She did not feel humble. She didn’t think she was brilliant or anything, but she did want people to like and miss her. She wanted more letters stacking up in Postal Box Number 898 that said, “Nothing is the same without you” and “Please come home soon.” She pretended they were on their way. Poppy would flip them out of his briefcase and say, “Jackpot!”
Then she thought about the boy she’d seen in the lamp store. His dark hair combed smoothly straight back.
They could meet again. It was a small enough city.
DETECTIVE WORK
We used to leave notes on smokers’ doorsteps saying, “Excuse me, but did you know your lung cells are shriveling up?” Signed, The F.B.I.
Liyana began visiting the Sandrounis’ ceramics shop every other day, memorizing the intricate curls of vines on fancy tiles.
She pretended she had various missions: to collect the store’s business cards to send to her friends back home, whose mothers had enormous interest in painted ceramics, or to purchase a small blue drinking cup, or to check again on the price of that green lamp which she would really love to see sitting by her bed. She wouldn’t even mind learning how to electrify things. She studied cords and switches.
The Sandrounis soon greeted her as if she were their old friend.
“Ho—back again? We are irresistible!”
Mr. Sandrouni folded a newspaper he was reading very carefully. “You know what?” he said to Liyana, who just happened to be standing nearer to him than anyone else. “I think it is better to use newspapers for wrapping than for reading.” He placed the newspaper on his giant pile. “Always a bad story. Always something very sad.”
She wanted to ask about the cinnamon-smelling boy—was he their son, or nephew, and where was he now? But she couldn’t do it.
Finally, on the day she’d decided her browsing was getting ridiculous and she’d better stop hanging out in the shop or they’d put a detective on her, he appeared again, just where he had stood the first time, eating yogurt out of a cup.
“What’s up?” he said to her, tipping his head and smiling.
“I was taking a walk.” She coughed and grew courageous. “I was looking for you.”
He raised an interested eyebrow. “Yes?”
“I think we might—have more things to talk about.”
Liyana, she said to herself, Poppy would flip!
Here, in the land of dignity.
Here, where a girl was hardly supposed to THINK about a boy!
But he didn’t flinch. He grinned even more widely. “I’m sure,” he said. But he wasn’t making fun of her. “I think you are right.” His spoon rattled around in his cup. “Shall we talk about—yogurt?”
She took such a deep, relieved breath it sounded as if she were gulping. “I eat another kind without so much writing on the cup,” she said. “It tastes saltier and less creamy.”
“I prefer it myself,” he said. “This kind is more sweet. But the store was finished with—your kind. Do you like yogurt with fruit?”
“I hate it.”
“I hate it, too!”
Mr. Sandrouni looked vaguely amused. “Shall we start a taster’s club in here when business gets slow?” he said. “You could eat out of my bowls. Don’t they have those things—people tasting cheese and wine together?”
Liyana felt a charge of enthusiasm as if such a dopey conversation were electrifying her.
The boy put out his hand. “Don’t you think we should trade names now that we know so much about each other?”
She thought he said his name was “Omar” but he went by “Or.”
“Why?”
“It’s shorter.”
When she told him hers, he smiled. “A nice name,” he said. “I never heard it before.” He said it twice. Liyana thought it rolled around on his tongue.
She asked, “Is your last name Sandrouni?” and he looked startled.
“Me? No way! I’m not related to these guys! I’m just—an old friend of their family!”
Mr. Sandrouni said, “He asked me to adopt him, but I refused.”
Liyana and Or made a plan to meet for yogurt at Abu Musa’s the next day, after discovering they had exactly the same lunch break.
At dinner that night, Liyana did not tell her parents about her new friend. But she asked Poppy, “Have we ever had anyone in our family named Omar?” and he looked puzzled.
“Well, I think way back when your grandfather was young and he used to ride his Arabian horse from the village all the way up to Galilee just to eat the tiny crispy fish that were caught in the sea—then I think we might have had an Omar. Why?”
