The Turtle of Oman Read online

  Memorize

  They ate green beans with chunks of lamb and rice for dinner. Aref pushed his water glass to the right-hand corner of his place mat. He liked a square glass, so it lined up properly. No one noticed that he always did this. He liked his fork and spoon lined up exactly straight with the place mat too. He liked finishing one food—all the green beans, for example—before he started eating the rice. He ate the salad last, like a French person, his mom had told him. He drank water between each course. And he liked to eat very slowly.

  His dad’s chair was just sitting there empty with the echo of his dad in it. By now his dad was—where? High above the clouds. Dozing on a little airplane pillow with his earplugs in his ears. Aref closed his eyes to imagine this.

  What did people eat on airplanes?

  Jumbo jet menu

  1. Dad says they eat sandwiches.

  2. Mom says they eat peanuts.

  3. Sometimes airplane waiters serve hummus in sealed cups, with a sack of chips. This is hard to picture. But I hope they give it to me.

  4. Maybe the passengers gobble gigantic mounds of cotton candy since they are above the clouds.

  After dinner, Aref quietly turned the handle of the front door and stepped outside by himself to memorize what his house looked like under the moon. He needed its shape and shadows. He wanted to press all its details into his brain so nothing would disappear.

  It would have been nice to walk around the whole neighborhood, staring at every single other house, tucking all their windows and doors and roofs into his memory too. But he was afraid of foxes. At night foxes wandered through the city, poking their noses into gardens and trashcans for scraps. They had large ears and looked regal and a little scary, sneaking around. Aref had seen them from the roof. But he didn’t want to meet one up close.

  Still, he wished he had been born a fox.

  Fox Facts

  1. Foxes have fur between their toes so their feet won’t get burned on hot ground.

  2. The British School has an Arabian Foxes Hockey Club which Diram is going to join.

  3. Foxes are not afraid of the dark. They just wander wherever they want to go when they feel like it. No one puts a leash on them.

  Even better than a fox, Aref wished he were the endangered Arabian leopard in the Musandam peninsula. Almost no one ever saw it. So they couldn’t tell it what to do. He would not wish to be a crab (caught and eaten) or a spiny crayfish (too spiny) or a bonito.

  Aref thought about climbing the stairs to their flat roof, where his parents draped the bed quilts on clotheslines for airing and his father often sat with friends in a circle, especially in winter, eating sunflower seeds and drinking tea. In the daylight, you could see the ocean off in the distance. You could see Jabrin Castle. You could wave at the one-hundred-year-old lady Ummi Salwa in her pink satin robe taking a nap in her long chair on the next roof.

  When they came back from the United States, Ummi Salwa would be a hundred and three.

  Better or Worse

  Aref said to his mom the next morning at breakfast, “I dreamed about a word, it was all lit with spotlights.”

  The word he had dreamed of was “halcyon.” In his mind, it looked like a tipped balloon with the air coming out a pinhole on one side. Sulima was throwing it at him and he opened his hands, but dropped it.

  Halcyon meant a period of time that was happy and peaceful. You never heard anyone say it, though. That is what my life in Oman has been so far, he thought. And now it will be all shaken up.

  “That’s nice, habibti,” said his mom. She didn’t ask him what word it was. She probably thought he dreamed about a simple word like “lucky” or “mabruk”—“congratulations” in Arabic. She had no idea how many words he knew.

  Aref looked out the window at a streak of orange clouds with a bend in it. The clouds reminded him of an arm with a muscle. At breakfast, he nibbled a cucumber, dipped a carrot into the hummus plate. He stared at his scrambled eggs, taking a few small bites. His mother had mixed some white cheese into the eggs. He didn’t think he would ever like eggs. But his mom kept serving them. When he was younger, he ate so slowly, his mom said every day was an “endless breakfast” and she made him get up much earlier than his friends did, just to have time to eat before leaving for school.

  “How’s your place mat memorization coming?” his mom called, trying to distract him from the plate sitting on it.

