Habibi

by Naomi Shihab Nye

  Poppy placed two fingers on his lips and blew a kiss at her. “Don’t tell Sitti!” he said. “Promise me! She’ll stage a revolution! Take care, habibti! And where’s Rafik?” he shouted, as the guard marched her off.

  “Outside! They wouldn’t let him in!”

  Liyana reclaimed her purse from the office and asked the soldier if he knew where her mother might be, but he pretended he didn’t understand her.

  Before jumping back into the waiting taxi with Rafik and Khaled’s cousin, who both looked deeply curious about what had just happened inside the jail, Liyana stared hard into the face of the soldier who had escorted her. He was sitting on his crate again. She didn’t blink. She wanted to see him clearly.

  Then she stared into the faces of the other two soldiers guarding the prison door. They leaned into the wall, huge guns slung over their shoulders. They could have been handsome if they had smiled. She couldn’t stop herself. Pointing at them with the forefingers of both her hands, she said loudly, “You do not have to be so mean! You could be nicer! My father is a doctor! My friend you shot is a gentle person! YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BE THIS WAY!”

  The soldiers didn’t say anything. But they looked surprised.

  At the tall white hospital, which reeked of ammonia, but still smelled better than the jail, Liyana, Rafik, and Khaled’s cousin were admitted to see Khaled without any trouble. Liyana and Rafik said they were his cousins, too. They let the true cousin do the talking until they got inside.

  Khaled was still down in Emergency on a thin little bed with his leg wrapped as tightly as a stuffed grape leaf. His mother sat beside him wringing water out of a washcloth. She was bathing his face. Khaled looked surprised to see his visitors and lifted partway up on his elbows.

  “What!” he said weakly. “You find me! I am worried about your father! Where is he?”

  A nurse refreshed a water glass beside Khaled’s bed. She stared at his guests, then left. Khaled said he’d heard about the bomb on the radio and felt very sad. Then he said, “You know I know nothing else about it.”

  “We know.”

  Rafik stared at Liyana. She knew. He didn’t know. He hated being cut out of things. Liyana said they’d both seen Nadine, who was very upset. She said Poppy was acting fairly calm behind bars. Khaled shook his head. “He was good to me. He tried to stop them. He hates fighting, too. He told me that when we came home from the Dead Sea. I can’t believe they took him!”

  “Doesn’t this make you feel more like fighting?” Liyana asked.

  Khaled sighed heavily, stretching his upper body as if his neck were stiff. He seemed very tired. “Believe me, I feel less. Ohhhhh…” He closed his eyes and sighed. “Did you know—it’s my birthday?”

  “NO!” Liyana and Rafik spoke together. “Is it really?”

  Rafik shook his head soberly. “I’m starting to think birthdays are bad luck.”

  A black-and-white clock on the wall said six. The fragrance of cooking rice wafted down the hospital hall. At least some things still felt normal.

  As they exited the hospital, Rafik said, “Now where are we going?”

  Liyana whispered, “Home.”

  She liked how the taxi driver waited wherever they asked him to. He was idling in front of the hospital. He knew they were having an upsetting day. In the car heading north, Rafik said, “Tell me every one of Poppy’s words. Did he look scared? Did they have chains in there?”

  Liyana said, “I didn’t see chains,” but Khaled’s cousin, the one who had been in jail himself, said, “Believe me, they have everything.”

  It seemed strange to find their house sitting calmly where it always sat, lights in the first-floor windows and the upstairs dark. Their car was still parked outside, too. But their mother wasn’t back yet. She rang them up from police headquarters in Jerusalem soon after they had entered the house and flicked on lights in every room.

  “I have good news,” she reported, brightly. “They say your father will be released tonight. I haven’t seen him. I’ve been filling out papers in ten offices. This is the worst day of my life, but it will have a happy ending! Have you been home all afternoon?”

  Liyana went downstairs to ask Abu Janan more about the bomb in the market. He shook his head. “People dead.” Old men and women. Innocent, everyday people who had as much to do with politics as Liyana did. Shopping bags. Corn. Purses. Stockings. Shoes. Kleenex. Teeth. Earrings.