“Did you know him?”
“No. Maybe I heard a story about him. It’s a common name, you know.”
Later, as they ate rice pudding, Poppy added, “I met the famous actor, Omar Sharif, in a tiny café in Egypt once. Did I ever tell you that? We shared a table because there weren’t many tables. He asked me what I did and I said I was getting ready to go to medical school. Then I asked, ‘What about you?’”
“I’m an actor,” Ornar Sharif said. “I’m getting ready to be a famous actor.”
Liyana opened her eyes wider. “Wow, he knew that? Before it happened?”
Poppy said, “I had never heard of him. So I answered cockily, if you can believe it—Isn’t everybody an actor?”
At Abu Musa’s café, neither Liyana nor Or ordered yogurt. They ordered hummus, which came swirled with sprigs of parsley for garnish. They sat at a crooked table outside, dipping their breads into the same creamy plate.
“Did you always live here in Jerusalem?” Liyana asked him and he said, “Always—forever and ever—from the time of the—infinite sorrows—till now.”
She liked how he talked. His English was very flowing.
“Do you hope to live in Jerusalem forever?”
She felt like an interviewer. Tiny gray birds poked around their feet for crumbs and pecked at a paper wrapper. Did it taste of salt, of pomegranate syrup, of sesame? Did they fly around the city together or had they met just now for the first time? Liyana tossed them a stalk of parsley.
“Where else would somebody go, after here? Omaha?”
For some reason that struck her funny. Not that she had ever been to Omaha, but just the fact he would think of the word.
“I’m sure there are lots of immigrants who have gone to Omaha,” she told him.
“But a place is inside you—like a part of your body, don’t you think? Like a liver or kidney? So how could you leave it? It sounds like big trouble to me.”
She stared at the table. The patterned grains of wood in the scarred surface reminded her of currents in the Mississippi River. Would she ever smell that muggy air again?
“But what do you think?” he continued. “Didn’t you come here from another place? Do you think I’m wrong?”
A sparrow landed right on her foot and jumped off again. “I’m from St. Louis,” she said softly. “Just—a city. Like—Omaha. I don’t think you’re wrong. But—do you think you can get your kidney back?”
He tapped his finger on the tabletop. He stared at her in a soft way that made her feel warm. Then he said, “I hope so.”
Old men were trudging up the skinny street with baskets of kindling tied to their backs. Liyana took a big sip of her lemonade. She felt saddened by their conversation but glad to be mentioning it, at least.
“What do you do all the time?” Liyana said. “Where do you go when you’re not in school?”
He looked around. She liked the straight line of his jaw, his skin’s rich olive tint. “Well, I walk. I walk a lot. I go to the Sandrounis’, and the museums, and the libraries, and the soccer fields, and the beach sometimes in summers—do you go to the beach?—and the green country around Nazareth, where my mother is from—have you been there?”
They ordered a bowl of baba ghanouj because they were still hungry.
He said tentatively, “I’m also very happy to stay at my house and re
ad books and listen to music.”
He had careful fingers. He tore his bread into neat triangles, not ripped hunks, as Rafik did. He offered her more before he took any himself. Liyana realized she was staring at the subtle valley above his upper lip, the small elegant dip under his nose. Did everybody have one of those?
She was staring at his wrist, the graceful way it came out of his sleeve.
“Have you heard any of the new folk music over here?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “But I would like to.”
He invited her to meet him on Saturday at 1 P.M. at a coffeehouse called “The Fountain” where they had live local music on weekends. “They have orange juice, too—if you don’t drink coffee.”
She wished she had a pocket calendar. She’d fill in every day.
When they parted to return to their own schools, he took her hand formally and shook it. “Liyana, it was a real pleasure talking with you. Better than most days of my life! And I look forward to our next visit.”
