Habibi (18 page)

Poppy knew from when he was a boy there must be a
kernel of truth on every avenue.
He
thought
about the reasons behind different beliefs—no pork, for example, came from the old days when pork was the first meat to spoil. “Does it make sense,” Poppy said, “that any God would choose some people and leave the others out? If only Christians or Jews are right, what about most of Asia and the Middle East? All these millions of people are just—extras? Ridiculous! God’s bigger than that!”

Any kind of fundamentalism gave Poppy the shivers. The Jews in Hebron called themselves “holy pioneers.” “Fundamentalists talk louder than liberals,” he said. “That’s too bad. Maybe we moderate people should raise our voices.”

When Liyana told this to Omer, he said, “Your father’s right. Please, I want to meet him!”

On the other side of the earth, Peachy Helen’s parents had believed their Christian denomination was “chosen” too. They were the only ones going to be “saved”—but Peachy refused to raise her own children that way.

Peachy Helen had often taken Liyana’s mother to the art museum instead of to church. They would stare into blue and green paintings by Monet. “Look at the wavery edges of things!
That’s
how we could live.”

When Liyana’s mother had measles as a girl, she lay in bed for a week in a dim room with lowered shades. She lay as still as a cucumber on a vine.

“Peachy Helen stood over me saying prayers of healing that she made up as she went along. She said, I hope they’ll work if they’re not official. First she cried, then we both laughed together. I promised her I would get well. And of course I did. But it was then I realized I had been grumpy sometimes for no reason. After that, I thought of every day as A FRESH CHOICE!” She talked about it in capital letters as if it were a feature at the grocery store. “My mother sang a song to keep me calm, “Look for the Silver Lining.” The same one I taught
to you.”

Mrs. Abboud had told Rafik and Liyana to carry the song as a crucial part of their memory banks. Liyana had a stomachache when they learned it so she kept picturing the inside of her stomach coated with silver. They made Peachy Helen pay a nickel to hear them sing it. Sometimes Liyana thought of that song as their religion.

When Liyana and Rafik were little, their mother took them to the art museum
and
to a rich assortment of Sunday schools—Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Unity, and Unitarian—where they signed in as “visitors,” wore the yellow visitor ribbons, and sometimes kept coming back for months. They just didn’t
join
anything. Poppy stayed home reading the newspaper or digging in the garden.

“Didn’t the churches wonder where you went when you disappeared?” Omer asked.

“I guess we seemed like hoboes.”

“What’s a hobo?”

Then they talked about wanderers and gypsies and vagabonds longer than they talked about anything else.

Liyana’s parents would discuss religion late into the
night in the living room when Liyana was in bed. She would listen to them till their words blended into a soft sheet of sleep gently spreading over her.

Their words made sense. Why
would
any God want to be only large enough to fit inside a certain group of hearts? God was a Big God. Once Liyana answered someone that way, but it didn’t work very well.

“What religion are you?”

“Big God.”

It sounded like the Big Sam Shop, where truck drivers bought new tires.

Some people let their countries become their religions and that didn’t work either. Liyana thought it would never happen to her. She never even felt like a Full and Total American, except maybe when her kindergarten class said the Pledge of Allegiance with hands on their hearts and she was proud to know the fat fruits of words between her lips—republic, nation, indivisible—what a pleasure just to say
words
that felt bigger than you were.

Liyana knew
indivisible
even when her friends still thought it was invisible, but she didn’t tell them because there are things you have to find out for yourself.

When we were born we were blank pieces of paper; nothing had been written yet.

On Rafik and Liyana’s birthdays, Poppy always brought flowers to their mother. He wanted to thank her for having had such wonderful kids. The day before Liyana’s fifteenth birthday, he stepped through the door after work with a hefty bouquet of white roses, saying, “What do you think? Fifteen deserves something—regal!”

Their mother was still at the English radio station where she worked three days a week now. Rafik liked to say, “Our mother is a DJ,” but the station was mostly news, interviews, and cooking programs. Liyana dug under the sink for a glass jar to put the roses in.

