimes they stood together in the lunch line, discussing the dazzling enchiladas, and they ate together, but not every day.

  Jackson had leaned over to ask what the actress in the movie had just said and the next thing Liyana knew, his lips were nuzzling her cheek. They moved to her mouth and held there for a moment, pressing lightly.

  Liyana had no idea what happened at the end of the movie. It was a swirling blue blur, like an underwater scene. Afterward, her friends crowded toward the exit doors, laughing. Jackson tripped over someone’s empty popcorn tub on the floor. Liyana liked that he picked it up and threw it away. It said something about him. But they didn’t talk much at Claire’s pizza party, and all they said when Poppy picked Liyana up later was, “See you at school,” as if nothing had happened.

  Still, there was something different between them now. A little glimmer. His lips were so warm. Liyana had never imagined lips being warm.

  And now she was leaving the country. The waitress refilled Poppy’s tea.

  “What will we do with our things?” mumbled Liyana. The piano; the blue bicycles; the boxes of tangle-haired dolls Liyana hadn’t played with in years, though she refused to give them away; the mountains of books; the blackboard on an easel where she and Rafik left each other notes. It stood in the hallway between their rooms.

  Did you take my red marker? Big trouble, buddy!

  Red marker seized by Klingon intruders!

  Who would they be if they had to start all over again? Liyana started thinking of the word “immigrant” in a different way at that moment and her skin prickled. Now she would be the immigrant.

  Poppy curled his finger at the waitress. “Honey,” he said to her. “My potato is positively icy inside.”

  JET SET

  Some days were long sentences flowing into one another.

  They flew to New York in steamy June, left their seventeen suitcases and Liyana’s violin stored at the airport, and spent one day lugging stuffed backpacks around to the Empire State Building and riding up to the inside of the Statue of Liberty’s head. Poppy was retracing his steps. He wanted them to see exactly what he had seen when he first came to the United States.

  “When Miss Liberty appeared through the fog holding up her hand in the harbor, I felt she was an old girlfriend welcoming me. I’d seen so many pictures of her.”

  “It’s not just a hand, Poppy, it’s a torch,” Rafik said. His mother flashed him a quieting look. She wanted Poppy to keep telling stories.

  Poppy recalled, “When I saw a sign for hot dogs, I thought they were made of dog meat. It scared me. I thought the big shiny trash cans were mailboxes.”

  Nineteen years after his first arrival, they ate giant pretzels from a cart on the street. The big grains of salt on the pretzel skin tasted delicious. They bumped into disoriented families on summer vacations. They ate double scoops of Rocky Road ice cream.

  “After this, you’ll call ice cream booza,” Poppy said. “And it won’t have marshmallows, either. I don’t think they’ve crossed the ocean yet.”

  “They’d get wet,” said Rafik. Liyana rolled her eyes.

  Liyana felt exhilarated by the skyscrapers. Their glittering lines lifted her out of her worry. She wished she could ride every sleek elevator up and down, punching buttons, seeing who got on and off. Some days you remembered the world was full of wonderful people you hadn’t met yet. She bought seven postcards with different pictures—the Brooklyn Bridge, Washington Square, the fish market—imagining which one she might send to Jackson.

  By the time they returned to the airport at sundown for their night flight overseas, a storm was swirling somewhere over the dark Atlantic. They heard rumors about it from passengers at the gate. Ominous booms of distant thunder made Liyana feel edgy inside. Yippity loosebugs, she thought. Their flight was running two hours late. Liyana kept her eyes on the other people waiting to fly. She wanted to see if they looked nervous.

  But they only looked sleepy. A yawning lady with a flowered scarf tied under her chin lugged a food basket jammed with Jell-O boxes, paper napkins, and coffee filters. Didn’t they have those things in the Middle East? Another lady rolled up her husband’s raincoat and made her little children lie down on the floor with their heads on it. No one looked nervous at all.

  When Rafik unzipped his backpack and pulled out a giant sack of Cornnuts, Liyana went to sit at the other side of the gate. She couldn’t stand to sit next to somebody crunching. She scribbled in her notebook. One Indian lady in a purple sari crying. The size of good-bye.

  CLOVER CHAIN

  Some days I am brave, but other days I almost disappear.

  Before the Abboud family left St. Louis, there were many times Liyana thought she would rather be anyone else on their block, someone who planned to stick around in the neighborhood doing dull things like going to Mannino’s grocery store and staring at watermelons and jars of peanut butter stacked up. She would rather not have to change her life.

  She knew the bush with red berries that were probably poison. She knew which bus number to take downtown. Often the Abboud family drove around on slow Sunday evenings with their car windows wide open to “smell the air.” That’s what Poppy said people did in Jerusalem.

  St. Louis air smelled of tar and doughnuts, old boards washed up out of the muddy river, red bricks, and licorice. Leafy greens of bushes and trees ran together outside their car. How could Liyana give all this up? She knew what grass smelled like, a rich brew of dirt and green roots, right after rain.

  And her fingers knew exactly the best way to twist skinny green clover stems together to make a long chain to stretch across the street to stop cars. She would stand on one side and Rafik would stand on the other, holding his end for as long as he could pay attention.

  Of course the cars could have driven right through the chain if they tried. Most drivers would laugh and motion for Liyana and Rafik to pull the chain back. But one day right after they started telling people they were moving overseas, a man in a red pickup truck slammed on his brakes, shook his fist from the window, and shouted that he’d tell the police and make them pay a fine.

  “We are children!” Liyana called out. He glared at her then. They dropped the chain and he drove away.

&
nbsp; “Could he really do that?” Rafik asked.

  “Let’s go in,” Liyana said. “I don’t want to play.”

  BLIP

  Being little was a skin that fit.

  It had seemed to Liyana that Poppy was walking differently during the weeks before they left. His stride had a new lift in it. He made lots of overseas phone calls. Mrs. Abboud would watch him and raise ten fingers like a coach or a referee when she thought he should get off.

  But he also kept falling into silent spells. At the dinner table he forgot to remove the blue denim baseball cap he wore for yard work. He wasn’t combing his hair as carefully as usual. When he read a newspaper story about demonstrations in Jerusalem, he rolled the newspaper into a tube and slapped it against his arm.

  “What’s up?” Liyana asked him as he poured gasoline into the lawn mower for the last time. He jumped. “Are you worried we’re making a mistake?”

  “No,” he said. “I was just thinking about … how I like doing this.”

  She caught him staring at odd things—the hinge on the pantry cabinet, the medicine chest in the bathroom. When she asked what he was doing, he said, “Remembering.”

  Liyana, too, had been trying to memorize at least one small detail about each house on their street. The blue cottage with the crooked chimney, the green two-story only half painted. Did the painters break their arms? Did they lose their enthusiasm for that color? The brick house with the pink vine wrapped around its forehead in the summers. Liyana might never see the cherry trees or tulip beds or gray pebbles or cracked sidewalks again.

  When she was younger, before she went to middle school and her arms seemed to grow longer in the night, she knew the easy latitude and longitude of her world. Now she was moving away to a land she knew little of, except the skillet of olive oil with crumbles of garlic and pine nuts browning on the stove. Liyana’s mother stood over the skillet with the spatula poised, like a scientist. Poppy would pass through the house lifting his nose to the air, saying, “There it is, there’s my country.”