The Turtle of Oman (2 page)

Lemon

A
ref and his mother waved and waved until they couldn't see Aref's father anymore.

Aref's mother sighed. “There he goes! Now it's time for you to get packing! Your big green suitcase needs attention!” She reached for Aref's hand. “You could get lost in here. You could be in India before you know it.”

They didn't always hold hands like this anymore. But today Aref squeezed her hand tightly. They walked past a newspaper and gift shop featuring a table of small brown camels. Aref stopped to press the belly of a camel and it made a bleating sound. He pressed it again. A man from India or Kathmandu in an orange robe smiled at him.

“Mom,” said Aref, “I wish we were going to India for a vacation instead of Michigan, then just coming home.” Many of Aref's good friends at school were from India. He knew about the massive elephants and tigers in the parks and the monkeys that sneaked in through open windows and lifted the lids of pots to see what was cooking. Once his friend Jaz found a monkey on his auntie's kitchen counter scooping up rice with its paw. Aref wished a monkey would sneak in through his window and do his homework. He would make friends with it. He would name it Brother.

Boom! He bumped into a giant red suitcase being hauled by a sparkly diamond lady in super-tall shoes. “
Mint-essif!
” he said. “Sorry!” She frowned and kept on walking.

His mom led him through the door toward the parking lot, chanting, “See you again next week, airport!”

Aref shivered. He didn't want to come back here. He did not want to move to Michigan.

They stood in the blazing parking lot for a moment, staring toward the runways behind the airport. They could see airplanes marked Air India Express, Turkish Airways, and the giant shiny Lufthansa, which was his dad's airplane. They would have stayed to watch him take off, but his plane wasn't leaving for an hour and a half yet, and the parking lot was more than one hundred degrees with no shade.

In the car on the way home, his mom asked, “Where did you get that rock you gave Dad?”

Aref didn't want to say,
I dug it up in the far corner of our yard, past the chairs and table, from between the roots of the fig tree.
He knew his mom didn't like it when he dug too close to roots. How had he known the rock was buried there? Sometimes he just obeyed his shovel and it told him where to dig. It was like a secret magnet to the treasures in the earth.

“I don't know,” said Aref quietly. “But it was a good one.” He stared out the window. Gazing left up the boulevard crowded with cars and buses, Aref could see the Hajar Mountains, which meant “Stone Mountains,” standing behind the low white buildings of the city. Everyone loved those brown mountains that loomed like a comforting wall. He slumped against the backseat and felt like crying.

To the right, palm trees bowed over the road. They swayed and shifted their drying palm skirts. The giant turquoise Arabian Sea had been there every day of his life. He had always known it. Oman was his only, number one, super-duper, authentic, absolutely personal place.

Aref knew how people moved, crossing a street, how they wrapped their scarves, how the call to prayer echoed across the city and made everyone feel peaceful and proud inside. He liked the way large white boulders were stacked beside the water. He even loved the clicking sounds of shoes and animal hooves on the old cobbled streets in the marketplace, called the
souk
. The buzzing and hammering from smoky shops and garages. He loved when shopkeepers who knew his family called to him, “
Marhaba
, Aref!
Tylee shouf
! Come see what we have today!”

 

At the Souk

1. You can stack fresh apricots like a mountain.

2. Some stores sell kitchen matches in big boxes with smiling cat pictures on them.

3. You can buy tiny red metal double-decker bus toys from England with doors that really open and spinny wheels.

 

His father liked a grizzled man named Abu Aziz at an ancient corner shop. He sold clay and brass incense burners for chunks of frankincense and walking sticks with silver knob handles. His stall smelled delicious. An old donkey with sleepy eyes stood tied up outside. Once Abu Aziz had handed Aref a carrot to feed the donkey, who took it sleepily between his teeth and crunched, and ever since then, the donkey had remembered him.

But would it remember him if he were gone for three years?

In Oman, hotels by the sea glittered at night. Aref had watched some of those hotels being built. So he felt like he owned them. When he was younger, he and his grandfather, Sidi, had walked inside the gleaming lobbies and watched people pushing elevator buttons. He had tugged at his grandfather to ride the elevators with him, and sometimes they rode to different floors and walked up and down the halls as if they were staying there. Once they joined a wedding party in a ballroom when the doorman thought they knew the people inside!

In Oman, Aref knew the bulldozers and the birds.

 

Three Birds We See a Lot at the Beach

1. Storm petrels = smallest seabirds. They look a little like bats when they fly. They pick crustaceans and tiny fish out of the waves while hovering.

2. Cormorants = seabirds that eat fish

3. Frigate birds = they cannot walk or swim. Sometimes they fly for a whole WEEK without landing. The males have inflatable throat pouches and their wings make a big W when they fly.

 

He loved the brightly colored school supply shop for paper and pencils and pens and folders. He knew the exact bin his purple pencil sharpener had come from. He liked Sami at the tennis shoe store who gave him extra shoelaces and Miriam at the dentist's office who always offered him a new toothbrush. He knew the smooth white sidewalk at the Muttrah corniche that his parents said he had taken his first steps on.

