Habibi by Naomi Shihab Nye

Habibi

by Naomi Shihab Nye

Image Credit: Habibi at kirkusreview.com

1. Bibliography

Nye, Naomi Shihab. Habibi. New York: Simon Pulse, 1997. ISBN 0689825234

2. Plot Summary

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 focuses on the Abbouds' handling of conflicting cultural norms between American and Arab values as they settle into their new home. Then Liyana tests her family's alleged unprejudiced beliefs when she befriends Omer, a Jewish boy. She wants to introduce him to her but finds she must first remind him of his own words. (Summary Credit: A Boy and a Jaguar at publishersweekly.com)

3. Critical Analysis

The main character of Habibi is Liyana Abboud, a 14-year-old American girl whose family moves from St. Louis to Israel.  Liyana is a typical American teenager who has to learn how to live in a new culture foreign to her own.  Other characters in the story are mostly her family, immediate and extended; her father Dr. Kamal Abboud (Poppy), her mother (Susan the Arabs call soo-sun) and her younger brother.  Her father was raised in Israel and has fond memories of the “way it used to be”.  Her younger brother is young enough that he is more adaptable to his new environment.  The primary extended family character is Sitti (grandmother in Arabic).  She doesn’t speak any English but Liyana is able to connect through cooking and other chores her Sitti teaches her.  The rest are mostly referred to in a huge crowd that Liyana describes as “burst into the room, bustling, hugging, pinching cheeks, and jabbering loudly” or “trilling wildly”. The setting is mostly Jerusalem and the nearby Palestine village.  Locations mentioned help paint the picture of the setting. Towns mentioned include Ramallah, Mecca, Jericho, and Hebron. Sites that the family visit in Jerusalem include the Doors of Jerusalem, Church of Holy Sepulcher, Chapel of Calvary, Garden of Gethsemane, Via Dolorosa, Wailing Wall, Dome of the Rock, Damascus Gate, Herod’s Gate, Jaffa Gate, New Gate, Lion’s Gate (St. Stephen’s Gate), the Dung Gate, Kfar Kana Church, and Hisham’s Palace.  Other locations in the story are Liyana’s Armenian school of St. Tarkmanchatz, Dead Sea, Al-Makassad Hospital and the Jorden River.

There are many other cultural references and of many cultures; Palestine, Jewish, and Bedouin. A lot of the Palestine references come from Poppy and Sitti.  Poppy tells his children that they should know both sides of their history, he recounts stories of coming to America and thinking hot dogs were made of dog meat and that shiny trash cans were mailboxes. He tells Liyana that Arab women don’t wear shorts and she should comb her hair in private.  And, to explain why she needs to be a proper young lady he tells the story of a guy found kisses a girl who was beaten up by the girl’s brothers.  He speaks of “old anger” in Jerusalem and he is glad that Palestinians had a “public voice” again. He recounts a tale of being lowered into the village well as a child and finding secret shelves and shallow corridors dug into its sides above water level; on the shelf are ancient clay jars probably from before biblical times. Poppy tells the kids that Sitti’s stories have no logical sense of cause and effect and that in this part of the world the past and present are often rolled into one. Sitti wears old-fashioned long dresses and a smoky scarf. She tells Liyana that if a bird pooped on clean white sheets it is bad luck but if a bird pooped on your head then your first baby would be a boy. She says that her cold feet meant she would live longer. Sitti asked that when she died for Poppy to give money to the poor, the gravedigger and the women who washed her body and to leave space so she could sit up in the grave and talk to angels.

One of the first cultural references Liyana runs into is a woman on the planes traveling with Jell-O boxes, paper napkins, and coffee filters and Liyana questions whether you could get these things in Jerusalem. Liyana notices and experiences many new things in her new home: women soldiers, back of a women’s hands tattooed with the dark blue shapes of flying birds, people kissing on both cheeks, gold bangle bracelets, a shoemaker, a butcher with live chickens in cages, clotheslines on flat roofs, signs in Arabic, Hebrew and English, diesel exhaust, military checkpoints, orchards, minarets, olive trees, long cloaks, sitting on the floor, women carrying water from the spring on their head, arranged marriage, chicken pens, yarmulkes, oriental rugs, henna, gravestones with no words, olive oil soap, reading fortunes in the tea leaves, an antique scale, paper cone to pour things in a paper bag, sitting straight up in the salt of the Dead Sea, Israeli military tanks, cedar trees, a funeral procession (with an open coffin), donkeys, shepherd in dusty brown cloak, and a refugee camp. The Bedouins live in tents and own a camel.  And, one of the shops has the Hindu elephant Ganesha.

Liyana learns a lot of Arabic and these words are used throughout the story.  Some of the Arabic words include: booza (ice cream), kaffiyehs (male headwear), muezzin (person who gives the call to prayer), taboon (mounded oven where you slap bread dough), marhaba (hello), Ana Liyana (I am Liyana), Yimkin (maybe), nos-nos (half-half), Alham’dul-Allah (Praise be to God), wahad, min-fadlack (one, please), shookran, fidda (silver), urjawaani (purple), and souk (marketplace).  Character names are also Arabic and include: Liyana, Rafik, Kamal, Sitti, Tayeb the Elder, Fayed, Fowzi, Muna, Saba (means morning), Abu Mahmoud, Amal, Muhammad, Hamza, Zaki, Abu Janan (means father of Janan), Imm Janan, Ismael, Khaled, Kevork, Babgen Bannayan, Mr. Bedrosian  and the Hebrew name Omer. Foods eaten are from this region of the world.  Some of the food items mentioned include: round flatbread, maramia (tea), baked lamb, soupy yogurt drink, lentils, olives, baba ghanouj, hummus, baklava, roasted peanuts, pomegranate, almonds, sumac, hot tea with mint, pumpkin seeds, falafel, chickpeas, the spice saffron, dates, pistachio, katayef (pancake stuffed with cinnamon and nut, soaked in syrup), olive oil, and apricot. The extended family celebrates the Abboud’s arrival in Jerusalem with the killing of a lamb in their honor, red lanterns and shooting guns in the air. And, there is some mentioned of Muslim religious practices.  They mention the mosque, small blue prayer rugs, the call to prayer and a pilgrimage to Mecca.

4. Review Experts

~ ALA Best Book for Young Adults

~ALA Notable Children’s Book

~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.”

~Publishers Weekly: “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.”

5. Connections

Gather for classroom reading, other books by Naomi Shihab Nye, these could include:

            19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East. ISBN 9780060504045

            The Turtle of Oman. ISBN 0062019783

            Going, Going. ISBN 0688161855

Read other books with similar themes, these might include:

Abdel-Fattah, Randa. Does My Head Look Big in This? ISBN 0439919479

Budhos, Marina. Ask Me No Questions. ISBN 1416949208

Dau, John Bul. Lost Boy, Lost Girl: Escaping Civil War in Sudan. ISBN 9781426307089

Robert, Na’ima B. Far From Home. ISBN 9781847800060

Ho, Minfong. The Stone Goddess. ISBN 0439381975

Use with a unit discussing different religions

Use in a unit about the Middle East