  How could anyone do that? Liyana thought. Maybe it was done by the Arab father whose ten-year-old son was shot by Israeli soldiers last week. Maybe it was done by the brothers of the tortured prisoners Poppy met all the time, or the cousin of the mayor who lost both legs when the Israelis blew up his car. Did people who committed acts of violence think their victims and their victims’ relatives would just forget?

  Didn’t people see? How violence went on and on like a terrible wheel? Could you stand in front of a wheel to make it stop? What if Khaled had been killed when he was shot? Would that have made Liyana or Nadine do something violent, too? It was better, as happened with Khaled’s own grandparents and himself, if you were able to let the violence stop when it got to you. But many people couldn’t do that.

  The telephone rang in their apartment again and Rafik raced up the stairs to get it. “It’s for you!” he shouted down to Liyana.

  Her feet felt leaden on the stairs.

  “Poetry reading?” Omer’s voice said.

  Liyana had forgotten completely.

  NEGOTIATIONS

  Maybe peace was the size of a teacup.

  “Jail,” said Poppy soberly, settling himself on the couch with a large glass of water and tipping his head back, “is an experience I don’t ever want to have again.” He’d come home from jail at 11 P.M. in a taxi and the driver refused to take a cent from him.

  Liyana, Rafik, and their mother were shocked when Sitti climbed out of the taxi after him. Where did she come from? Rafik and Liyana jumped up and down. “Poppy’s home! Poppy’s free!” He hugged them so tightly, Liyana felt surprised.

  Sitti had appeared at the jail a few hours after Liyana did. The soldiers wouldn’t let her in, though. As Poppy was being released, he found her outside shouting, waving a broom, and demanding to see the governor. “She still thinks it’s fifty years ago,” he said, shaking his head. “We had someone called a governor then.” An old lady she knew at Khaled’s camp had called Sitti’s village to tell about Poppy being arrested.

  Poppy said, “You can’t keep any secrets over here.”

  A few nights later the Abbouds were eating cabbage rolls at the dinner table—Mom made Liyana a small casserole of vegetarian ones on the side, filled with nuts and raisins and rice—and everything was almost back to normal. Khaled was back at the camp with a heavily bandaged leg and a crutch. The Abbouds had been down to welcome him with molasses cookies that afternoon. Sitti had carried her broom home to its corner.

  But Poppy seemed a little odd. He’d taken a few days off from work and kept sitting at the dining table scribbling notes and staring into space. He made an unusual number of phone calls and spoke only in Arabic. One day their mother reported he wore his pajama top till noon—something he never did.

  When Liyana asked what was going on, he said he couldn’t stop thinking about all the people who were still in jail—many for more ridiculous reasons than his own. He was becoming an activist in his old age. He was going to see the Jewish mayor of Jerusalem tomorrow. He’d heard a man coughing too hard a few cells down. The man obviously needed medicine. He put both his hands up in the air. He walked down to the refugee camp and talked to everybody. He rolled his papers and banged them on the table. “I’m trying to figure out how many things an ordinary citizen can do!”

  But at dinner he asked Liyana, “Now what are you thinking about? The tables are turned. You’ve been so quiet tonight.”

  She dove in. “Could my friend Omer—Mom’s met him—come to the village with us someday soon? He’s never been to—an Arab
village. He invited me to a poetry reading the other evening, but I wasn’t able to go, since my father was just getting out of jail—so I thought it might be nice to invite him somewhere, too.”

  Poppy’s hand went up to his forehead. “Right now? Oh, Liyana. He’s curious about us? He wants to know how we do things? He likes our food?”

  “You don’t have to sound so defensive!”

  Poppy was silent for a moment. That’s what he always said to her. “Our family—wouldn’t appreciate it. They wouldn’t—understand. It would seem suspicious—or unsettling to them. The peace isn’t stabilized enough yet.”

  “Understand? What’s there to understand about having a friend?”

  “Liyana—you know. You’re just acting innocent on purpose.”

