Other Words for Home Read online

  Dedication

  This one’s for the Nazeks,

  especially my father, who crossed an ocean,

  my uncle Abdalla, who loved me from across one,

  and my cousin Jude, whose name I borrowed.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Part One: Changing

  Chapter I.

  Chapter II.

  Chapter III.

  Chapter IV.

  Chapter V.

  Chapter VI.

  Chapter VII.

  Chapter VIII.

  Chapter IX.

  Chapter X.

  Chapter XI.

  Chapter XII.

  Chapter XIII.

  Chapter XIV.

  Chapter XV.

  Chapter XVI.

  Chapter XVII.

  Chapter XVIII.

  Chapter XIX.

  Chapter XX.

  Part Two: Arriving

  Chapter I.

  Chapter II.

  Chapter III.

  Chapter IV.

  Chapter V.

  Chapter VI.

  Chapter VII.

  Chapter VIII.

  Chapter IX.

  Chapter X.

  Chapter XI.

  Chapter XII.

  Chapter XIII.

  Chapter XIV.

  Part Three: Staying

  Chapter I.

  Chapter II.

  Chapter III.

  Chapter IV.

  Chapter V.

  Chapter VI.

  Chapter VII.

  Chapter VIII.

  Chapter IX.

  Chapter X.

  Chapter XI.

  Chapter XII.

  Chapter XIII.

  Chapter XIV.

  Chapter XV.

  Chapter XVI.

  Chapter XVII.

  Chapter XVIII.

  Chapter XIX.

  Chapter XX.

  Chapter XXI.

  Chapter XXII.

  Chapter XXIII.

  Part Four: Hoping

  Chapter I.

  Chapter II.

  Chapter III.

  Chapter IV.

  Chapter V.

  Chapter VI.

  Chapter VII.

  Chapter VIII.

  Chapter IX.

  Chapter X.

  Chapter XI.

  Chapter XII.

  Chapter XIII.

  Part Five: Growing

  Chapter I.

  Chapter II.

  Chapter III.

  Chapter IV.

  Chapter V.

  Chapter VI.

  Chapter VII.

  Chapter VIII.

  Chapter IX.

  Chapter X.

  Chapter XI.

  Chapter XII.

  Chapter XIII.

  Chapter XIV.

  Chapter XV.

  Chapter XVI.

  Chapter XVII.

  Chapter XVIII.

  Chapter XIX.

  Chapter XX.

  Chapter XXI.

  Chapter XXII.

  Part Six: Living

  Chapter I.

  Chapter II.

  Chapter III.

  Chapter IV.

  Chapter V.

  Chapter VI.

  Chapter VII.

  Chapter VIII.

  Chapter IX.

  Chapter X.

  Chapter XI.

  Glossary of Arabic Words

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  PART ONE

  Changing

  I.

  It is almost summer and everywhere smells like fish,

  except for right down by the sea

  where if you hold your nose just right

  you can smell the sprawling jasmine and the salt water

  instead.

  In the summer, I always hold my nose to avoid

  the stench of fish and

  tourists that smell like hairspray

  and money and French perfume.

  The tourists come from Damascus and Aleppo.

  Sometimes even Beirut and Amman.

  Once I met a man all the way from Doha.

  I asked him about the big skyscrapers that I have heard

  reach all the way up to the heavens,

  but Baba hushed me quiet before the man could answer me.

  Baba does not like for me to talk to

  Tourists

  Strangers

  Men.

  He does not want me to talk to anyone that I do not know

  and even people that I do know he always says,

  Jude, skety,

  and so I bite my tongue and it sometimes tastes even worse

  than the way the summer fish smell.

  Everyone is saying that there will be fewer visitors

  from Aleppo this year.

  That there is no one left in Aleppo to come.

  That everyone who could leave Aleppo already has.

  When I ask Mama if this is true, she says,

  Jude, skety.

  II.

  Our city does not look like what they show on TV of Syria.

  I remember the first time

  Fatima and I saw a story

  about Aleppo on the news.

  We felt proud.

  I know that is strange to say, childish maybe—

  it felt strange even then—

  but it also felt like the rest of the world

  saw

  me.

  But our city does not look like Aleppo, before or after.

  It is not sprawling and noisy with buildings

  pressed up against

  one another

  like they are crammed together in an elevator

  with no room to breathe.

  Our city is on the sea. It sits below the mountains.

  It is where the rest of Syria comes when they want to breathe.

