Habibi: List 1

He was handsome and lean, with rumpled black hair and dark eyes.

“You know,” Poppy said, “I never planned to be an immigrant forever. I never thought I’d become a citizen. I planned to return home after medical school. I didn’t know”—and here Rafik picked up the familiar refrain with him, like the chorus to “America the Beautiful”—“I’d fall in love and stay for so many years,” Rafik covered his heart with his hand and closed his eyes.

They bumped into disoriented families on summer vacations.

Liyana felt exhilarated by the skyscrapers.

She wished she could ride every sleek elevator up and down, punching buttons, seeing who got on and off.

Ominous booms of distant thunder made Liyana feel edgy inside.

She scribbled in her notebook. One Indian lady in a purple sari crying. The size of good-bye.

Liyana’s mother stood over the skillet with the spatula poised, like a scientist.

"I would hardly call this an estate,” she said dubiously.

But the woman at the newspaper who copied down their ad had been adamant—a “Garage Sale” meant you carried things outside and an “Estate Sale” meant you sold the whole household from the inside out.

Harpsichord music blared from Liyana’s cassette player.

What if her girlfriends pawed through her threadbare socks, Nancy Drew mysteries, and frayed hair ribbons, casting them aside and choosing none?

She folded the red velvet embroidered dress that her faraway relatives had stitched for her long ago.

She polished her violin, placing it tenderly back in its case with the white cloth over its neck.

Talk about camp and favorite teachers and the opening of the neighborhood swimming pool made her feel wistful.

A dusty silver sheen in the sky capped the city as it shrank behind them.

“Of course we all know about Jerusalem—it’s such a big part of religious history and constantly in the news—but why do you think people have had so much trouble acting civilized over there?”

“Interview your father...make some informal notes,” Mr. Hathaway said. “Just use your own information—no encyclopedias for this! It may be your last chance for extra credit, you know.”

They held candlelight vigils in the streets.

But Poppy leaned across the aisle jabbering so fast, she could barely notice the color of the sky.

Poppy had written “indefinitely” on the length of their visit when he filled out the papers on the plane.

There were no welcome posters, no murals, no candy stands.

“Remember, Sitti comes from a different world. She's very—earthy. She doesn't wear anything but old-fashioned long clothes and she never did. She may seem strange to you. You won't understand her. I'll translate whatever you need, since she knows absolutely nothing in English—”

After Poppy had peeked out the window twenty times at taxis veering by with honking horns and squealing tires and their mother had combed and recombed her hair, applying a new dash of perky red lipstick, everyone finally arrived.

After Poppy had peeked out the window twenty times at taxis veering by with honking horns and squealing tires and their mother had combed and recombed her hair, applying a new dash of perky red lipstick, everyone finally arrived.

Then a huge crowd of relatives burst into the room, bustling, hugging, pinching cheeks, and jabbering loudly.

Liyana had an impulse to stand very close to Poppy, for protection, and also for translation, so he could keep her posted on what was being said.

Suddenly she threw her head back, rolled her tongue high up in her mouth, and began trilling wildly. Liyana had never heard anything like it.

All the women wore gold bangle bracelets.

The women even touched Liyana’s earlobes. She wore no gold earrings, as they did. But Liyana didn’t mind. She didn’t feel like a “specimen.” She liked their curiosity.

Liyana lay on the other twin bed, idly reciting, “One potato, two potato, three potato, four.”

Although she’d thought she was alone in the snow, someone pushed her abruptly from behind and she plopped onto the sled, shrieking, flailing down the slope on her stomach.

They crowded downstairs in a flurry to hail a whole herd of taxis and head north.

In the bustling Arab town of Ramallah, everyone walked around carrying large mesh shopping bags.

Then the taxi headed into the rural West Bank of orchards and tiny villages, each with its own minaret and perched houses.

She was also thinking, “It's strange,” but she was looking for the silver lining.

Rafik offered up—reluctantly, Liyana thought—a few packages of small cars to the boys.

Poppy asked if his family could have individual plates since they weren’t used to eating communally.

Voices in the village streets bounced off stone walls. They rose into the night sky like kites, billowed, and disappeared.

A muezzin gave the last call to prayer of the day over a loudspeaker from the nearby mosque and all the relatives rose up in unison and turned their backs on Liyana’s family.