Other Words for Home Read online

  They talked so fast and I spent most of the time

  trying to keep up with the subtitles that rolled across

  the bottom of the screen.

  Afterward, Sammy said,

  See, now you will be able to talk about a movie

  that isn’t a hundred years old.

  I smiled and didn’t tell Sammy that I still liked

  Miss Congeniality

  better.

  IX.

  Today the air is so soupy

  that it feels like I am living inside

  someone else’s mouth.

  I wake up at the sound of the first adhan,

  the muezzin’s voice echoing through my room.

  But I do not get up to pray.

  Instead I roll over and press my face

  into my pillow and

  pray for cool air

  and sleep.

  When I get up, Mama is in the kitchen brewing tea.

  She has set out large chunks of feta

  and slightly toasted pitas.

  She toasts them right on the open flame in our kitchen.

  I know that everyone’s mother makes them this way,

  but I still cannot imagine doing it

  myself one day.

  It seems so bold.

  So brave.

  It is playing with fire.

  Baba has already left for work.

  In the summer, his store has extended hours.

  In the summer, he is a ghost that I do not see.

  I only know he exists by the footsteps I hear

  in the early mornings and late evenings.

  Mama is telling Issa to eat.

  She is telling him not to go to the march

  that is planned for today.

  Life is good.

  We should not tempt fate,

  Mama says.

  Life is not good for everyone.

  You only think it is good because that is

  what you have been told.

  You need to

  open your eyes,

  Issa says.

  I stretch my eyes as wide as I can.

  I want him to laugh,

  but he just

  shakes his head.

  I used to be able to make him laugh,

  but not anymore.

  I have not heard him laugh in

  ages.

  We live in a town where most people do not speak ill

  of our president.

  But my brother does.

  So do his friends who

  attend the local university.

  They have ideas about how the world should be.

  Issa says he wants to live in a country where

  anyone can be

  anyone

  they want to be.

  I don’t understand what my brother means

  when he says this.

  I wish I understood exactly what my brother

  wants to be.

  Our president’s family grew up

  in the mountains to the north of us,

  and if you listen carefully you can hear

  the whispers rolling down the mountains,

  telling us to stay quiet

  and be grateful.

  The president’s ancestors are

  powerful spirits.

  We live in a town that needs tourists.

  Revolution

  and war are not good

  for business.

  But my brother doesn’t care.

  My brother who no longer will

  imitate Reese Witherspoon

  or sing Whitney Houston

  with me.

  My brother wants to see things change,

  and I just want to hear him laugh

  again.

  X.

  Mama forbids me to leave our apartment

  on the day of the protest.

  She tries to forbid Issa,

  but, of course, he does not

  listen.

  I sit on the couch by the small window

  and look out into the courtyard.

  It is as quiet as

  always.

  Maybe even more quiet. The two benches are

  empty.

  The one potted plant of mint has grown out of control.

  It smells like strong tea

  and is spilling out of its container,

  taking over everything around it.

  No one knows how the mint got there;

  someone should do something about that.

  But everyone is waiting

  for someone else to do it.

  We are still waiting.

  I stare at the window of Fatima’s apartment.

  I keep thinking I will see her, sitting by the glass,

  listening, watching, and waiting.

  Just like me.

  But I don’t see her.

  I pace back

  and forth by the window.

  Sometimes I think I can hear the protests.

  I stretch my ears for miles

  and miles,

  itching to catch a sound of the angry students

  with their signs.

  Imagining my brother’s face,

  red and angry.

  Chanting about freedom and democracy,

  words that I know, but don’t quite

  understand.

  I know my brother is shouting for

  his country.

  But I also feel like he is shouting at Baba.

  I do not think Baba is

  listening.

  XI.

  I am sitting next to Baba at his store.

  He has never told me that he likes when I visit,

  but I think he does because

  whenever I come,

  there is always another stool,

  sitting next to his,

  empty,

  waiting.

  Today is a good day because

  Baba is letting me eat a candy bar

  from his shop.

  I am trying to eat it slowly,

  to savor it.

  But instead I eat it all

  in four quick bites.

  Is this what your brother wants?

  My head jerks up,

  surprised by the sound of my father’s voice,

  surprised he is asking

  me

  a question.

  He hands me a newspaper.

