Habibi (17 page)

“Have you always lived in Jerusalem? Do you like your school? Are you familiar with Liyana’s school? Do you know other people who go there? What do you most like to do in your spare time?”

He said, “Wander. Both inside and outside my head.” Her mother looked at Liyana as if she could now see how the two of them were connected.

In the car on the way home, her mother said calmly, “Liyana, I don’t think he is an Arab.”

Liyana said, “So?” which was not the way to answer your mother when you wanted to keep her on your side. But that’s what came out.

They drove in silence for a mile, past the Universal Laundry and Abdul Rahman’s shoe repair shop where Liyana’s favorite beat-up American loafers were currently taking a vacation, awaiting new soles. Liyana said, “No one I go to school with is an Arab either. Did you know they made me an honorary Armenian citizen?”

Her mother looked sideways at her. “You know what I mean.”

Liyana swallowed twice. “We already talked about it. He believes in the peace as much as we do.”

A crowd of old women with baskets on their
arms waited for a bus. Her mother paused a long time before saying, “I just fear your father’s response. Of all the boys you might find in this town to have a crush on …”

Liyana kept plummeting. “Can he come over? For dinner someday soon? He gave me his telephone number and I gave him ours!”

“Don’t you start calling him, Missy,” her mother said, and Liyana opened and closed her mouth like a fish. If she didn’t, she might suffocate.

At dinner, Poppy said starkly, “What? Who? Where?”

Liyana said, “This isn’t a book report, you know.” Then she said, “Remember when you told us how you had Jewish neighbors and friends when you were growing up here? Remember how we had plenty of Jewish friends back in the United States? Why not? He lives on Rashba Street. Did you ever go to Rashba Street when you were little?”

Poppy said, “Sure.” But a moment later he said, “Never, never, never.”

All evening Liyana stood by her window staring west toward Jewish Israel. She had a new feeling
about it. The guard at the museum quietly locked the galleries. The paintings slept calmly on their walls. Over there the Mediterranean’s soft blue waves were scattering shells. Liyana had never yet been to a beach in this country. She thought she’d like to visit one with Omer. They could take their shoes and watches off and walk and walk for miles. They could sink their feet into the sand.

Would a wise man please step forward?

At Christmas time, Jerusalem and Bethlehem felt crisp and cool, flickering with candles in windows, buttery yellow streetlights, and music floating from shops—thin threads of light and sound. But the holiday decorations weren’t nearly as prominent or glossy as they were in American cities. “I don’t think Santa Claus made it over here yet,” mourned Rafik.

“Sometimes,” Liyana mused, “when you’re standing in the places where important things really happened, it’s even harder to imagine them. Don’t you think? Because video stores and Christmas pilgrims unfolding Walking Tour maps are getting in your way. History is hiding.”

“Thank you,” said Rafik. “Thank you for your wisdoms.”

At midnight on Christmas Eve they stood with their parents in the long line at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. Poppy had done this as a
teenager himself, with his Arab Christian friends. Liyana and Rafik both had checkered black and white
kaffiyehs
wrapped around their necks against the chill. Irish nuns harmonized in wavery soprano voices. Liyana and her mother led a few verses of “Angels We Have Heard On High.” A gold star on the floor inside marked the spot where the manger might have been. It was the one “official” spot that didn’t make Mom feel like crying.

Liyana liked to remind herself:
Jesus had a real body. Jesus had baby’s breath.

And Jesus did not write the list of rules posted on the stone wall. There were many, but Liyana’s eyes caught on the first: N
O
A
RMS
A
LLOWED
I
NSIDE
T
HIS
C
HURCH
.

She really believed her parents when they said, “Look both ways.”

On one of the first warm days, Omer and Liyana licked pistachio ice cream cones as they sat on an iron bench near the Russian Orthodox Church with its onion domes. They were waiting for Hagop and Atom from Liyana’s class to appear so they could go see a French movie at the British library.