  “I don’t know! I don’t want to know! What good is it to believe in peace and talk about peace if you only want to live the same old ways?”

  “Is his family orthodox?”

  “No. He doesn’t seem orthodox—anything. He seems very universal.”

  Poppy sighed. “They always seem—universal. Do you have any passages from your favorite prophet Kahlil Gibran you’d like to read to me just now?”

  Liyana’s mother tapped her water glass with a spoon. “Don’t make fun,” she said to Poppy. “Remember what my parents said when I fell in love with you? They said nothing, remember? And do you remember how cruel that was?”

  Poppy reeled back in his chair. “Now she’s in love?” he thundered. “Liyana’s in love? I thought she just wanted to go to the village!”

  Rafik was roaring. Liyana hated this.

  “So is it okay or not?” she asked, pushing back two lonely green beans to the edge of her plate.

  Poppy was quiet.

  A bus roared by on the road outside.

  Liyana said softly, “We want to write a new story,” and Poppy said, “What?”

  Mom, queen of her Communications Club, took a deep breath. “She’s right, you know. What good is a belief in peace if it doesn’t change the ways we live?”

  But Poppy wasn’t listening. “It’s inappropriate for a girl to invite a boy anywhere in this part of the world. They’ll think you’re engaged or something. They’ll think he’s a spy. How will I explain him?”

  Rafik groaned. “Could we talk about something else? Let’s just invite him already! Who cares? Say he’s MY FRIEND, not Liyana’s! Say he’s my mentor or something—like we had in school in the United States. I met him at the library. He’s a nice guy. And Sitti invites everyone else on earth to our dinners—why not him, too?”

  Liyana loved Rafik with all her heart.

  Poppy said, “He was at the library, too?”

  Then he said, “You’re stubborn, dear Liyana. You’re that fine Arabian horse again, constantly trying to get your own way. Why do you want to take him and not Khaled or Nadine?”

  “Let’s take them as well! Let’s take everybody! Don’t you want a coming-out party? And didn’t you mention, last week, how wonderful it was when Mr. Hamadi, your favorite thousand-year-old patient, let the Jewish doctor work on his eyes and never once referred to his ethnicity? Didn’t you say before you went in jail that it would be great if people never described each other as ‘the Jew’ or ‘the Arab’ or ‘the black guy’ or ‘the white guy’—didn’t you just SAY?”

  Her mother repeated, “She’s right, you know.”

  After dinner, Liyana was on the phone. Omer always laughed when she identified herself with both her names. “You think I can’t tell? I told you you’re the only Liyana I know!” His rich voice rang out, a rippling stream of energy across the wire between their rooms. The minute she heard him, she wished they could talk forever.

  Poppy had told Liyana they shouldn’t “set the date” for the village trip yet. He made it sound like a marriage. It would happen—“someday”—when the time felt better. When Khaled’s leg was stronger. “Don’t rush me,” Poppy said. “Don’t rush anything. Okay?”

  Omer was so happy Liyana had taken his interest seriously.

  But he called her back the next day, sounding downcast, just needing to talk. His mother didn’t want him to go to the village with Liyana, ever, but he told his mother it was very important. “Then she took a long walk,” he said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means she’s worried. And I’m going. Just let me know when.”

  Omer was leaving for two weeks with his class on an extended field trip to a kibbutz in northern Israel. They did this every year. He wasn’t thrilled about it. He’d be picking cherries, boxing them, digging, and weeding. The thought of such a long gap till they might meet again made Liyana’s heart sputter in her throat.

  She wrote for two hours that night, putting the word “heart” together with every verb she could think of. Her heart tipped, it rumbled, it swelled. She tried to write a story in which she was not the main character, in which some person she had never heard of before did things and felt things. But she still had trouble imagining lives she had not lived.

  NEW COUNTRY, OLD COUNTRY

  For the first time these days, she also felt like part of a sea.

  When Liyana considered the echoes bouncing off the walls of Jerusalem, she felt like the dot on an i in an American alphabet book for babies. Nearly invisible.

