HABIBI
By Naomi Shihab Nye
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Nye, Naomi
Shihab. (1997). HABIBI. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN: 0-689-82523-4.
PLOT SUMMARY:
Liyana is a
14-year-old all American teenager from St. Louis. Her life revolves around
school, her friends, and her first kiss. That is until her father announces one
day that they are moving to his homeland Palestine so that they can get to know
his country and the Palestinian family they have never met. Liyana and her
little brother Rafik are torn about this move. So is their mother Susan. They
will have to give up their home, their belongings, their friends, and the only
life they have ever known. Once there,
they begin to discover a love for this place of conflict, they appreciate the
history, the people and the beauty around them. They get to know and love their
Sitti, their father’s mother. And, they begin to learn and speak Arabic. Liyana
even falls for a cute boy named Omer, who happens to be Jewish. Can the two
overcome the longstanding hatred between the Jewish and Palestinian people? Will her traditional and strict father
understand? Peace sometimes begins one person at a time.
CRITICAL ANALYSIS:
Naomi Shihab
Nye has written a moving book that mirrors her own experiences as a 14-year-old
and thus gives this novel an air of authenticity. The poet in Shihab Nye is
also very evident at the beginning of each chapter where she inserts a clever
first line of poetry—a snippet, a not fully formed idea, but the beginning of
one. My favorite one is for the chapter The
Fountain: If you could be anyone, would you choose to be yourself? The
novel itself is very lyrical and beautiful with clear imagery and strong
character development. Each character is a vibrant portrait representing a true
individual from Palestine or Israel.
The novel is
sprinkled with phrases that Liyana is learning in her new country. Alham’dul
Allah means Praise be to God; Shookran
means Thank You; Ana tayyib means
I’m fine; Ana asif means I’m sorry; Sabah-al-khair means Good morning; and the title of the book, Habibi, means darling or a dearly loved
person. There are also frequent instances of food being mentioned such as hummus or her favorite falafel. Along with these, they have
hot, flat bread, marinated olives, dates, and mint tea. The cultural difference
between shopping in America and in Palestine is evident when Liyana and her
mother visit the butcher for a chicken. It is plucked right out of the cage,
held upside down and its head chopped off, put into boiling water and its
feathers removed—all in front of them.
Certainly,
the names of the characters are also an indication of the culture portrayed in
the book. Liyana, Rafik, Susan (their mother), and Kamal (their father) are
Abbouds. When they arrive in Palestine, the meet some friends in a nearby
refugee camp named Khaled and Nadine. The boy she strikes up a friendship with
is named Omer, which is a Jewish name. This surprises her at first because she
thinks his name is Omar, which is an Arabic name. Liyana attends an Armenian
school where some of the last names are Hagobian, Melosian, Yazarian, and
Zakarian. Her school friends tease her and add “ian” to her last name too.
Right before
they move from the states, Liyana has her first kiss. Her father has a talk
with her and warns her that that kind of behavior is simply not acceptable in
their new country. He tells her, “Public kissing—I mean, kissing on the mouth,
like romantic kissing—is not okay here.
It is simply not done.” The only kind of public kissing is the kind exchanged
on both cheeks between friends and family. Before she moves, she is also told
that she cannot take her shorts with her to wear in Palestine. Arab women
simply do not dress that way. Her grandmother and other female relatives look
at her strangely when she wears blue jeans with patches on the knees.
Liyana’s
family is more of a secular family, although they do claim to have some
spiritual beliefs—just not traditionally religious. When they visit Sitti, they
hear the muezzin giving the last call
to prayer over the loudspeaker at the local mosque. “They unrolled their blue
prayer rugs from a shelf, then knelt, stood, and knelt again touching foreheads
to ground, saying their prayers in low voices.” They visit the Wailing Wall
which is a spiritually significant place for Jewish people. The men are wearing
yarmulkes and praying and putting
notes into crevices in the wall. Her friend Omer tells her about the shiva, a
Jewish tradition of mourning the dead in which they remove their shoes, do not
leave the house and cover the mirrors. The Abboud family also visits a great
many spots in Jerusalem that are significant to the Christian faith. They visit
the places where Jesus walked and the area believed to be his birthplace.
