Home Is Not a Country Read online

  MAKE ME A WORLD is an imprint dedicated to exploring the vast possibilities of contemporary childhood. We strive to imagine a universe in which no young person is invisible, in which no kid’s story is erased, in which no glass ceiling presses down on the dreams of a child. Then we publish books for that world, where kids ask hard questions and we struggle with them together, where dreams stretch from eons ago into the future and we do our best to provide road maps to where these young folks want to be. We make books where the children of today can see themselves and each other. When presented with fences, with borders, with limits, with all the kinds of chains that hobble imaginations and hearts, we proudly say—no.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2021 by Safia Elhillo

  Cover art copyright © 2021 by Shaylin Wallace, based on a photograph by Yael Marantz

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Make Me a World, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 9780593177051 (trade) — ISBN 9780593177068 (lib. bdg.) — ebook ISBN 9780593177075

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  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue: New Country

  i: The Photograph

  ii: Baba

  iii: Mama

  iv: Haitham

  v: School

  vi: America

  vii: Yasmeen

  viii: Nostalgia Monster

  ix: My Name

  Part 1: The Other Side

  1: The Airport

  2: Mama

  3: Haitham

  4: Pyramids

  5: Haitham

  6: Haitham

  7: An Illness

  8: Haitham

  9: Khaltu Hala

  10: Mama

  11: Overheard

  12: Mama

  13: The Photographs

  14: Mama

  15: Overheard

  16: Another Life

  17: Baba

  18: Haitham

  19: Boys

  20: The Mirror

  21: Videos

  22: English

  23: English

  24: Halloween

  25: Mama

  26: Yasmeen

  27: Yasmeen

  28: Haitham

  29: Bathwater

  30: Haitham

  31: Advice

  32: Calling Haitham

  33: Jinn

  34: Boys

  35: Arabic Class

  36: The Headscarf

  37: The Office

  38: Outside the Office

  39: Why Here

  40: Ghosts

  41: The Silence

  42: Alone

  43: Mama

  44: Yasmeen

  45: Haitham

  46: The Bus

  Part 2: Old Country

  47: Haitham

  48: Hala

  49: Touched

  50: Running

  51: Street Fair

  52: Houses

  53: Trespassing

  54: The Water

  55: Caught

  56: The Diner

  57: The Stranger

  58: The Stranger

  59: The Driveway

  60: The Airport

  61: Broken Arabic

  62: No Daughter

  63: The Elevator

  64: The Photograph

  65: Home

  66: Home

  67: Haitham

  68: Ashraf

  69: Visitors

  70: Haitham

  71: The Lesson

  72: The Lovers

  73: Yasmeen

  74: The House

  75: Morning

  76: The Photographs

  77: Yasmeen

  78: Room

  79: Hala

  80: Hala

  81: Baba

  82: Baba

  83: The Coward

  84: Mama

  85: The Game

  86: Quiet

  87: A Country

  88: Yasmeen

  89: Half Possible

  90: A Single Possibility

  91: Yasmeen

  92: Yesterday & Tomorrow

  93: Dusk

  94: The Lesson

  95: An Alternate Possibility

  96: A Life

  97: Yasmeen

  98: Yasmeen

  99: Spirits

  100: Alone

  101: Alone

  102: Yasmeen

  103: The Plan

  104: The Cafe

  105: Yasmeen

  106: Leaving

  107: Breaking

  108: The Officers

  109: Leaving

  110: Gone

  111: Left Behind

  112: The Baby

  Part 3: Home Is Not a Country

  113: The Portal

  114: The Portal

  115: Home

  116: The Photographs

  117: The Kitchen

  118: Haitham

  119: Haitham

  120: Haitham

  121: Home Is Not a Country

  122: The Singer

  123: Nima

  124: Yasmeen

  125: Jazz

  126: Yellow

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  To my commu
nities. To Awrad & Basma. You are my country.

  Dear Reader,

  The truth is, this is just one life of many you could have led.

  At some point you made the choice to pick up this book, but you could have chosen something else to do. Before that there were other decisions—you chose to walk down one street or another, to take the bus, to talk to that stranger. Even earlier there were decisions made before you were born, decisions that have profoundly affected who you are right now, what language you speak, where you live, even how you dream.

  It seems to me that this knowledge—that you could have just as easily been any one of a hundred other people—is at the heart of empathy. It’s the realization that every person you meet, or see on the news, or hear about could have been you, if you had made slightly different choices, or if your grandparents had made different choices, going way back, into a great tree of different choices that looks like an entire world of people who aren’t you, but might have been.

