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.
Make Me a World and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
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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
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