  No one is going to come this year, Fatima says.

  And I wonder if that is because there is no one left

  who needs to

  breathe.

  III.

  Fatima is twenty-four days, six hours, and eleven minutes older than me.

  She did the math.

  Fatima hates math, but loves

  when she comes out on

  top.

  We have always been friends.

  Mama and Aunt Amal have known each other

  since they were girls.

  We live across the courtyard from them and

  sometimes when I was little,

  I would squeeze my eyes shut at night and

  pretend that Fatima and I

  were dreaming the same dream.

  When I was little, it was easy to imagine that.

  Fatima and I were always in step,

  four feet pointed in the same direction.

  But the last few months have been different.

  Fatima feels kilometers ahead of me now.

  Her dark curls aren’t on display anymore,

  tumbling to her shoulders

  in unruly waves that remind me of laughter.

  Her head is wrapped in silk scarves

  that are bright and colored like jewels.

  She is one of the first girls in our grade to cover.

  She has bled between her legs.

  I am still waiting

  to bleed.

  To feel like I have something worth

  covering.

  IV.

  Fatima and I almost always have our asroneyeh together.

  Either Mama makes it or Auntie Amal.

  Fatima likes to have
olives, green and black,

  so fat that you can stick your fingers inside of them

  and eat them one by one.

  I think olives taste like the sea

  and all that salt makes me dizzy.

  I eat the jebneh and the bread

  that Mama gets from Hibah’s bakery

  around the corner

  because she knows it is my favorite.

  Hibah makes her bread as fluffy as a pillow.

  I eat so much of it that Mama

  always has to remind me that

  asroneyeh is supposed to help me last until dinner,

  but is not dinner.

  During asroneyeh, we drink tea.

  Or Fatima drinks tea and I drink sugar and mint

  with a side of tea.

  We watch old American movies that we bought

  with our Eid and birthday money.

  We watch Julia Roberts fall in love and

  we watch Sandra Bullock track down criminals and

  we watch Reese Witherspoon go to law school.

  Fatima and I both want to be movie stars.

  Fatima also wants to be a doctor,

  but I only want to be a

  movie star.

  The wanting pulses so hard in my chest that it sometimes hurts.

  My older brother, Issa,

  used to watch the movies with us.

  He would sometimes even act them out with us,

  standing up on the couch,

  imitating Reese’s way of speaking English,

  all slow and sugary.

  He used to until one day Baba came home from work early and walked in on us

  acting out the movies. Baba didn’t say anything.

  Not even Jude, skety.

  He didn’t even look at me.

  Only at Issa.

  He shook his head

  and walked into his bedroom.

  V.

  Fatima and I like to find bits

  and pieces of ourselves in the faces of

  movie stars.

  We have decided that Fatima has Sandra Bullock’s

  dark eyes that are so expressive you could tell

  if she was laughing

  even if her mouth was covered.

  Speaking of mouths, I have one.

  And it is big

  like Julia Roberts’s.

  At least that’s what I tell myself.

  Someday

  I hope I will be a movie star

  and some other little girl will look at me and say

  I have her eyes

  her nose

  her hair

  her laugh

  and she will feel beautiful.

  Maybe

  someday

  Julia Roberts will see me and think

  I have her mouth.

  VI.

  I am walking down by the shore

  with my favorite person in the whole world,

  my older brother, Issa.

  We are strolling down the stretch of beach

  that is open to everyone.

  Only people who—like Issa and me—have always lived here

  walk on this beach.

  Only people who don’t have piles and piles of money

  walk on this beach.

  Soon, we will be able to walk anywhere we want, Issa says.

  Things are going to change.

  I follow his eyes to the other side of the beach

  where there are plush white chairs

  shaded by white-and-blue-striped canopies.

  The chairs sit empty,

  but they are not open.

  The salty wind is whipping through Issa’s dark hair

  and he is wearing his serious face.

  His serious face is new.

  Issa used to love to sing American pop songs

  with me and Fatima

  at the top of his lungs.

  He knew every word of

  Madonna

  Whitney Houston

  Mariah Carey.

  Now he knows other words like

  revolution

  democracy

  and change, change, change.

  He is always talking about change.

  My feet sink into the sand

  and I realize I do not want things to change.

  I want things to go back to the way they were,

  which I guess is another sort of changing,

  but it is not what Issa is talking about.

  The sky is melting overhead.

  The sun, like my feet, is sinking

  lower and

  lower,

  swirls of yellows and dusty pinks.