  “Very bad.”

  A few weeks ago, Aref’s dad had bought him a place mat with a map of the United States on it. Aref was trying to learn the names of the fifty states. He kept mixing up Wisconsin and Minnesota. Mississippi was a river AND a state. It was complicated. He hadn’t really stared very hard at the western section of the country yet. It was on the left side of the place mat and he was starting at the right. He liked New York and New Jersey.

  “Mom, why is there no Old York or Old Jersey?” Aref asked.

  “They are in England,” his mom said.

  “I wish we were moving to England instead,” said Aref.

  “Why?”

  “It’s closer to Oman.” But it wasn’t really close at all. It only looked a lot closer on a map or a globe.

  “Why do you have to go back to school?” he asked one more time.

  His mother was looking through a thick stack of papers on the table. She still had to grade them. His father graded papers on the computer, like a modern man, but his mother preferred seeing her students’ reports and compositions on real paper.

  “Well, I do think we’ve talked about this one hundred times—please try to remember what we said. It’s temporary. We’ll have an adventure and when we come home, all our lives will be better.”

  “My life will be worse,” said Aref. “Diram will be a Hockey Fox without me. I don’t want to speak English all the time. I don’t want to meet new people. I will miss my friends and be too far from Sidi. Mom, can Sidi come over today?”

  “Guess what, I already called him,” she said. “I told him we need his personal assistance, so he is coming over later this afternoon. Isn’t that good?”

  “Yes. It’s great.”

  Aref went to his room and wrote in his notebook.

  Questions

  1. Why can’t Sidi come with us?

  2. Is my handwriting in both English and Arabic getting better?

  Slow

  Aref and his grandfather had been looking inside and under things for a long time now, checking out new streets, shops and cafes, finding friends, wandering the beaches. Since Aref was little, they had been making plans:

  Someday Soon

  1. Yes, we will go to Masirah Island and watch kite surfing!

  2. Yes, we will march around Al-Hazem Fort and pretend we are living two hundred years ago!

  3. Yes, we will visit Jebel Shams, the highest mountain of our country!

  4. Yes, we are always looking hard to find the leaf-toed gecko. Maybe it will sit on our feet.

  5. Yes, we will see the “magical light” at Wadi Shab. Sidi says it is a long drive and if we sit down and stare, something inside our eyeballs will start to shimmer. Sidi says the trees look like they are floating in the sky.

  Even when they weren’t doing anything special, Sidi and Aref, Team of Two, pretended they were—yes, we will take all the spices out of the drawer and smell them and throw the old nasty nutmeg away! When Aref was little, Sidi would sit quietly on a bench while Aref ran in circles around him. Sidi would close his eyes and say, “I’m soaking up the light” or, “I’m thinking of what we just did, or what to do next.”

  Sidi knew the real official names of rocks and stones and said it was because he had always lived in view of the Hajar Mountains. He loved that massive wall of brown rumpled slopes and peaks behind the city. Everyone in Muscat looked at those slopes all their lives. Sidi said he was the sultan only of stones.

  And Sidi always had time for Aref, since he was retired now and never wore a watch. He didn’t like watches. He
said time felt heavy on his wrist. He hated rushing and thought the world was hurrying so much that people were missing all the good parts.

  Aref had taught Sidi how to use a computer, but Sidi didn’t like it. He said the letters on the screen went too fast and made him dizzy. The wealth of information was overwhelming. He didn’t want to know the news from Zanzibar.

  Aref’s mother stood in the doorway of his bedroom staring at him. He was lying on his bed reading a science magazine about glittering galaxies.

  “Is there any news about your suitcase, Aref?” she asked. “You don’t seem to be making any progress. Why don’t you manage a little packing before Sidi gets here? You need to pack the clothes you love most.” She had come upstairs from cleaning out the refrigerator and still had a dishrag in her hand. She wanted the refrigerator to be spotless for his cousins and had crammed everything that was left onto one shelf.

  “I don’t love any clothes.”