Of greatest
significance is how Shihab Nye brings the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict to us
and makes us understand how it truly affects both Jewish and Palestinian
people. A bomb goes off in a Jewish market and the soldiers get a tip that
someone in Khaled and Nadine’s camp is responsible. Khaled gets shot by a
soldier and Liyana’s father, who is a doctor, tries to intervene and help. He gets
arrested and sent to jail. Liyana’s Sitta’s house is invaded and ransacked by
soldiers as they search for a family member. The grandmother is terrified and
can’t understand why they would smash her tub and destroy her home. Some areas
of the city are gated and locked and under close security. All of these various
peoples are together and live amongst one another in this city. It is home to
Muslims, Jews, Christians, Orthodox—all different, but connected by this land
and by history. Can Liyana and Omer’s friendship be a first step in peace
within their families, and ultimately between their cultures? Sitti, in a
poignant moment, says, “ I never lost my peace inside.” But old feelings are
hard to shake. When Liyana invited Omer to visit and eat with Sitti, another family
member named Abu Daoud is incensed and storms off telling Omer, “Remember us
when you join your army.” But despite this, when they have to leave, Sitti
holds Omer’s hands and tells him, “Be careful! Come back! Please come back!”
Sometimes peace starts with one friendship at a time.
AWARDS:
- American Library Association
Notable Books for Children
- Dorothy Canfield Fisher
Children's Book Award
- Georgia Children's Book Award
- Jane Addams Children's Book
Award
- Judy Lopez Memorial Award
(Women's National Book Association, Los Angeles Chapter)
REVIEWS:
School Library Journal: “Grade 5-9. An important
first novel from a distinguished anthologist and poet. When Liyana's doctor
father, a native Palestinian, decides to move his contemporary Arab-American
family back to Jerusalem from St. Louis, 14-year-old Liyana is unenthusiastic.
Arriving in Jerusalem, the girl and her family are gathered in by their
colorful, warmhearted Palestinian relatives and immersed in a culture where
only tourists wear shorts and there is a prohibition against boy/girl
relationships. When Liyana falls in love with Omer, a Jewish boy, she
challenges family, culture, and tradition, but her homesickness fades.
Constantly lurking in the background of the novel is violence between
Palestinian and Jew. It builds from minor bureaucratic annoyances and
humiliations, to the surprisingly shocking destruction of grandmother's bathroom
by Israeli soldiers, to a bomb set off in a Jewish marketplace by Palestinians.
It exacts a reprisal in which Liyana's friend is shot and her father jailed.
Nye introduces readers to unforgettable characters. The setting is both sensory
and tangible: from the grandmother's village to a Bedouin camp. Above all,
there is Jerusalem itself, where ancient tensions seep out of cracks and Liyana
explores the streets practicing her Arabic vocabulary. Though the story begins
at a leisurely pace, readers will be engaged by the characters, the romance,
and the foreshadowed danger. Poetically imaged and leavened with humor, the
story renders layered and complex history understandable through character and
incident. Habibi succeeds in making the hope for peace compellingly personal
and concrete...as long as individual citizens like Liyana's grandmother Sitti
can say, ‘I never lost my peace inside’."
Kirkus Reviews: “Liyana Abboud, 14, and
her family make a tremendous adjustment when they move to Jerusalem from St. Louis.
All she and her younger brother, Rafik, know of their Palestinian father's
culture come from his reminiscences of growing up and the fighting they see on
television. In Jerusalem, she is the only ``outsider'' at an Armenian school;
her easygoing father, Poppy, finds himself having to remind her--often against
his own common sense--of rules for ``appropriate'' behavior; and snug shops
replace supermarket shopping--the malls of her upbringing are unheard of. Worst
of all, Poppy is jailed for getting in the middle of a dispute between Israeli
soldiers and a teenage refugee. In her first novel, Nye (with Paul Janeczko, I
Feel a Little Jumpy Around You, 1996, etc.) shows all of the charms and flaws
of the old city through unique, short-story-like chapters and poetic language.
The sights, sounds, and smells of Jerusalem drift through the pages and readers
glean a sense of current Palestinian-Israeli relations and the region's
troubled history. In the process, some of the passages become quite ponderous
while the human story- -Liyana's emotional adjustments in the later chapters
and her American mother's reactions overall--fall away from the plot. However,
Liyana's romance with an Israeli boy develops warmly, and readers are left with
hope for change and peace as Liyana makes the city her very own. (Fiction.
12+)”
CONNECTIONS:
Information
on the author: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/174
Israeli-Palestinian
Conflict for Kids: http://geography.mrdonn.org/palestine.html
Information
about the Conflict: http://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/content/israeli-palestinian-conflict-101
Children of
Peace: http://www.childrenofpeace.org.uk/
