Balcony on the Moon Page 16
* * *
Summer is almost gone, and the day of the results is finally here. I walk to my school, sometimes rushing and sometimes going slowly. When I arrive, the first thing I learn is that one of my classmates who sat for the exams has died of tuberculosis.
Her twin sister, who also sat for the Tawjihi exam, and several other girls are standing in a circle crying. I recall that the classmate who died looked pale all the time. I am aware that we Palestinians living under occupation have meager public health services. Many people are diagnosed with diseases only after they die. But now I am also aware of how little I know about the lives of many of my schoolmates and the stories they have in their hearts, even though we have seen one another almost every day for years. Under our school uniforms, which make us look similar, are greatly dissimilar worlds. We do not ask or tell each other much about our private lives and how lonely and overwhelmed many of us feel. To pretend that all is well helps us to manage our pain and avoid feeling powerless and ashamed of the mountains of problems we live with but cannot solve.
Then I learn that my score is among the top ten percent in the region and that this grants me a scholarship for the first semester at Birzeit University, to study science.
I sit on the steps of my school, looking around to say goodbye to everything: the uniform I wore daily, the strict rules and structures, the principal, the teachers and their different personalities, and all the studying for grades and all the anxiety about tests. I also say goodbye to the bells ringing many times a day between classes. Could schools not have one minute of beautiful music separating classes instead of the annoying school bells? For certain, I am happy not to hear school bells again.
I look at the three palm trees under which Dr. Salah stood to give me the gift. Sitt Fatima’s parked car is near them. I will come back again in the future to visit her and the palm trees.
On the way home, the streets are filled with a special Tawjihi song by Abdel Halim Hafez: “Wehyat Albee wa Afrahuh.” He says there is no happiness that surpasses one’s success. I celebrate by buying mascara and a bag of colorful balloons. As I tie some of the balloons to stop signs hoping that people will understand that as Stop and celebrate, I think of how sad this day must be for anyone who fails the exams but must hear this song everywhere for days.
When I arrive home, I find that Mother has taken out all her books and notebooks from the Tawjihi year, opened one book, and is reading. “I am not going to waste even one minute,” she says, tears streaming down her face. I do not ask her what happened. She then explains that she has passed all of her topics, but many of them with the minimum passing grades, which has given her a low grade-point average.
“But, Mother, do you remember our agreement when I was in the eighth grade? You wanted to finish the twelfth grade. And now you have. Why not celebrate?”
Slapping her books with her hand as she speaks, Mother announces that she does not want to only finish twelfth grade, she wants to pass Tawjihi exams with a high grade-point average that qualifies her for a scholarship. She dreams of entering college, too, graduating and becoming a high school teacher.
Because West Bank college scholarships for literary students are granted mainly to those with the highest grade-point averages, leaving the majority of students to compete for them, Father assures Mother that he will do everything in his power to support her during the next year and until she becomes the teacher she dreams of becoming.
* * *
My parents now seem on good terms. Mother feels that she can have her dreams and her marriage, too. Father’s fears about Mother’s schooling have turned into pride in her strong spirit and persistence. My parents decide to move to a new house in al-Bireh, Ramallah’s twin city. We will live in al-Sharafa district, on the edge of Jerusalem Street, and we’ll have four bedrooms, a large living room with a telephone, a backyard and a front yard where my younger siblings can play freely, and a shed where father can have a goat. He has missed having one. It has been years since I heard him singing happily to his goat. I am eager for that to happen.
Father also stops driving permanently when Muhammad decides to get a job as a truck driver. Father will work cutting stones and building houses only. But knowing how fond Father is of trucks, Muhammad promises every now and then to let Father drive his truck.
* * *
Grandmother Fatima comes from Jerusalem to visit our new house. Her basket is filled with pomegranates because Mother loves them. When I embrace Grandma to welcome her I suddenly notice that I have grown taller than she is, and I tell her that.
“Maybe because of all the books that you are standing on,” she jokes, and glances at my feet.