“Or,” she said, hesitating a moment, because it felt like calling somebody “And” or “But.” “Or—I enjoyed it—too.”
He gripped her hand a moment extra.
Sometimes to hold a good secret inside you made the rest of a day feel glittery. You could move through dull moments without any pain.
All afternoon at her desk, Liyana felt lifted up by the glint of her secret. An invisible humming engine shone a small spotlight onto one corner of her desk, to the upper right of the geometry text, and the triangles they were studying all looked like bread.
THE FOUNTAIN
If you could be anyone, would you choose to be yourself?
The day after Thanksgiving, which no one else in Jerusalem even mentioned, much less celebrated, Liyana’s family sat on the low couches in the living room after dinner reading different sections of newspaper when she blurted out her plan.
“Fountain? Fountain? Never heard of it,” said Poppy.
“You’ve never taken the bus alone into the city,” said her mother, putting down her page.
“Well, it can’t be very hard,” Liyana answered testily. “I mean, I’ve taken it coming home, right? Is there a huge difference? On our road it only goes north to Ramallah and south to Jerusalem. I’ll take the south one. Then, when I see the city, which I do recognize by now, I’ll get off. Then I’ll walk.”
“Walk?” they said in unison.
Every day Liyana’s father drove her into Jerusalem, letting her off by Jaffa Gate so she could walk into the Armenian Quarter by herself and go to school. At lunch she hiked miles within the walled city, around curls and corners of tiny alleyways, up secretive staircases, along crowded thoroughfares smelling of oranges and rose water and damp, mopped stone. And now they acted as if she’d never walked before.
“How did you hear of this place? Do your friends at school go there?”
“Well—they might if they know about it.”
Actually she hadn’t mentioned it to any of them. She was still keeping it a secret rolled up tightly inside her.
“Was it in the newspaper?”
“Maybe.” So she spread the back pages from both newspapers on the floor and started scouring them. All she found were ads for purchasing a “beautifully sculpted charm replica of the Second Holy Temple in Jerusalem” and a concert by the Jerusalem Woodwind Quintet (the Jewish paper) and giant obituaries and restaurant ads (the Arabic paper).
She stomped into her room and fell down backward on her bed.
A little later, Liyana’s mom stepped into the doorway of her room and smiled the motherly smile that says, “I know where you are and I remember being there myself.”
Her mother said, “You know, I have a few errands in the city myself. Would that make things easier? If I drove you and dropped you off and came back to get you?”
“What are your errands?”
“Well, I need to go to a tailor, for one. The two denim skirts I bought right before we left the States are a little too big. I should have tried them on.”
“That will take about ten seconds.”
“And I’d like to find the vitamin store I heard about. We’re running out of Cs and Es. And I need to explore more of the Jewish neighborhoods on foot because I want to find out what’s—available. You know how Poppy only takes us around east Jerusalem because he doesn’t know the other side? Well, I’m ready to discover it. All that might give you two hours or more.”
Saturday arrived and Liyana rebraided her hair ten times. Then she brushed it and decided to leave it loose. It had little waves in it from all the activity. Her mother, who was not yet used to driving in the city, still pumped the gas hesitantly and everyone passed them. Even very old men passed them. Liyana said, “Mom, I’m meeting a friend there.”
“From school?”
“Not my school.”
“A girl?”
“Not a girl.”
Her mother’s foot hit the brake a little. “You mean—this is—a date?”
“Not a date. It’s an—appointment.”
“Who is he?”
“He’s Or.”
“What?”
“For Omar. I met him—at the Sandrounis’ ceramics shop. The place Poppy showed me. I was—just in there—a few times.”
“He works there?”
“No. They’re friends.”
Liyana could see right then she had rounded the bend where conversations with her parents were no longer going to be as easy as they once were.
“Do you know what your father would say?”
“About what?”