  Some people have the gift of understanding that they could have been other people; Nima is one of them. She understands that her own life is just one branch of a tree, and the seeds that became her could have just as easily become someone else. She rides her nostalgia and the strange here-and-there-ness that is every immigrant’s story to full visions of who she should have been if…And maybe we fantasize that we would be happier as that other person, or that we could run faster, or be more loved.

  So many stories are about just this thing, the fantasy of what it would mean to be someone else. All the lions and wardrobes, all the kids with secret powers, even the cats in hats. But what they fail to realize is that just as much as there are the many people we could have been, these people live in the corners of imagination and, perhaps, they are wishing that they could be us.

  Welcome, then, to Safia Elhillo’s Home Is Not a Country, a tree of identities, of who we are and who we could be, and the dangerous and beautiful place in between.

  Christopher Myers

  The Photograph

  in a lifetime before mine my parents

  not yet my parents only a slim girl

  the color of cinnamon skirt swirled liquid

  about her knees as she dances eyes cast

  downward smiling shyly at a boy

  who mirrors her movement to the song the little

  gap in his front teeth cigarette tucked

  behind an ear & shirt unbuttoned down his chest

  sepia hand longing for her waist frozen

  immortal in the photograph wondering

  if they will ever touch

  Baba

  the photographs of my father are everywhere

  alone in a suit framed in the living room

  seated with his afro full taped to the mirror of my mother’s dresser

  in the one on the coffee table he stares awestruck at his bride

  a passport picture in mama’s wallet a single furrow in his brow

  i like the ones of him younger rounded & serious as a child

  dusty-kneed as a teenager crowded with other boys around a ball

  before the car crash that took him from knowing me

  before the father-sized ache before my mother all alone

  still crowding herself to one side of the bed saving his place

  soft browns of the sepia photos

  making him impossibly far away

  Mama

  in this photo my mother is alone

  as i will come to know her

  it is her wedding day back home

  a lifetime right before mine before

  the new country & the widowing

  & the worry lines stamped into her brow

  her eyelashes painted dark beneath

  a headdress of silver coins

  strung across her forehead

  & her hands floating up to fix

  the arch of her headscarf

  soil-colored blooms of henna

  twisting from both elbows to

  each finger

  a different country a different

  life the henna since faded

  & the story hushed to memory

  to old bits of song from oceans away

  we are no longer back home

  the headdress has been sold & my mother

  is alone is at work is rushed

  in her headscarf & blue jeans

  & it hasn’t been her wedding day in years

  her name aisha means she who lives

  but mostly she goes to work & comes home tired

  & watches television & sometimes

  in the television’s blue glow

  her eyes make tears that do not fall

  i keep this photograph in a tin box

  that once held butter biscuits

  long ago eaten by guests unimpressed

  with our spare american living

  Haitham

  we’ve always known each other

  our mothers friends from back home

  bound into some ancient sisterhood

  of grief his mother the only one

  who can make my mother laugh

  but when i really meet him when

  we enter a siblinghood of our own

  i am wearing the first new coat i have ever

  owned & we are both entering the age that

  makes our elbows feel larger than the rest

  of our bodies

  the wal-mart lights are cold & harsh

  blunt squeak of his shoes against

  the polished floors nothing left of

  my mother’s date-palm trees his

  mother’s riverbank only suburban

  america no matter how far

  we strain our eyes our mothers

  share a shopping cart & speak shy

  quiet english testing new words

  like coupon & value-pack his

  polo shirt hangs loose about him

  years before the shoulders

  to come & all they’ll have to carry

  later at the bus stop our mothers

  fish for change at the bottoms

  of their worn handbags he lifts

  the hem of his shirt just a little

  to show me a pack of stolen starburst

  tucked into the waist of his jeans

  are you going to tell? he whispers

  & i shake my head thrumming

  with excitement & fear a grin

  stretches across his face good

  he begins unwrapping the candy

  because half of these are yours

  School

  i’ve never felt like i was good at anything

  haitham for all his atrocious grades

  is at least good at people while i am a solid

  b minus in every class & barely scraping

  a passing grade in any social interaction

  muttering & burdened by the shadow of an accent

  that i cannot manage to make charming

  at school haitham & i separate for the day

  he’s repeating ninth grade & we now have

  different lunch periods where i sit with

  an assortment of others all citizens of

  the social margins & though assembled

  we do not talk we poke glumly at our wilted lunches

  i long ago begged mama to stop packing

  leftovers for me to take to school the smell alone

  one morning filled the entire bus despite

  my seat in the back where i waited

  for everyone to pile out
through the folding doors

  before slumping outside myself throwing away

  the offending plastic container of okra & lamb & rice

  before anyone could know it was mine

  now instead i make my own dejected sandwiches

  damp in their paper towels two pieces of untoasted

  white bread & between them a single slice

  of plasticky american cheese

  America

  i go to halfhearted arabic classes each sunday