Habibi

I’m re-reading a favorite young adult novel of mine by reading it aloud to my almost ten-year-old daughter, Olivia. The book is Habibi by Naomi Shihab Nye.

From the book jacket:
The day after Liyana got her first real kiss, her life changed forever. Not because of the kiss, but because it was the day her father announced that the family was moving from St. Louis all the way to Palestine. Though her father grew up there, Liyana knows very little about her family’s Arab heritage. Her grandmother and the rest of her relatives who live in the West Bank are strangers, and speak a language she can’t understand. It isn’t until she meets Omer that her homesickness fades. But Omer is Jewish, and their friendship is silently forbidden in this land. How can they make their families understand? And how can Liyana ever learn to call this place home?

This book helps me imagine what life would be like in amazing and troubled Jerusalem. Helps me to see the stone walls of the old part of the city and introduces me to some of the foods. I want to stand under lemon trees, olive trees, and almond trees. I want to watch the old men and women in the market. I want to hear children playing in Arabic and Hebrew on the same block.

You can always tell when a poet is the author of a novel. That makes all the difference to me. “Every little light of New York City was a period at the end of a sentence” and “She opened her mouth and a siren came out” both caused me to pause as I was reading to Olivia.