Habibi (20 page)

After they returned in their newly dazzled state to the cluttered table where Rank was drawing an elaborate soccer field on four pieces of notebook paper laid out end to end, Omer leaned over him and said, “I have bad news, new friend. I have to go to my own soccer game—right now. Would you like to come with me?”

Rafik couldn’t, because he and Liyana were meeting Poppy at the Philadelphia for a late lunch at two. But Liyana could tell he was pleased.

Liyana and Omer traded a long gaze as he left. They grinned easily. She placed one finger on her vivid lips. Rafik didn’t notice.

Then she walked over to “Reference” and slid an encyclopedia off a shelf to see if “Kissing” had an entry, but nothing appeared between Kishinev, the capital of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic of the USSR, and Kissinger, Henry, born in Germany and a naturalized American like her father. Well, she thought, sort of like her father. Her father didn’t care for him. There was no
“kissing” in the encyclopedia. She wondered, “Where did kissing come from? Who started it?”

She knew about the Eskimo tribes who liked nose rubbing more than kissing. She was glad she hadn’t been born into one. She made a kissing list in her notebook:

Lemony lips,

warm magnets pulling toward one another,

streets crisscrossed by invisible tugs,

secret power fields.

Electrodynamics.

Then she wandered over to the “Newly Arrived” shelf (she thought she should live on that shelf herself) and placed her hand directly on a book called
A Natural History of the Senses
by Diane Ackerman. Flipping it open, she discovered a whole astonishing chapter called “Kissing” in the section called “Touch”!

She took the book to their table spread with Rank’s information on famous rivers of the world and shielded it from Rank to read,
“There are wild, hungry kisses or there are rollicking kisses, and there are kisses fiuttery and soft as the feathers of cockatoos.”
Liyana had never touched a cockatoo, but she liked how it sounded.

She wrote down a “first line” that said:
Being good felt like a heavy coat, so I took it off.

The author, Diane, talked about her memory of kissing in high school, using a rich string of adverbs—“inventively…extravagantly…delicately … elaborately…furtively when we met in the hallways between classes…soulfully in the shadows at concerts…we kissed articles of clothing or objects belonging to our boyfriends…we kissed our hands when we blew our boyfriends kisses across the street… we kissed our pillows at night….” OH!

And Liyana knew this book was for her. Because last night, the very night before today, she had kissed her pillow and thought she might be cracking up.

Drop in anytime and stay forever.

Poppy said their skins would feel so sticky after plunging into the Dead Sea, they’d have to lie down under freshwater spigots to wash off.

He drove Liyana, Rafik, Khaled, and Nadine on the descending road through sand dunes toward Jericho because Rafik had been bugging him so much. Mrs. Abboud had gone on a weekend retreat with her women’s group. The women were going to hike ten miles through the wilderness to see some hermit nuns who wouldn’t be hermits anymore once they got there.

Liyana and Rafik had bathing suits on under their clothes, bottled water, towels, and a basket of small bananas. Liyana hadn’t worn her baggy old-man shorts after all. She’d decided to make them into a purse. Khaled and Nadine said they would go swimming in their clothes. They brought extra clothes rolled up and tied with a string.

Sunlight vibrated on the golden sand. Graceful dunes cast shadows on one another. There weren’t
any clouds. It felt wonderful to leave the clutter of town behind.

Around a curve, Rafik shouted, “Stop!”

Poppy hated when someone yelled in a car. He braked sharply and pulled over. The roads didn’t have shoulders like they did back home. “Don’t scare me! What is it?”

Rafik pointed. “I want to visit them.”

Poppy and Liyana in the front seat hadn’t even noticed the Bedouin tents perched far from the road in a crevice of shade between two dunes. They’d been talking about Sitti’s new obsession for black sweaters. Though they had bought her two already, she still wanted one with
pockets
.

“You
said
we could visit the Bedouins!” Rafik’s voice from the back seat was insistent. He didn’t beg very often. “Please!” Khaled and Nadine jabbered in Arabic to each other.

