HABIBI

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/