Habibi Read Online Free Page B

Weeks later, they returned to Jerusalem to find their house “occupied”—filled with other people—Jewish soldiers with guns. Later the “Occupied Territories” indicated Palestinian lands that were seized by Israelis, so “occupied?” became a nasty word.
    My father’s family went back to the village and moved into a big old house there, but they lost all the things inside their Jerusalem house. They lost their furniture and their dishes and their blankets and never got anything back. The Jewish soldiers with guns wouldn’t
let them. The bank wouldn’t give them their money either. So it was really hard.
    I don’t understand how these things happen, personally. I’m just telling you what my father told me.
    Other Palestinians ended up crowded together in refugee camps, which still exist today. They lived in little shacks, thinking they would be there only a short time. Unfortunately that wasn’t true.
    My father got his scholarship to study medicine in the United States and his family was not happy. They didn’t want him to leave. He promised he would come back someday. It was hard for him to watch the evening news all these years. Sometimes the Middle East segments show people he knows. In medical school, he specialized in the care of old people because young people were too mixed up. Maybe he should have become a vet.
    Then he met my mother, an American, which is why he stayed over here so long. Stories of the American Indians made my father very sad. He knew how they felt.
    Only recently he grew hopeful about Jerusalem and his country again. Things started changing for the better. Palestinians had public voices again. Of course they never stopped having private voices. That’s something you can’t take away from people. My father says, wouldn’t you think the Jews, because of the tragedies they went through in Europe themselves, would have remembered this? Some did. But they weren’t always the powerful ones.
    The Arabs ana Jews shook hands again, at the White House and in lots of other places, too. Many of them had never stopped doing it, secretly. Of course some people believed in the peace process more than others. Can you imagine why anyone would not? I can’t.
    That’s when my father began planning for us to move back. He wants us to know our relatives. He wants to be in his old country as it turns into a better country. If it doesn’t work out, we can always return to the United States.
    I think of it as an adventure. I will miss all of you, especially Mr. Hathaway’s pop quizzes and Clay ton’s fascinating monologues about mummies. If I become one, I hope you all will be fortunate enough to dig me up.
    P.S. to Mr. Hathaway—that last part was just a Joke.
    Liyana Abboud

P ALS
    Are dreams thinner at thirty-three thousand feet?
    When their plane landed at Tel Aviv, Poppy was talking so fast, Liyana couldn’t pay close attention to details. Normally she liked to notice trees first—their leaves and shapes—when she arrived in a new place. Then she’d focus on plants, signs, and, gradually, people. Liyana believed in working up to people. But Poppy leaned across the aisle jabbering so fast, she could barely notice the color of the sky.
    “When we go through the checkpoint for passports, let me do the talking, okay? We don’t let them stamp our passports here. They stamp a little piece of paper instead. And don’t leave anything on the plane. Look around! Did you check under the seats? We’ll go to the hotel first and rest awhile, then we’ll call the village. My family will come in to see us. They won’t expect us to travel all the way out to visit them today. Make sure you have everything. Did you get those pistachios? What about that book Rafik was reading?”
    “Poppy’s nervous,” her mother whispered toLiyana. “He hasn’t been here in five years.”
    He was making Liyana nervous, too.
Jitterbug bazooka.
He didn’t like it when she said foolish words lined up,