  Are you coming to dinner?

  It still feels strange to ask my brother this question.

  His presence at ghadah used to be as certain as the sunset,

  but now that has also

  changed.

  Issa’s face switches again,

  from serious to sorry,

  and I know he isn’t coming.

  I’m meeting Saeed and Yasmine, he says,

  and Baba would tell you that my brother

  and his friends

  are plotting revolution.

  Our baba is furious that Issa goes

  to these meetings.

  He calls them treasonous and

  Issa says that it is our president

  Bashar al-Assad

  who is treasonous,

  who is oppressing his own people.

  Issa shouts at Baba about free elections

  and real democracy

  and unlawful use of force

  and Baba shouts about stability

  and safety and then stability again.

  You should come with me, Issa says,

  bringing me out of my memory

  and back to the beach.

  He knows that I can’t.

  I am not like Issa.

  I am good at taking an extra piece of bread at ghadah,

  at talking too loud and too quickly

  about American movie stars.

  I am not good at defying Baba.

  You should care about our country, too, he says.

  I do, I say,

  but what I mean is that I care

  about my brother

  and my baba

  and my mama

  and I just want to live in a country where

  we can all have dinner again

  without shouting about our president

  or rebels and revolution.

  VII.

  Last summer

  Fatima and I met a girl who was from Damascus.

  Her name was Samira

  but she told us to call her Sammy

  which was what her friend from London called her.

  London, she said.

  Did we know where that was?

  We said yes, which was true

  and not true.

  I’ve heard of London but

  I wouldn’t know how to get there.

  Sammy pronounced the word London

  like Mary Poppins does in the movie and

  I almost laughed but

  then I realized she wasn’t trying to be funny.

  She was being posh,

  which is an English word she taught me.

  Sammy’s family had lots of money.

  She was staying at the hotel right by the sea

  that has the fancy white chairs that are shaded

  with fancy white canopies.

  The kind of hotel that Issa hates,

  but I secretly like and dream about staying at one day.

  I picture myself as a famous actress,

  coming home to visit,

  sitting on one of those fancy white chairs,

  reading a glossy magazine with my face on the cover.

  VIII.

  The hotel where Sammy was staying is right around the corner

  from Baba’s store

  where he sells candy bars

&nbs
p; and soft drinks and magazines to the tourists.

  His prices are much better than at the shops in the fancy hotels.

  Sammy was picking out a candy bar when

  she heard Fatima and me talking

  near the back of the store.

  Fatima and I like to hang out at Baba’s store.

  Sometimes he gives us free Fanta

  sometimes free chips

  and there are always interesting people coming

  and going

  especially in the summer.

  If we don’t cause too much trouble

  Baba lets us hang around.

  He would never admit it but I think he actually likes

  when we come to visit him.

  You like American movies? Sammy said to us

  in English.

  She’d heard Fatima and me talking so I knew

  she spoke Arabic,

  but she wanted us to know she also spoke

  English.

  Yes, Fatima said loudly back to her

  in English,

  even though Fatima’s accent is not as good as mine.

  Baba gave us a warning glance

  from behind the counter,

  and we all slunk further down the aisle,

  hiding behind the Kit Kats and the M&M’s.

  Which films do you like? she asked,

  again in English.

  Fatima looked to me.

  My English has always been better than hers.

  Miss Congeniality.

  Runaway Bride.

  Legally Blonde.

  Practical Magic.

  Pretty Woman.

  The last two we weren’t supposed to watch

  because witches

  and prostitutes scare

  Mama and Auntie Amal

  but Issa bought us those movies

  from a store in our neighborhood that sells recordings

  of American movies.

  We hid the tapes in a box

  behind a pile of clothes that I don’t wear anymore.

  Sammy frowned at us.

  Later I would realize this was the moment she decided

  Fatima and I

  were not posh.

  You like old movies.

  We gave her a blank stare and she said,

  What about . . . ?

  She listed lots of movie titles we had never heard of.

  Later that summer, Sammy took Fatima and me

  to the movie theater that is right downtown

  by the fancy new shops

  that were built just for the tourists.

  Fatima and I had never been to that movie theater

  or any movie theater and

  we tried to pretend not to be stunned by the

  soft red velvet seats that are so dense you can make

  a handprint in the fabric

  or the wide flat white screen

  that is larger than anything

  I’d ever seen.

  We watched a new American movie

  and I didn’t recognize any of the movie stars.