Habibi

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

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 came 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.