  When she turned a corner in the Old City, she was just a ripple of an ancient, continuing echo. Going, going … almost gone.

  “Will we ever go home?” she asked Poppy after an evening walk up to the small grocery to smell the air and buy new wooden clothespins and a box of loose tea.

  Poppy was whistling, so she figured it was a good moment to ask something like that.

  He paused. “I would hope,” he said, “that you felt comfortable here.”

  “Oh I do,” she said. “I feel more comfortable every day. But I was just … wondering. Sometimes I get incredibly homesick for …”

  Then her mind went blank. What was she really homesick for? Those ugly green signs marking exits off the interstate? The sports sections of American newspapers that she never glanced at anyway? The chilled tapioca puddings in little tubs at the supermarket?

  What was she really missing anymore?

  Rafik told everybody he didn’t miss anything. He had too much to think about over here to waste time with missing. He also said his Arabic was developing more quickly than Liyana’s because he was less afraid of making mistakes. One day Liyana was trying to say “Excuse me” to somebody and she said something like “monkey’s heart.”

  The sea. One wave running into another. But they had lived beside the Mississippi River, not beside a sea. She used to imagine the river running southward to pour into the Gulf of Mexico she’d never visited. Now, from this great distance, she felt closer to everything than she ever had before.

  She did not feel like a foreigner in the Old City anymore. Now she had her own landmarks and scenes to remember. She had Hani, the banana seller, Bilal, the fabric seller, and Bassam, the spice man. She knew where a certain stone corner was chipped away. Maybe a vendor had bumped it with his cart long ago. She knew where the cabbages were lined on burlap in front of a radiant old woman who raised one hand to Liyana as if she were blessing her. She knew the blind shopkeeper who sat on a stool in front of his shop nodding and saying, “Sabah-al-khair—Good morning”—to the air. The Old City was inside her already.

  “Did you ever think,” Poppy said, “that some of us might stay and some of us go back—in the future, maybe, when you and Rafik are grown? Wouldn’t it be strange if you were the one who stayed—and the rest of us moved back to the States? How can anyone know what the next day brings?”

  The next day brought two good things. One, Liyana received a tiny present in the mail from Peachy Helen, a new four-inch-tall edition of Kahlil Gibran, and it was a volume she didn’t have yet. Secondly, Mr. Berberian brought up the history of the “peace talks” at school, and suggested the students ask their elders’ opinions about
them.

  Since Liyana’s family was going out to eat kousa, stuffed zucchini squash, in the village that evening, she got Poppy to ask Sitti at dinnertime.

  Sitti was wrapping the cooked kousa in white cotton towels to keep them hot on the plate.

  Sitti looked surprised. She puffed up like a dove when it ruffles its feathers.

  She pointed at her own chest and said, “I never lost my peace inside.”

  EXEPDITION

  Her father always told them the Arabs were famous for their hospitality.

  Finally one day when Poppy was in an especially good mood because a new wing at the hospital had just been completed and his dear old patients got to move into better rooms, he said to Liyana, “Okay, why don’t you invite your friends? We’ll go out to the village next Saturday as usual. The Jews and Arabs are talking better over in Hebron for a change. Maybe it’s a good time for—your friend—to come along. And I’d like to get Khaled and Nadine out of that camp for a day.”

  On Saturday, Liyana kept watching from the balcony till the lumbering bus that carried Omer appeared on the hill. She ran out to meet him. He waved happily. He said he’d liked the bus trip north, which he’d never taken before. “Not understanding all the talk around me, but just picking up bits and pieces, made me feel—free.”

  “I guess I should be feeling free all the time, then.”

  Liyana’s mother walked daintily down the steps with her hand extended. “Hello again!” she said to Omer. She was wearing her pink embroidered Mexican blouse, which she usually wore on birthdays and holidays. Liyana had even dressed up in a maroon velvet vest.

  Poppy was in the bathroom when they went upstairs, “shaving,” Mom said. Liyana guessed he was really hiding out. “We’ll be going to the village as soon as he’s ready.”