Grandma is wearing a newly embroidered traditional dress. The charcoal-black fabric is hand-stitched with red, green, orange, and pink threads creating the shapes of flowers, birds, and stars. She is also wearing her full traditional headdress. The scarf is jasmine-flower white, and under it she has her saffah, the cap adorned with pierced silver coins that are sewn on to create a crown. A wealthier Palestinian woman would have gold coins crowning her saffah. Grandma’s round face glows like a harvest moon as she moves from room to room in our new house.
When done, she sits and I bring her a cup of tea. She begins to share news of other family members. But all Mother wants to talk about is how hard she has worked to get to this moment. Grandma nods her head over and over to let Mother know that she hears what Mother says.
Remembering that Grandma cannot read even a word, and therefore cannot relate to Mother’s experience, I ask if she is willing to learn something so simple and yet so important that it changes a person’s life forever.
“Yes,” Grandma replies.
So I put a pencil in her hand, hold it against a piece of paper, and trace an image slowly. Mother watches across the table as though a magic show is happening.
Grandma has no idea what I am doing but lets me move her hand. For a moment, she tries to pull away but then decides to go with me. When we are done Grandma does not know what the shape on the paper is.
“F, the first letter of your name, Grandma Fatima,” I say, “and you wrote it. The Tawjihi journey and then going to college begin with writing one letter and one word. I started when I was three and a half years old when I learned to write alef, the first letter of my name.”
Grandma gazes at her pencil, smiles like a child, then looks at me and asks me to teach her another.
TO LEARN MORE
You are invited to explore the following resources, which shed more light on the issues related to Palestine and the Palestinians:
United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East websites: www.unrwa.org and http://archive.unrwa.org
These UN-run websites are rich with the history of the UNRWA, from its inception to the present time. They include statistics, images, videos, hopeful initiatives in refugee camps, a newsroom, and up-to-date information about the five million Palestinian refugees registered with the United Nations.
Institute for Middle East Understanding (www.imeu.org)
The IMEU is a US-based organization that provides readers with journalistic reports, historical facts, current news analysis, and a multitude of digital resources about Palestine and Palestinians.
East Jerusalem, / West Jerusalem (A film produced by Gidi Avivi, 2014).
This is a documentary film starring Israeli, Palestinian, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim musicians, including singer-songwriter David Broza and singer Mira Awad, who all embark on a quest to set aside the harsh political reality, transcend for a short time the separation between Israelis and Palestinians, and record an album.
Being Palestinian: Personal Reflections on Palestinian Identity in the Diaspora, edited by Yasir Suleiman (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016).
Being Palestinian is an anthology of short essays that brings together one hundred two Palestinians living outside the Arab world, mainly in the United States and Europe. Each a
uthor reflects on the experience of the Palestinian identity in the diaspora.
Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid by Jimmy Carter (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006) and We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land: A Plan That Will Work by Jimmy Carter (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010).
These books provide a unique perspective of a former US president regarding Palestine and Israel and the search for peace. Relevant to the Balcony on the Moon timeline, Carter was the US president from 1977 to 1981. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
The People Around You!
An optimal way a person learns about the world is by forming friendships across cultures. In your community or in your school, it is likely that there are Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, Christians, Jews, and many Middle Eastern people who can share their perspectives about what you read and enrich your journey, as well as let you enrich theirs.
Author’s Website
(www.ibtisambarakat.com)
Visit the author’s website for questions and answers about Balcony on the Moon, and to hear the author read a section from the book. You will find a lesson plan that includes learning to speak some Arabic expressions, as well as additional creative resources.
Shukran / Thank You:
Majed A. Wahhab
Rima Tarazi
Elise Crohn
Ann Mehr
Tracy L. Barnett
Kris Meilahn
Jane Franck
Joan McElroy
Munther Salah
Nabil Alawi
Suzanne Fisher Staples
Naomi Shihab Nye
John Schmeiding
Melanie Kroupa
Barbara Grzeslo
Victor Navasky
Neil Barsky
Steve Weinberg
Margaret Ferguson
Susan Dobinick and everyone at FSG/Macmillan who helped to create this book, readers of Tasting the Sky who encouraged me to write more about being Palestinian, reader Madeleine Fenn, who tattooed a line from Tasting the Sky on her arm and sent me a photograph so that I could see the impact of the book on her, and my friend, the moon.