  The front page is filled with awful pictures of

  people who are

  bloodied and cowering together in their city,

  which has been torn apart by war.

  He wants these violent maniacs to take over?

  My father shoves the paper closer to me.

  I do not touch the paper.

  I avoid it like a hot plate that will burn me.

  I look away from the pictures.

  I don’t want to see them.

  I don’t want to think about them later tonight

  when I am trying to fall asleep.

  I know that Issa and his friends are different from those men.

  Those men who spill blood and manipulate the Quran to say

  things that the rest of us know it does not say.

  Baba has to know that too,

  and I move my lips to tell him,

  but cannot make myself say the words.

  I am not brave like my brother.

  Take it, he says,

  and he is no longer asking me.

  I hold the newspaper in my hands

  and it feels heavy for something made only of paper.

  You can keep it. If your brother has his way

  there will be no one left in this town

  who can afford to buy a paper anymore anyway.

  I clutch the newspaper,

  wishing that he had given me a different gift,

  like another candy bar.

  XII.

  After the protests,

  there are more police.

  It seems like everywhere you go—

  the butcher

  the beach

  at school—

  there is an armed policeman.

  There are whispers of people

  who were rounded up after the protests

  and locked in jail.

  There are louder whispers about a town nearby

  where men with stolen tanks and stolen weapons

  rolled in and took over.

  Those men are now fighting

  against the government’s army

  and the people who live in the town

  don’t know whose side to choose.

  They only want the violence to stop.

  Nobody knows which side is the right one anymore.

  When I go with Mama to the spice shop

  to refill her containers of coriander and za’atar,

  Mama makes a big show out of bowing her head

  in the direction of the framed portrait of our president.

  But when we get home

  and she is spreading the spice rub over the lamb legs,

  she talks to my brother

  who is finally home for a dinner.

  I know this is not what you expected, she says.

  Her hands massage the meat.

  The whole kitchen fills with the earthy scent of herbs.

  You were not wrong to want better.

  Issa sits at the table.

  He is having an asroneyeh

  to hold him over until dinner is ready.

  He rips a piece of pita bread in half.

  I know, he says,

  and his eyes meet mine.

  An invitation.

  A dare.

  I am not going to stop wanting better.

  He rips the bread into

&nb
sp; smaller

  and smaller pieces.

  This is not the end.

  It is only the beginning.

  XIII.

  Our town used to be

  a place for people to laugh and enjoy

  all the things that unite them like

  family and sunshine and the sea and good food.

  Not the things that divide them like

  opinions and political loyalties.

  But now everyone wants to know

  where you stand.

  What you think.

  What you believe.

  When you walk around town,

  you had better show deference to our president—

  to his large picture that is in almost every shop,

  and the armed guards that are now on every corner.

  If you don’t,

  you will be asked if you would rather

  live in one of those other towns,

  towns that are no longer under our president’s control.

  Towns where families huddle together in rubble,

  and there is no running water and electricity,

  but a whole lot of blood.

  I still smile at everyone in the street.

  Not everyone smiles back, though.

  When they don’t,

  I want to say,

  You don’t have to worry about me.

  I am just a girl who likes movies.

  XIV.

  At first when my brother moves out,

  I am forbidden from going to his new apartment.

  Children are not supposed to move out until they’ve finished university, Mama says

  as she folds the shirts that Issa left behind,

  neatly leaving them in his drawer,

  like she is preparing for him to move back in tomorrow.

  Baba, as expected, does not say anything

  about my brother moving out.

  But I catch him glancing

  in the direction of my brother’s

  now empty room

  when he doesn’t think anyone is watching.

  I ask every day if I can visit my brother,

  and every day the answer is no,

  until one day when my mama says

  yes and she walks with me the seven blocks across town to his new apartment,

  which is near the local university

  and all of the cafés that Baba thinks are full of radicals.

  Mama does not go inside,

  but I see her lingering outside

  watching me climb down the steps

  into the basement where my brother now lives,

  into an entirely new world.

  His new apartment is covered with a tapestry of mismatched rugs;

  a scratched coffee table sits low to the ground

  and it is covered with stacks of newspapers that have been marked up with a pen.

  Names have been circled, crossed out, and amended.

  It feels like a place where ideas live.