The phone rang and Rafik answered it. He called to his dad, “Quick! I know it’s Sitti, but I don’t know what she’s saying! She’s shouting loud! I think she’s crying too.” Liyana froze.

Poppy let the roses dangle upside down as he
listened. Liyana rescued them, her blood buzzing. Usually Abu Daoud conveyed Sitti’s messages, or she yelled into the phone from a distance. She didn’t like to hold the receiver because she thought it might shock her.

Poppy asked a few questions, then was silent a long time. Finally he slammed down the phone. He’d just told Sitti they’d be there right away. “What, what?” Rank and Liyana asked him at once.

“I’ll tell you in the car.”

He was out the door already.

Driving too fast to the village, Poppy said Israeli soldiers had appeared at Sitti’s house and demanded to see her grandson Mahmud, who’d been living in Jordan for the past two years. He was studying to be a pharmacist. Poppy had told Liyana she would like him because he had a good sense of humor, but she hadn’t had a chance to meet him yet.

Sitti told the soldiers, “He’s not home,” because that was the way she talked about him—as if he might turn the corner any moment. “He’s not home, but he might be coming soon.” She could have said that about anybody, even her dead husband, the way she thought of things.

Poppy said the soldiers pushed past her into the house and searched it, dumping out drawers, ripping comforters from the cupboards. Sitti said, “He’s not in
there
.” They broke the little blue plate she loved. “What are you doing?” she screamed. There were four of them.

Then they went into Sitti’s bathroom and smashed the bathtub with hard metal clubs they were carrying.

Rafik said, “Smashed the bathtub? Why?” Liyana felt nervous wondering, were those soldiers still around? What if they got into a—tango—with them?

Poppy said, “They smashed the sink so it cracked into big pieces on the floor and water streamed from the broken faucets into the room and Sitti was terrified. She thought she was going to drown. She thought water would fill up the whole house, but of course it must have poured into the courtyard and Abu Daoud heard her screams from next door and came running over. He turned off the water at the pipe, I think. Anyway, she said it’s not gushing now. Then the soldiers smashed the toilet—”

Rafik interrupted. “WHY?”

Poppy swerved to avoid a sheep in the road. His voice sounded tight and hard. “THERE IS NO WHY. I am filling up to my throat from
these stories. Do you know how many of them I hear every day from my patients at work? I don’t tell you. I can’t tell you. And I thought things were getting better over here.”

Liyana said quietly, “I thought there was always a why.”

Shadows stretched across the road, late afternoon, a softness falling down from the sky no matter what people did.

At Sitti’s house, a small crowd of men and women had gathered tensely outside. They nodded at Poppy and his children as they passed. Rafik entered first and shouted, “Sitti’s house is a mess!”

Sitti was mopping and crying all at once. Liyana tried to take the mop from her hand and she brushed her away. An old lady Liyana didn’t recognize was down on her knees scrubbing the floor with pieces of rags.

Everyone kept muttering about the soldiers. Poppy translated.
The soldiers left in a truck. We hate their truck. We thought they weren’t supposed to bother us anymore. We thought the peace said they would stay away.

What did they want? They wanted Mahmud. WHY? For two hours Poppy talked to everybody. Nobody knew. Mahmud read books. Books could
be dangerous? Poppy tried to phone the police in Ramallah, but the phone line was blank. The soldiers had cut it. Poppy put his hands to his head. He shook his head, saying, “They must do it because it’s personal. It’s insulting. And it’s weird.”

He tried to calm Sitti down, but she was inconsolable, whimpering like a cat. Liyana thought she was sadder about the blue plate than the toilet. Sitti kept fingering its pieces, trying to fit them together.

Rafik and Liyana sat in the corner, invisible as the lemons in the bowl on the second shelf. Bathrooms were not cheap. Sitti was not rich.

She reluctantly agreed to spend the night at Aunt Saba’s house, folding a dress to wear the next day and her prayer rug and a towel. She mumbled something under her breath.

They walked with her through a stunned village. Even the scrappy birds seemed quieter. Even the children who usually called out from rooftops weren’t making any sound.