Free Habibi by Naomi Shihab Nye

on any of the white gravestones.
    Then they came to the spring, where watergathered in a shining pool by the roadside. Sitti filled her hand and let Liyana drink from it. She’d never drunk from anybody else’s hand before. The water tasted crisp. Then Sitti filled the jug slowly from a pipe jutting out of a ledge. Poppy had said the women still preferred this fresh “earth water” to the water that came from faucets. Sitti placed a thick cloth pad on her head and heaved the full jug back up there, to carry back to the house. Once the jug was in place, she balanced it without using her hands. She motioned to Liyana.
Did Liyana want to try carrying it?
Liyana jumped back. She couldn’t even carry a peach on her head!
    After delivering the water home and snapping green beans into a big pot to steam with a cinnamon stick, Sitti took Liyana to meet a neighbor who was stringing orange beads on nylon thread. The woman opened a cupboard to show Liyana dozens of lovely necklaces hanging on nails. She urged her to choose one. Liyana didn’t wear necklaces herself, but selected a turquoise one strung with antique Palestinian coins. She could hide the necklace till her mother’s birthday. The woman kept song sparrows in small wicker cages and gave Liyana two fat olive oil soaps to take home to her mother, too. She hugged Liyana good-bye.
    Later Liyana realized how many things they had all communicated without trading any words.Toward evening, when Rafik had returned sweaty from playing with his cousins in the fields and their mother had returned sunburned, happily stocked with a year’s worth of herbs and some miniature embroideries to practice on, and Poppy had awakened from his second nap, they sat together on floor cushions by Sitti’s bed cracking almonds into a wooden bowl. Liyana leaned against Sitti’s shoulder so she could reach the bowl.
    Sitti kept Poppy busy translating. She related her dreams as if they were news reports, staring into Liyana’s face as Poppy spoke. “The other night I dreamed that a relative named Salim who died long ago came and asked me to accompany him to Mecca. I was so afraid. I want to go to Mecca, but not with somebody dead. I thought he would take me with him to the next world and make me die.”
    But then?
    “When I woke up I saw that ugly cat sitting in my window, so I knew I was still alive.”
    Sitti popped two almonds into Rafik’s mouth when he laughed and then she left the room to arrange the green beans and stuffed squash they were having for dinner on big trays.
    Poppy leaned toward his family and said, “You’ll notice Sitti’s stories don’t always hangtogether. She has no logical sense of cause and effect. Anyway, in this part of the world, the past and present are often rolled into one.”
    All the uncles were away at another village that day for a big meeting about land problems. The aunts had gone to Bethlehem to help a distant cousin prepare for her wedding. Liyana liked having fewer people around.
    Poppy said he was afraid to buy Sitti a bus ticket for the pilgrimage to Mecca, because he really did think she might die soon afterward.
    Why?
    Sitti was back in the room by now, listening to them talk English and nodding her head. She said the squash would be cool enough to eat as soon as two birds crossed in the sky. Poppy didn’t even blink. He just kept talking.
    “Sometimes when a person looks forward to something for such a long time, it keeps them alive. Then when they accomplish it—
boom
.” He studied such subjects. He said the old people he’d been seeing in the hospital here were incredibly “durable” for their advanced ages. “Lots of them are waiting for a true, independent Palestine, too. They’re not going to give up when they’re this close.”
    Sitti collected the almond shells in her skirt and went outside.
    Liyana kept considering what Poppy saidabout hopes being accomplished.
    “Like you coming back to Jerusalem, Poppy?” “I hope