Habibi by Naomi Shihab Nye Page B

into dollars in her head for them to make sense to her.
    “Thanks.”
    “Do you want it?” he asked her.
    “Well, I want it—but I can’t afford it. Maybe they’ll have a sale.”
    The Sandrouni man placed his hand on the cinnamon boy’s shoulder. “Has he been telling you stories? Has he promised to give all my precious cargoes away for half price?”
    Liyana laughed and thanked them both andstepped back outside toward Abu Musa’s where little cakes of
falafel
were frying. Abu Musa slid her crispy planets of
falafel
into pockets of warm, fresh pita bread and Liyana bit down hard. She was starving.
    That night at dinner she said, “Poppy, today I fell in love with a lamp.”

I NTERVIEWING SITTI
    Prepare for an unexpected visitor heading toward your door.
    Back in the United States, Liyana’s classes had oral history assignments where they were supposed to go home and ask their oldest relatives or neighbors what the world was like long ago.
What did you eat? What did you do for recreation? How did your mother cure a headache?
They could write the answers down or tape them, then choose the most interesting parts and compose a paper.
    Of course Liyana always picked Peachy Helen, but Peachy would protest. “Honey, you think I remember that far back? I barely remember what happened yesterday! Let’s just forget about it and share some scones with lemon curd, what do you say?”
    Liyana would open Peachy’s dresser drawers, pulling out a silver bracelet engraved with tipis and canoes, and dusty powder puffs, trying to jar her memory.
    Usually she’d end up having to talk to Frank,their neighbor in blue overalls who specialized in car engines and organic farming methods. He didn’t remember much about childhood, or he wouldn’t tell. But Sitti
remembered everything
. She even remembered when a Turkish tribe rode south past Jerusalem and the children were told to lie down in ditches so they wouldn’t be run over by horses.
    The problem was Liyana could only have a deep conversation with Sitti if Poppy were present. In Arabic class at school, Liyana was just learning the colors—
fidda
for silver,
urjawaani
for purple.
    Anyway, Sitti loved when Poppy was present. She rubbed the back of his hand till he looked uncomfortable. He had been her last of eight children, born when she was past the usual childbearing age.
    One Saturday in the village, with a light rain falling softly outside, Liyana tested her cassette tape and plopped down on a floor mattress beside Sitti, who was cracking almonds again by her fire in the oil stove. Liyana slipped off her blue Birkenstocks. Sitti picked one up, turned it over, looked at its sole upside down and said in Arabic, “It’s too fat.”
    Tell me a story.
    “About what?” Sitti laughed. She offeredLiyana an apricot.
The whole world was a story. Stories were the only things that tied us to the ground!
    Because she knew Sitti liked the subject, Liyana asked for “a story about angels.” Poppy looked dubious even as he translated. He thought angel talk was foolishness.
    Sitti stared at Liyana’s cassette recorder as if it were an animal that might bite her with its tiny teeth. A thread of faraway music floated past and vanished.
    Sitti placed both hands over her own eyes, as if casting a spell on herself, and began speaking. “Your grandfather, my husband, who died so long ago already, used to come home with his pockets full of a plump kind of dates, not those thin, dried-up ones that make you thirsty even in your sleep. He would present them to me as if they were coins or golden bracelets. He knew I loved them very much. We would place them in a white bowl covered with a cloth in the cabinet and we would eat them one at a time and I am not ashamed to say we did not tell the children they were there. Because one hundred little children from everywhere were always passing through this house. And there would not have been enough of them to go around, you know? But also, we