Omer asked, “What religion are you?”

The Abbouds had never belonged to a church since Liyana was born, but it might have made things easier. Liyana’s mother said they were a
spiritual
family, they just weren’t a
traditionally religious
one.

Most people said, “Huh?”

They wanted you to say, “I’m this kind of letter and I go in this kind of envelope.”

Omer knew exactly what she was talking about the minute she started to describe it. He said people always asked
him
if he was religious or secular. He would say, “I have Jewish hands,
Jewish bones, Jewish stories, and a Jewish soul. But I’m not officially observant of—the religious practices of the Jewish people. Got it?” His family did a few special-holiday things.

Liyana’s family believed in God and goodness and hope and positive thinking and praying. They believed in the Golden Rule—
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you
—who didn’t? A mosquito didn’t.

Liyana’s mother believed a
whole
lot in karma, the Hindu belief that what someone does in this world will come back to him or her—maybe not the day after tomorrow, but eventually. Liyana also liked the eightfold path in Buddhism, and the idea of the
bodhisattva,
the soul who does good for others without any thought for himself or herself. She hoped she would get to know some in her life, besides her parents. Rafik believed in sandalwood incense.

Liyana’s entire family believed in reincarnation because it made sense to them. They didn’t want to have to say good-bye for good so soon. Poppy said he’d like a thousand lives. Rafik wanted to be reborn in Japan so he could ride the bullet train.

“But what about all these
new
people?” Omer asked her. “Where did
they
come from? You know, the population explosion?”

“I don’t know. Maybe souls can split or something.” Liyana wasn’t too interested in the details.

She just liked thinking of different lives as chain links, connected. She had always felt homesick for some other life, even when she was a baby standing in her crib wearing a diaper not knowing any words yet.

Liyana’s parents did not believe everyone was an automatic sinner when they were born. Too dramatic! All people on earth would do good and bad things both. Poppy said every religion contained some shining ideas and plenty of foolishness, too.

“The worst foolish thing is when a religion wants you to say it’s the only right one. Or the best one. That’s when I pack my bags and start rolling.”

He was always rolling, Poppy Abboud. Out of one good story into another one. He didn’t like fancy church buildings either. “What
else
could they have done with their money? They could have helped the poor people, for one thing!”

Once in the United States some ladies came knocking at the Abbouds’ door when Poppy was home alone. “We’d like to tell you about Jesus Christ,” they announced, and he thought to himself, “I was born in Jerusalem, right down the road from Bethlehem, and they think they’re just now telling me?”

But he said, “Come in, come in.” Excusing
himself for a moment, he marched into his bedroom, tied on a long gray cloak that had belonged to his father, and a checkered
kaffiyeh,
the headdress that he never really wore, and leapt out of the bedroom into their startled gaze.

“But
first,
” he said, “may I tell you about Muhammad?”

They left the house that instant and never returned.

The Abbouds did not believe in the devil, except the devilish spirit inside people doing bad things. They did not believe in hell, or anybody being “chosen” over anybody else—which Liyana had to ask Omer about. He looked sober. He told her the Jewish idea of being “chosen” meant more than he could explain. “Maybe Jews are also chosen to suffer. Or to be better examples.”

Liyana said, “It seems like big trouble any way you look at it. I’m sorry, but I don’t like it. Do you
believe
you’re chosen? It sounds like the teacher’s pet.”

He didn’t know what that was. “It’s not a question of
believing,
” he said.

“What do you mean?”

Omer said, “It’s more like—history. A historical way of—looking at ourselves—and things.”

Liyana felt gloomy. “And it’s history that gave us all these problems,” she said. “I think as long as anybody feels
chosen,
the problems will get worse,”

Omer asked, “But what about your father’s family in the village? Don’t they try to make you become Muslim like they are?”

“No. Not yet, anyway.”

Omer said, “I’d like to meet them. Do you think I could—go with you someday?”

“I hope so!” Liyana said.