Habibi (16 page)

“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 singing 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.”

Liyana’s mind flew forward at full speed. She realized there shouldn’t be anything shocking about his being Jewish in a place made up mostly of Arabs and Jews. It’s just that she hadn’t even
thought
of it. And wasn’t his name “Ornar” an Arabic name?

When she mentioned this, stuttering, he laughed roundly so his fabulous teeth showed. “
Omer,
my friend,” he said, “with an
e
not an
a
—which is a Jewish name. You don’t like it as much?”

She thought,
It’s stupid for my heart to race.

“Could we sit down a minute?” she asked. They sat on a wall beside a cedar tree and she took a deep breath.

“Did you know I wasn’t Jewish?” she asked him.

“Of course.”

“How?”

“Well, you were carrying Arabic copybooks in your satchel, for one thing. Those little gray notebooks for homework? And you told me you live on the Ramallah road, didn’t you? I don’t have any
other
friends who live on the Ramallah road.”

“Does that bother you?” she asked.

“Ha! Would I suggest we get together—if it bothered me? The question is—does it bother
you?
”

“Of course not,” she said, startled, as words came out of her mouth that she could not predict from minute to minute. “I’m an American,” she said. “Mostly.” But that sounded ridiculous. He hadn’t asked for her passport. “I mean, this fighting is senseless, don’t you think? People should be able to get over their differences by this time, but they just stay mad. They have their old reasons or they find new ones. I mean, I understand it mostly from the Arab side because my father’s family lost their house and their money in the
bank and lots of their community when my father was a boy and the Palestinians were suffering so much, just kicked around till recently as if they were second-class human beings you know they couldn’t even show their own flag or have hardly any normal human rights like the Jews did till recently and it’s getting better only slowly you know my relatives have to get permits for things all the time and it wasn’t that way when my father was little, things were more equal then and of course I know the Jewish people suffered so much themselves, but don’t you think it should have made them more sensitive to the sufferings of others, too?”

Her mouth had become a fountain. Spurting waterfalls of words.

He stared at her quietly. “I do.”

Birds jabbered in branches above them. Flit and bustle. What did people seem like to birds?

Omer took a deep breath and stood up. “It’s a bad history without a doubt,” he said. “Nothing to be proud of.” He closed his eyes, turning his face to the side, right into the sun. “So what are we going to do about it?” Then he opened his eyes, made a little bow, and put his hand out toward the avenue, as if to offer her the street.

Liyana thought,
Now he’ll hate me. I’m a talking maniac.
As a kind of finishing touch, Liyana
blurted, “I have hope for the peace, do you?” And he stared at her closely. “Of course I do. Would you still like to go to the museum?”

They walked up the street without speaking, their arms brushing a few times. Liyana thought,
My mother’s probably watching us from the window of the bank across the street, her mouth wide open with shock that I’m not where I said I would be.

Inside the massive museum, Liyana and Omer stared happily at giant paintings, sculptures, and ancient lamps dug out of caves. They made themselves pay polite attention to the older art, though they both agreed they were more interested in the odd contemporary rooms.

Liyana liked how Omer stood back from pieces, then moved in to examine them closely, and drifted back again. She still felt breathless from her outburst. He seemed calmly deliberate, paying close attention. He shook his head over a painting that was nothing but bright red slashes, quick thick lines. He said, “My eyes don’t like it. Do yours?” Liyana wondered why it was such a relief to dislike the same things your friends did. What did that tell you about a person?

“Do you mind,” she asked, “if I call you by your whole name instead of your nickname?”

He said, “I don’t mind if you give me a new name I never heard before.”

Omer was wearing a thick, white, long-sleeved T-shirt with three buttons at the throat, blue jeans, and purple high-topped tennis shoes. She liked his clothes. She could easily have stared at him more than the artwork, but tried to keep her gaze on the walls whenever she was in his vision. Her eyes rose into a turquoise horizon. She floated on the ripe blue cloud an artist had painted crowning a yellow city. Was that Jerusalem? Sometimes Omer stood behind her and she heard his breathing as they viewed the same piece. She felt a delicious jitter inside.

One artist offered a giant bright installation titled “Underground Springs” made from tin cans roped together, painted flashing purple and silver, spilling forth from a map of Israel on the wall. Omer laughed out loud. “Do you worry about it?” he asked. “Where all the trash will be ten years from now? I worry about it every time I open a can of tuna fish.”

“Tuna fish?” Liyana said. It was one of the things her mother had been looking for in their Arab stores, but Arabs didn’t like tuna much. “Can you get it over here?”

“Of course. It’s delicious with yogurt.” He poked her in the side. Other foods the Abbouds missed crowded her mind. Should she ask? Lima beans! Lemon meringue pie!

When she finally remembered to glance at her watch, she exclaimed so loudly, a dozing guard over in the corner jumped. “Oh my! I forgot to meet my mother! I’m ten minutes late already!”

She and Omer sprinted toward the windmill, where they found her mother tapping her foot and staring at her watch, arms crammed with packages. When she saw them (about twenty-five minutes late by now) she said to Liyana, “I thought maybe you’d gone onto daylight savings time.”

“Mom, I’m so sorry! The time—slipped away from us. We ended up going to the museum instead, I hope that’s okay with you, you would have loved it!—you know that big one I’ve been wanting to go to? Anyway, this is Omer, my friend I mentioned.”

Her mother greeted Omer with interest, but couldn’t shake his hand since hers were loaded. Omer reached out and insisted on carrying almost all her bags to their car. Liyana could see she was impressed by his manners.

“I found it!” her mother said over her shoulder to Liyana. “Mayonnaise!” Omer raised his eyebrows. Liyana felt trembly and weak. She hoped
her mother wouldn’t say other goofy family stuff. But her mother smoothly turned her attention to Omer, smiling that generic mother smile.