  There is an energy in the room that excites

  and frightens me.

  There are so many faces,

  girls and boys.

  Issa introduces me to everyone.

  I do not know which faces actually live in this place

  and which faces are only visiting,

  like me.

  XV.

  There is a loud knock at the door,

  and soon my brother’s basement apartment is filled with armed police.

  There is shouting,

  glasses knocked to the ground,

  bodies shoved against walls,

  the sounds of handcuffs clicking,

  more shouting.

  In the chaos,

  my brother reaches for my hand.

  He pulls me with him,

  down a hallway,

  up a flight of stairs,

  out a door.

  When we are outside,

  I let out one long gasp.

  Don’t be afraid, Jude, he says.

  I wouldn’t let anything happen to you.

  But my knees won’t stop shaking.

  They could have taken you, I say, my voice trembling.

  He squeezes my hand again.

  It feels like some sort of promise,

  an assurance that he won’t leave me

  all alone.

  XVI.

  Mama knows what happened

  before Issa even brings me home.

  She clings to both of us

  and makes a sound I have never heard before.

  It sounds like terror,

  like primal relief.

  They could have taken you, she says,

  still squeezing us both tightly.

  It is exactly what I said to Issa.

  There is an Arabic proverb that says:

  The offspring of ducks float.

  It means,

  all children end up like their parents.

  I guess I am starting

  to float.

  XVII.

  After the raid on Issa’s apartment,

  My mama, who has never been afraid of anything,

  suddenly is squeezing my hand tight

  when we walk to the market,

  pulling me close to her at every corner,

  looking ten times before we cross the street.

  I watch her when she makes dinner.

  She does everything a little slower

  than she used to.

  It’s like there is now a blinking caution light

  inside of her.

  Even Baba checks the lock

  on the door

  twice every night,

  rubs Mama’s shoulders more than he used to,

  though I’m not sure if that’s to make her

  or him

  feel better.

  Maybe both.

  I hear them late at night,

  whispering back and forth to one another.

  I can’t always make out the actual words,

  but I can feel them,

  taste them.

  They taste like fear.

  I stare up at the ceiling of my room.

  I wonder where my brother is,

  if he’s staring up at his ceiling,

  in his new apartment,

  if he’s afraid like me,

  if he’s afraid at all.

  XVIII.

  When Mama first tells me,

  it’s just us

  sitting at the kitchen table,

  sharing a snack of feta cheese and olives.

  It’s only a visit, she says,

  to see my brother.

  My heart drops into my stomach.

  Her brother lives an ocean away

  in America.

  We have never visited him because

  it is not an easy place to visit.

  It is a long trip.

  An expensive one.

  It is not a trip you would take for no reason.

  We are leaving, I challenge her.

  I look in her eyes

  demanding she tell me the truth.

  Sunlight streams in through the cracks in the blinds.

  She used to leave our windows all the way open during the day.

  Only for a little while, she admits,

  and I can tell she wants to believe

  what she is saying.

  She wants to believe it for both of us.

  What about Baba? I ask and watch

  Mama’s big dark eyes fill up with tears.

  What about Issa?

  The tears spill over.

  She tells me that Baba has to stay because he cannot

  will not

  leave the store.

  She tells me that Issa

  will not

  leave.

  I wish he would, she says,

  holding out her hand to me,

  and I know she means it to be comforting

  that we both wish this,

  but it only makes my heart hurt more.

  Why do we have to go?

  Her eyes are still wet.

  She squeezes my hand tighter.

  I’m sorry, habibti, but I cannot wait for things to get worse.

  We cannot take the risk.

  But things might not get worse, I argue.

  I am thinking of everything I heard that night

  in Issa’s basement.

  Ideas about hope

  and freedom.

  Mama puts her hand on her stomach.

  Jude, she says. I need you.

  I need you, she repeats.

  To help us.

  My eyes study her hand,

  her belly,

  the rise and fall of her breath.

  And all of a sudden,

  I see all the pieces and how they fit.

  My eyes are still watery, but I smile.

  A baby? I say because I am worried

  that if it’s not said out loud

  it won’t be true.

  Nunu, she confirms.

  I slide out of my chair

  and snuggle up to her belly,

  pressing my ear against the soft fabric of her dress,