  He was wearing a blue-and-white striped T-shirt and blue jeans. He plucked at them as if he were swatting them away from his body.

  Then he jumped up, did a cartwheel on his carpet and landed perfectly. So he did another one.

  Know Your Michigan Turtles

  Mish-Mish had followed Aref’s mom upstairs and stood on her hind legs batting at the curtain pull. Sometimes she got a claw snagged and tugged hard to free herself. Aref thought she might be trying to close the draperies. She liked dim light for her four-hour naps. Aref thought Mish-Mish was extremely smart. Often she moved her cat-lips as if she were trying to speak.

  “Mom, why can’t I put Mish-Mish in my suitcase and punch air holes in the top? Hani and Shadi will not take good care of her. They barely know her. What if she thinks we’re never coming back and runs away? What if she goes looking for us, what if she gets lost forever?”

  It was possible to imagine all sorts of bad things without working too hard. You could think about centipedes curling and writhing under your bed. One might crawl up the leg of your bed and sting you. Or a tiny shriveled mummy person the size of your hand, standing up on your chest in the dark, sending out light-rays, and growling. You could picture your own head falling off without warning, or your human body growing a tail. You could imagine kids in the United States making fun of your accent or your clothes or the ways you did things.

  Aref’s mother sighed. “Please? Just for a little while? You pick what you want to take with you. You’re old enough! If it fits in your suitcase, you can take it.” She had been saying that for weeks.

  Aref picked up the tourist brochures and postcards of Michigan his mom and dad had been giving him. They had ordered them through the Internet and printed them in color and by now he had a thick collection—snows and bridges and lakes, boats and cherry trees. The biggest lakes were called the Great Lakes. He had to admit Michigan looked like a very nice state. He stuck the stack of pictures into a suitcase pocket. Then he took them out. If he was moving there, why did he need to pack the pictures? He would see everything in real life soon enough.

  On his desk he had placed his favorite brochure of all, Know Your Michigan Turtles. When this one arrived, Aref went a little crazy in a happy way.

  “How did they know? How did they know I like turtles the best?” he had asked.

  His dad had raised one eyebrow and shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe everyone in Michigan likes turtles,” he said.

  Aref learned that Michigan is home to ten native turtle species. Not sea turtles, like the giant ones in Oman, but smaller turtles that lived in the woods and in lakes.

  Smaller Turtles

  1. The state reptile is called a “painted turtle.” On the front of the brochure is a picture of a painted turtle sitting on a log, staring into the sun.

  2. Snapping turtles have long tails and white skin under their chins.

  3. On May 23, World Turtle Day, Michigan celebrates with Turtle Festivals and Turtle Story-telling.

  4. Box turtles have polka dots on their undershells.

  5. Wood turtles are enormous, not small at all.

  Aref stuffed this one brochure into a suitcase pouch.

  The other things he wished he could take—his whole room, his friends—would not fit into a suitcase of any size. He couldn’t take his bicycle. Which made him think: I would rather be riding my bicycle than packing. For sure, for sure!

  He could hear water running. His mom was in the bathroom taking a shower. Aref rapped on the bathroom door lightly and shouted, “Mom, I am going outside for a minute!”

  “Come back inside soon!” she yelled. “And stay on our street.”

  His bicycle was tucked behind the dark red blooming bougainvillea bushes on the side of the house. An English name was painted on its back bumper, FAST FORWARD.

  He clicked his red helmet under his chin, and coasted down the road next to his house.

  His parents always said they were lucky not to have too much traffic on this street, which was why they had given him permission at the age of seven to ride on his own block up and down whenever he wanted. How much traffic would there be in Michigan?

  Construction workers on a noisy yellow bulldozer were pushing sand and gravel off to the side of an empty lot. They waved to him and he quickly raised his right hand in greeting. They wore yellow hardhats similar to his helmet. One of the workers called out to him, “Deer balek—be careful, son!”