Poppy looked at his watch. “If we visit them, we may not make it to the Dead Sea. They’ll keep us all day.”

“We’ll just run away!”

Poppy said, “Khaled, what do you say?”

Khaled’s voice was gentle. He never wanted to boss anyone around. “I say—
yes?
”

The minute Liyana’s eyes focused on the flapping black tents, she noticed a small camel staked beside them, the first she’d seen in this
country since they arrived. Poppy always included camels in his childhood stories and folk tales, but they’d mostly vanished from this land since then. Where had they gone? Had they all trekked away to Saudi Arabia or Abu Dhabi? She’d been wishing so hard to see one.

Liyana pitched in, “Yes! Let’s visit them for just a minute! Come on, Poppy!” Nadine was laughing.

Poppy groaned, “A Bedouin’s minute is an hour to you. Maybe two or three. Believe me.”

But he pulled the car farther off the road. He said, “What if we get stuck in a sand dune? What if the sand shifts while we’re visiting and swallows the car entirely?” But his children were relentless.

Poppy had said Bedouins, like their camels, were much fewer and farther apart than they used to be, but still as friendly. “I thought they were fierce,” Rafik said.

Poppy said, “They are, but not to their guests.”

The five of them hiked in toward the tents. Halfway there, Poppy returned to the car to get the basket of bananas. “You always bring a gift to Bedouins,” he said. “Like a house gift. To people without a house.”

The women of the tribe were off beyond the tents shaking dust from little rugs. Children in baggy clothes played a game involving sticks,
Balls, and large tin cans. Tall men with lean faces sat before the largest tent, wearing black cloaks and headdresses, stitching tarps together with huge needles. Maybe they were making a new tent, Liyana thought.

The camel shifted its feet as they approached. It watched them closely. Spectacular white cheeses lay lined like thirty perfect moons on a dark cloth, drying in the sun. Nadine pointed at them and babbled excitedly to Khaled. She said in English, “So much!”

All the men rose up as they approached. Poppy talked fast and heartily so that before they knew it, they were sitting in a circle with the Bedouins. Everyone was laughing and nodding and asking questions about America and the women were serving tea and slicing a cheese in front of Rafik.

He looked worried. He hated white cheese. Liyana grinned.

Poppy translated, “They’re ready to adopt you. See? I told you. Get set for a long day.”

He also said, “I told them we are Arab-Americans and they’re shocked. They didn’t know such people existed. We’re the first visitors who’ve come by in a long time. In the old days people used to stop in more. Bedouins don’t even wander as much as they used to. Nowadays they change places only once a year, instead of every few months. In
saudi Arabia the Bedouins have all been settled in towns. It’s a shame. It was a great tradition.”

Rafik’s eyes were huge. Did the woman think he was going to eat the whole cheese? Why were they focusing on him instead of Khaled? Maybe they liked his red and blue striped T-shirt. Nadine took four pieces of cheese, which helped him out.

“How do Bedouins live?” Liyana asked Poppy. “I mean, where do they get their money?”

“Money? Do you see any money? The goats are in a patch of grass over the dune somewhere. The people sleep right here. They eat right here. Their lives are extremely simple.”

Now Liyana knew. She wanted to be a Bedouin when she grew up.

A woman with kind eyes produced two goatskin drums. Even though Poppy said Bedouin music usually happened after sundown, two young men began slapping quick rhythms and singing for them—the same words and notes repeated over and over. Liyana clapped her hands and hummed along. They liked that. Nadine snapped her fingers. A girl with tight braids swayed and bent hypnotically. Khaled accepted a drum and began playing with one swift, accurate hand. Rafik leaned backward on the tarp, as far from the cheese as he could. He nodded bravely when the women pointed at it again.

