Inclusive Lit. HABIBI by: Naomi Shihab Nye

Bibliography: Nye, Naomi Shihab. 1997. HABIBI. New York: Simon & Schuster ISBN 0689801491

Summary

Liyana is an Arab-American who along with her brother has been raised in the United States. When she is fourteen years old her father who is an Arab decides it is time to move the family to Israel to become acquainted with relatives and cultures of his native country. Liyana is unhappy about the move and leaving her friends and all that she is familiar with. Throughout the book Liyana begins to discover the love of her extended family and the horrors of the war torn country. She has a flirtatious affection for a young boy who it turns out is Jewish. Through this relationship and other events throughout the book she questions the reasons for the hatred between the two groups. She finally settles into her life in Israel and discovers there is not much that she actually misses from America.

Critical Analysis

Naomi Shihab Nye is an award winning poetess and novelist. She is of Palestinian and American descent and has been widely exposed to various cultures. HABIBI has won several awards including the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award (1998) and the American Library Association Notable Books for Children (1998). Ms. Nye has lived in both America and the Middle East and has first-hand knowledge of the attitudes of the various cultures within the Middle East. This experience adds to the authentic feeling of the book. Religious practices such as the muezzin giving the last call to prayer over a loudspeaker from the Mosque in the village of Sitti (grandmother) gives the reader a hint of the religious practices of this Arabic community. “They unrolled their blue prayer rugs from a shelf, then knelt, stood, and knelt again touching foreheads to the ground, saying their prayers in low voices.” This was in contrast to the informal beliefs of Liyana’s Mother and Father. Mother says they are a spiritual family, not a traditionally religious one. Liyana had not been raised within any particular formal religious group. The entire family believed in reincarnation, because it made sense to them. They did not believe in the devil, just people doing devilish things. Shortly before leaving America she had her first kiss, which at the age of fourteen, is not unusual within the states. However, when she arrived in Israel she and her father had a conversation in which he tells her “Public kissing – I mean, kissing on the mouth, like romantic kissing – is not okay here. It is simply not done.” Adjustments between the two cultures were very difficult for Liyana. There was some integration of Arabic and Jewish words such as at the Wailing Wall the Jews in yarmulkes were praying and tucking notes into the wall. Liyana’s friend Omer tells of the shiva – the time when family members remove their shoes, do not leave the house and mirrors are covered to mourn the dead, a Jewish tradition. We find the meaning of the title of the book, HABIBA, which means darling, a dearly loved person, chosen. Other words such as ana tayyib- I’m fine and ana asif, I’m sorry are sprinkled throughout the book. The names of the people in the book took on the language of the Middle East with names such as Khalad, Rafik, and Omer. Meals when they arrived in Israel included such things as olives, marinated turnips, plates of baba ghonouj and hummus and hot flat breads. At the market when her mother wanted to buy a chicken a live one was plucked from a cage and its head chopped with Liyana and her mother watching. As a result, Liyana became a vegetarian. Clothing was completely different within the Israeli community where Liyana’s shorts were totally inappropriate and the family looked strangely upon her wearing her jeans with patches in the knees. She was accepted into an Armenian school where the wearing of her ring was considered inappropriate and she had to wear the uniform of the school. The languages were foreign to Liyana, her brother and her mother. There were so many languages within a small area. Great cultural shocks had to be overcome for adjustments to the new life. When Liyana became ill following an immunization injection for Cholera her Sitta came to cure her even though her father was a medical doctor. Sitta used many pins to confine Liyana within the sheets of her bed, the pins “looked like a metallic running fence.” Following this Sitta said many prayers and flicked her fingers as if she were casting the illness aside. Soon Liyana began to feel better. Her brother, Rafik, called it a voodoo bed.

The most important significant cultural difference within this book was the differences in the feelings of the Arabs, Jews, Palestinian and other Middle Easterners. Their cultural differences brought bombings, attacks, and prison among the various groups. There were areas within the city which different groups were not accepted. A young friend Khalad was shot and Liyana’s father was imprisoned for a day because a group of soldiers thought that Khalad had been involved in the killing of a young man. Her Sitta’s home was wrecked as soldiers went through it looking for a relative and then they left as quickly as they came. This was very difficult for Liyana to understand. She met a young Jewish boy and bonded a friendship with him. One her father found unacceptable. Yet in the book it was this friendship that brought forth the sharing of feelings from both sides that at least among this small group of people peace was possible and desired.

The cover of this book illustrates the three characters who so varied in their believes are drawn together. There is Omer in his yellow checked shirt that Liyana finds him so handsome in, Liyana in her contemporary American clothing which is unacceptable to her family and Sitta, her grandmother in the traditional clothing of the Arabic community. In the background we find the old city with a part of it special to each group -- all tied together, yet so different. Will there ever be peace?

I very much enjoyed this book. I liked the setting of the book with an American immigrating to another country versus most of the books we have read which have other people coming to America. The book gives an understanding of the lives of the people that we read and hear about on the news daily. It gives the perspective of being in the countries where the turmoil is going on. These things we tend to read and forget, but the people of the Middle East cannot forget – it is their life.

Each chapter begins with a brief message to give thought to. My favorite is “When we were born we were blank pieces of paper; nothing had been written yet.”

Horn Book Guide: When Liyana Abboud is fourteen, her father decides that the time is right to move the family from St. Louis to his native Jerusalem. Inevitably, Arab-Israeli tensions enter into the story, but the message isn't preachy and remains almost secondary to the story of Liyana's search for her identity. The leisurely paced text contains poetic turns of phrase that accurately reflect Liyana's passion for words and language. Horn Rating: Superior, well above average.

Publishers Weekly: This soul-stirring novel about the Abbouds, an Arab American family, puts faces and names to the victims of violence and persecution in Jerusalem today. Believing the unstable situation in that conflict-ridden city has improved, 14-year-old Liyana's family moves from St. Louis, Mo., to her father's homeland. However, from the moment the Abbouds are stopped by Jewish customs agents at the airport, they face racial prejudice and discord. Initially, Nye (Never in a Hurry) focuses on the Abbouds' handling of conflicting cultural norms between American and Arab values as they settle into their new home (e.g., Liyana's father, Poppy, while forbidding her to wear "short" shorts, reacts in anger toward a relative who asks for Liyana's hand in marriage). Then Liyana tests her family's alleged unprejudiced beliefs when she befriends Omer, a Jewish boy. She wants to introduce him to her father (who taught her, "Does it make sense that any God would choose some people and leave the others out?... God's bigger than that!"), but finds she must first remind him of his own words. Nye expertly combines the Abbouds' gradual acceptance of Omer with a number of heart-wrenching episodes of persecution (by the different warring factions) against her friends and family to convey the extent to which the Arab-Israeli conflict infiltrates every aspect of their lives. Nye's climactic ending will leave readers pondering, long after the last page is turned, why Arabs, Jews, Greeks and Armenians can no longer live in harmony the way they once did.

Connections

Letter from Naomi Shihab Nye “To Any Would-Be Terrorists” can be found at:
http://godlas.myweb.uga.edu/shihabnye.html

http://www.pbs.org/now/classroom/poet.html This Website allows for lesson plans from Naomi Shihab Nye’s poetry. A renowned poet – many of these poems address her Palestinian/American heritage