Also by Ibtisam Barakat
TASTING THE SKY:
A Palestinian Childhood
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A bilingual speaker of Arabic and English, Ibtisam Barakat grew up in Ramallah, West Bank, and now lives in the United States. Her work focuses on healing social injustices and the hurts of wars, especially those involving young people. Ibtisam emphasizes that conflicts are more likely to be resolved with creativity, kindness, and inclusion rather than with force, violence, and exclusion. Her educational programs include Growing Up Palestinian; Healing the Hurts of War; The ABCs of Understanding Islam; Arab Culture, The Mideast Conflict; and Building Peace. The ABCs was selected by the Missouri Humanities Council as one of its Speaker Bureau programs in 2003 and 2004.Ibtisam has taught language ethics courses — Language Uses and Abuses — at Stephens College (2002). She is also the founder of Write Your Life (WYL) seminars and has led WYL seminars in places including Morocco, Washington, D.C., Missouri, and Ramallah. In 2001, Ibtisam was a delegate to the third United Nations conference on the elimination of racism, which was held in Durban, South Africa. In 2004, she was a visiting writer at the Creativity for Peace camp, which brought Israeli and Palestinian teenage girls to Santa Fe to provide an opportunity for them to live together in cooperation and peace. In January 2005, she was a moderator at the fourth international Faculty for Israeli-Palestinian Peace conference in Jerusalem, where Israeli, Palestinian, and international faculty members and students work toward f. You can sign up for email updates here.
Thank you for buying this
Farrar, Straus and Giroux ebook.
To receive special offers, bonus content,
and info on new releases and other great reads,
sign up for our newsletters.
Or visit us online at
us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup
For email updates on the author, click here.
CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Author’s Note
Epigraph
Map
Part I: Radio Street
Stone House
Baba Noel
Fingerprints
Despair
Part II: Beitunia
Belonging
Ramadan
Death
Red
Part III: Spring of the Lantern
Demonstration
Daring
Chocolate
Contest
Agreement
Separation
Part IV: Main Street
People
Dreams
Relative
Poetry
Part V: Jerusalem Street
Time
Result
To Learn More
Shukran / Thank You
Also by Ibtisam Barakat
About the Author
Copyright
Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers
An imprint of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue, New York 10010
Text copyright © 2016 by Ibtisam Barakat
All rights reserved
Map designed by Cathy Bobak
Compass rose designed by Freepik
First hardcover edition, 2016
eBook edition, October 2016
fiercereads.com
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Names: Barakat, Ibtisam, author.
Title: Balcony on the moon : coming of age in Palestine / Ibtisam Barakat.
Description: First edition. | New York : Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers, 2016. | “Margaret Ferguson Books”—Title page.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015039502 (print) | LCCN 2016006614 (ebook) | ISBN 9780374302511 (hardback) | ISBN 9780374302535 (Ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Barakat, Ibtisam—Childhood and youth. | Children, Palestinian Arab—Biography—Juvenile literature. | Youth, Palestinian Arab—Biography—Juvenile literature. | Girls—Education—Arab countries—Juvenile literature. | Arab-Israeli conflict—Juvenile literature. | BISAC : JUVENILE NONFICTION / Biography & Autobiography / Political. | JUVENILE NONFICTION / Biography & Autobiography / Cultural Heritage. | JUVENILE NONFICTION / Family / Multigenerational.
Classification: LCC DS119.7 .B28445 2016 (print) | LCC DS119.7 (ebook) | DDC 956.95/2044092—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015039502
Our eBooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at (800) 221-7945 ext. 5442 or by e-mail at MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.
eISBN 9780374302535
An earlier version of the chapter “Stone House” was published as “Radio Street” by The Massachusetts Review in 2014. Some names have been changed in the story to honor the preferences of individuals.