They sat within the graceful slopes of dunes, tucked away from the road and the few cars and jeeps going by. Liyana felt her thoughts drifting into the sky. Her eyelids drooped. Was this music putting her into a trance? She wished her friends from back home could be here. This was what they would call “an exotic moment.” She wished her mother were here, too—hermit women couldn’t be more interesting than
this
.

After the ninety-ninth verse of the song, Poppy stood up. The Bedouins protested. “Please,” they said to him in Arabic, “you must spend the night!” Poppy laughed. He promised they’d be back. What could they bring them from the city? The Bedouins wanted Rafik to take a cheese home with him—a new cheese, not even the strong one they had all nibbled from. Poppy left the bananas and the basket both. The Bedouins liked the basket. They kept touching it admiringly. It was her mother’s favorite basket. Liyana wondered, would she be upset?

Walking back to the car with the entire Bedouin tribe sadly watching them leave, Poppy said to Rafik, “Oh no, you didn’t even ride the camel! You petted it, anyway. It’s their last camel. Was it too small to ride? Shall we go back? You want to try?”

Rafik considered it. He turned and waved,
Looking wistful. Liyana said, “Remember, camels can spit.”

Poppy sighed, “And we might have to leave you.”

The Dead Sea water was so prickly with salt, it stung Liyana’s eyes. Her skin felt marinated after ten minutes.

“It’s seven times saltier than the ocean!” Poppy called out. He strolled back and forth by the water wearing a white baseball cap pulled low over his thick hair. He hated swimming. “How do you feel at the lowest spot on earth?”

“Down deep!”

“Bottomed out!”

They were practically sitting on top of the water, as if invisible lounge chairs buoyed them up. Rafik called out, “Strange!” He was paddling fast like a duck. Khaled laughed harder than Liyana had ever seen him laugh. “Did you like the Bedouins?” she asked.

He said, “
Very
much. Did I ever tell you my
Sidi
—grandfather—was half Bedouin? Once when I was small he took me to visit, like today.”

“Where is he—now?”

“He is dead. He and—my
Sitti
, too. When our village was taken away. I saw it.”

“Saw what?”

“The Israeli soldiers—exploded a house. You know, like they do when they think you are bad. And the house fell on my grandparents. It was not their house.”

A single puffed cloud drifted past overhead. Far away someone hooted and leapt into the sea.

“And then what? Did your family fight back?” Liyana asked. Khaled had never mentioned many personal things before.

Khaled said haltingly, “My family—does not like to fight. My parents are very—sad till now. They will never be finished with sadness. I—had a bad picture in my mind—a long time. For myself I never fight. Then my mind is sick and doesn’t get well. Sadness is—better.”

Liyana said, “I think I would fight. Not kill, but yell or something.”

In the car going home, Liyana would tell Poppy what Khaled had told her and Poppy would ask him more questions in Arabic. For now the thick gray water seared a scrape on Liyana’s knee. She said, “Khaled, nothing about this sea feels dead to me.”

She wanted another kiss—her chapped lips were burning up.

In March, Poppy found three American evangelists lost in the Old City and brought them home for dinner. Liyana thought, “If I were his wife, I would say
Thanks a lot
and not mean it.”

But her mother was in the kitchen humming happily and clattering pot lids as the visitors sat around the table toasting each other with glasses of mint tea and gobbling roasted chickpeas. Rafik showed them the new designs he’d been sketching for Star Trek phasers. He could tune in to planets X, Y, and Z. The two evangelist men, Reverend Crump and Reverend Holman, wore bright red-and-navy diagonally striped ties, and the woman, Reverend Walker, wore a long gray dress with a lace collar. Liyana asked the woman cautiously, “Are you married to…?” and nodded at the men, curious if one was her mate and she used her own
Name, but the woman declared, “Honey, I’m married to THE LORD’S GOOD WILL!”

Poppy said they had been wandering with dazed looks by the shoe shops where the streets get narrower when he stopped to offer directions. “Our countrymen!” But they didn’t remind Liyana of anyone else she’d ever met in her life.