“Liyana! This is his country. It is a very conservative country. Haven’t you noticed? Remember the shorts? Remember his story about someone getting in trouble in the village simply because he talked to a woman in the street? People have supposedly even been killed! For little indiscretions! I realize you are not a villager and you don’t have to live by their old-fashioned codes. Just remember your father won’t like it if he knows about it. Still, I think you should tell him. Absolutely. Tonight at dinnertime. Or the minute we get home. And—oh Liyana, be careful. Be—appropriate.”
There it was. The word she hated most.
They parked on a side street near the Old City. Or had described to her how to walk to The Fountain.
“Where’s the tailor?” Liyana asked Mom, who was carrying her skirts bunched up in one arm, and her mother said, “Who knows? I’m looking for her.”
Liyana struggled to remember Or’s directions exactly—up one hill, past the odd windmill, to the right, then straight. The streets seemed wider on this side of town. They passed a store for watches, a bank, a gift shop full of antiques, a nursery school. Fewer sounds of Arabic drifted through the air now—just the husky, less familiar-sounding accents of Hebrew and languages they couldn’t identify. Norwegian, Liyana thought. Polish or Russian.
She recognized The Fountain by the courtyard in front of it containing chairs, striped umbrella tables, and—yes—a fountain spurting water from two crossed jugs into a blue pool.
Someone in the cheery interior adjusted a microphone on a stage. A lady with a deep tan, bright lipstick, and a pink drink at an outdoor table turned her cheek up to the sun. Liyana didn’t see Or anywhere.
“Are you sure this is it?”
“Yes.” Two dark birds dipped into the fountain and splashed themselves.
Liyana didn’t know how to make it sound sweeter, so she just blurted it out. “Could you please go on now?”
Her mother looked slightly hurt but not terribly.
They decided to meet by the windmill in two hours since there was only one and it was easy to find.
Just before Liyana stepped inside the café by herself, Or materialized beside her. “You made it! You remembered my directions!”
She could have told him she remembered even the smallest brown hairs on the back of his hand.
“There is bad news,” he said. “The person I hoped was playing and singin
g is not here today. Another person is playing who, I am sorry to say…” he whispered into her ear, “is very terrible.”
“Would you like to go to the Israel Museum instead?” he asked straight into her ear. “It’s not far away.” She had never been there. Poppy had talked about going one day, but they got side-tracked into visiting the tomb of Lazarus instead.
“Uh—sure.” But she felt a little worried. Her mother and father never liked it when she and Rank changed their plans without telling them.
The Israel Museum, largest in the country, displayed archaeological wonders and contemporary art. Liyana had been reading about its shows and lectures in the newspaper. One Saturday, sleepily thumbing through the newspaper at the breakfast table, she’d suggested to Rank that he attend a youth workshop on “developing artistic talents.”
He said he had all the talents he could handle right now.
Later he asked her, “Am I the only youth in this house?”
Liyana followed Or up the street. He waved at shopkeepers and said something to an old woman passing in a black dress and black scarf.
Then it struck her. He said it in Hebrew!
A yellow cat dodged a black car. Her heart was pounding. Two young women in blue jeans walked by chattering, pushing baby buggies.
She didn’t know how to ask him this.
“Or,” she stuttered, “did you—are you—what did you—say to her?”
“Her husband died a few months ago,” he answered. “She’s a neighbor of ours. We took food to her house during the first week of mourning, when she and her family were sitting shiva—that time when the family doesn’t wear shoes or leave the house, when they cover all their mirrors. This is the first day I’ve seen her out in the world again.”
“Cover all the mirrors,” Liyana repeated. “That’s a—powerful tradition. It’s a—Jewish tradition?”
He looked at her curiously. “Yes, it’s a Jewish tradition. And I think you may have some similar Arabic traditions, too.”
As her heart jogged and blipped, she said, “Well, they won’t listen to music in the village, after someone dies. I don’t know about the mirrors. Come to think of it, I don’t know if they have any mirrors.”
Habibi Page 10