  A dump truck paused over at the side. Dust spiraled up from a huge hole that an excavator was digging. He didn’t know exactly what they were building. Probably just another house. But he wished: a candy store? That would be good. It could be standing there, a striped surprise, when he returned.

  He swooped down a tiny section of pavement that went nowhere, as if once someone had planned to build a house there and quit. He stopped his bike at the end of the alley, staring out over the valley of houses, moving vehicles, tiny moving people, and bright sun cascading down upon everything—and beyond it all, the sea. He tried to imprint this scene on his mind, then began backing up, slowly, from the end of the alley, to the street, where he turned around again. “Why, why, why?” His mind clicked along with his pedals.

  Sometimes moving backwards was important. Aref wished there could be one day, maybe Mondays, when everything moved backwards, as a sort of time experiment changing the view. You could eat dinner in the morning and breakfast at night. Cars could only reverse. Or you could eat dessert first at every meal. Wouldn’t that feel like a different world?

  Sometimes, even though he was old, Aref walked backwards swinging his arms, making a back-up beep, like a bulldozer or truck would make. You saw differently when you walked backwards. Aref had read a book backwards, put his shirt on backwards to see how it felt, and tried to write his name backwards. It looked very strange. English started at the left and moved right, Arabic words started at the right and moved left. What was backwards to one was forward to the other.

  Would he feel backwards in Michigan or just the same as he felt in Oman?

  He was pedaling hard. He knew where the cracks were. He knew the best place to make a fast swooping circle and turn around. He knew where the bump rose in the street in front of Ziad’s driveway and today he pedaled hard up over it so his bottom rose from the seat and the wheels jumped into the air.

  Ummi Salwa was standing in her doorway moving her arm out and back to her chest, beckoning to him. She had a hard time speaking above a whisper now—she said it was because she was 100, but her voice was still deep and musical if you got close enough to hear her.

  “Marhaba, Ummi Salwa! Hello!” Aref shouted. She smiled and waved harder.

  Aref placed his bike down gently by her walk and ran up to her.

  “Are you still here?” she asked.

  This was very very strange. He could imagine what Sidi would say: “No, I have already left, I am gone now. You are having a dream.”

  “Yes, I am still here,” Aref said politely. “My father left, but my mother and I are still here. We are
packing. We are leaving in a week.”

  Ummi Salwa reached into the side pocket of her silken housecoat and pulled out a package of four tangerines and a small box of chocolates. “I wanted to give these to you, my son,” she whispered. “May Allah bless you and may all the days be kind to you.”

  Aref surprised himself by taking her hand and kissing it. He had never done this before, but Sidi always touched her hand to his forehead. Kissing it just seemed like the right thing for Aref to do at that moment. “Thank you, Ummi Salwa,” he said, also in a whisper. “I will think of you and look forward to seeing you when we get back.”

  She closed her eyes. Sidi had told him that Ummi Salwa could fall asleep while standing up now, but Aref didn’t know if she was asleep or not. Maybe she was just counting up to the age she would be when he returned. Or praying. He walked back to his bicycle, placing her gifts in his basket. He should probably take the chocolate home, so it wouldn’t melt. He looked back to wave, but she had stepped inside.

  He made one more big zigzag down the street and coasted smoothly into his driveway. He was sweating now. He opened the door, and placed the gifts on the kitchen table.

  Cat Without a Map

  “Did you pack anything yet, habibti?”

  Aref thought of the turtle brochure and his gifts from his friends and said, “Yes.” He pressed his forehead against the cool refrigerator. “Will I feel backwards in Michigan?”

  “What are you talking about?” His mother turned to him. “Sweet boy, of course not! You’ll feel perfectly at home!”

  “How do you know?” This was Aref’s favorite question. He had now asked it one million forty-two times in his life, since he could talk.

  “I just know.” She put Ummi Salwa’s chocolate in the refrigerator to harden it again and asked if he wanted a tangerine. He shook his head. “I think I’ll have one, then,” she said, peeling it with her fingernails.