Aref leaned forward so he could see his favorite blue billboard shaped like a boat coming up.
Yallah!
it said in Arabic. Quickly! It was for a restaurant called
MARHABA
that served crispy fish in blue plastic baskets. The fish was so tasty Aref always ate it with his fingers, not a fork. And his mom always said, “Don't gobble.” Aref had been keeping his eye on that same sign for years now. It meant they were almost home. How would it survive without him? And how could he say good-bye to a restaurant named “Hello”?

Aref's mother turned the steering wheel, circling a speedy roundabout brimming with pink flowers and tall iron lampposts. Cars whizzed past them. They turned at the shining silver water tower with sunlight gleaming on its head. Aref thought Muscat was surely the greatest place in the world.

“Is there any chance”—Aref leaned forward again, speaking in a weird, high voice like a cartoon—“Dad won't like it in America and he will fly home instead? And we won't have to move?”

His mom laughed. “No chance! We've been planning this adventure for years,
habibti
—you know that. You'll be excited too when you see your wonderful school in Michigan and meet your new friends and teachers. After only one day of strangeness, it will feel like home to you. I promise. Think of Dad flying all that way by himself just to get our apartment ready for us—you and I still have so much to do here! We have a whole week of good-byes ahead of us. I have one lecture to give at school and we must sort, pack and get everything cleaned up before we leave. Let's be in a good mood, yes?”

No. It sounded horrible.

His parents would be attending a university in Michigan. They would be called “Doctors” when they came home.

 

Different Doctors

1. They are not doctors for sick people.

2. They will still be professors at the university in Muscat when they come back, just smarter ones called Doctors.

3. Aren't they smart enough? Why do they need to be smarter?

 

It made no sense to him. The inside of his head felt like a lemon, squeezed and sour. Someone honked—an orange taxi veered in front of their car. His mother pressed hard on the brake. “What bad driving!” she said.

“But why, Mom? Why do we have to move somewhere? We won't know where anything is. They might not let me play soccer there.”

“Aref, we talked about this one hundred times.”

“I still don't understand. I won't have any friends.”

“Your new friends are waiting for you. They may not know this yet, but they are.”

The lemon squeezed and puckered.

“
Anyone
should be excited to travel to another country and have great adventures,” Aref's mom said.

“How do you know?”

“Don't forget,” she continued, “you do get to come home in three short years. Sometimes when people leave their countries, they are not returning. That would be so much harder, yes? Think of the refugees we know—their homes or villages were wrecked or ruined, sometimes they have to escape their countries without any suitcases at all. With nothing. They have to be very brave, knowing they might never go back. They are much more brave than we have to be.”

Aref was sure this was true. His friend Jad was a refugee from the Sudan. His friend Assef was a refugee from Iraq. Many students at the university were refugees. Refugees had to be the bravest people in the world. But he wasn't one, and he didn't know as much as they knew.

Good-bye, Turquoise and Limestone

A
ref and his mom drove up the driveway. Their two-story house in a modern new neighborhood was as yellow as butter. They were the first people who had ever lived in it. All of the white and yellow and brownish houses on their street sat peacefully in the afternoon sunlight. No one else was moving away.

“But, Mom,” said Aref, “see, I really like this driveway.”

She laughed, as if that meant nothing at all.

The driveway was long, smooth and slanted, so the car tilted up to their house, which sat on a sandy hill. Tufts of green and golden grasses grew up in neat, tall bunches along the sides of the house. They looked like ponytails on his friend Sulima's head. Red granite paving stones led from the driveway to the front step. Aref jumped from one stone to another. “
Yallah
, Mom, remember when I couldn't even do this?”

What if he forgot everything he had already learned, by leaving? Three years of being gone were not short. Not short at all. Anything could happen.

Aref raced ahead to their heavy yellow metal front door and slapped it. He knew the strong click the handle made when his mother turned the key. The inside of their house was a deep breath welcoming them back—so quiet, so cool. He knew the long golden sofas, the blue rugs with swirling red edges, the coffee table, the bookshelves. A string of golden bells hung from one wall. He had rattled them all his life. He knew the small orange tree in the corner of the dining room that was laden with bitter tiny oranges you weren't really supposed to eat. Sometimes he broke one in half and placed it open-faced on the patio so birds could nibble it.

Mish-Mish, which meant “apricot,” ran up to them meowing loudly the moment they entered the house. Aref knew what his large orange cat wanted. He left his shoes at the front door, went to the kitchen and found the shiny silver sack she loved best. He placed three star-shaped cat treats on top of the food in her bowl and watched her crunch them with her teeth. He leaned over and rumpled her fur and stroked the place that looked like a striped sunset on her chest. He said, “Oh, Mish, I can't stand it.” She waved her fluffy tail. What would she think when they just disappeared?

Aref ran upstairs to his bedroom.

“I will miss my school too much!” he shouted to no one, staring at the blue and red soccer ribbons dangling from his bulletin board. He loved his school. It was the only school he had ever known.

Now he would have to go to a new school in Michigan called Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary. His parents said the school had a space camp. It had International Night, where all the students from different countries shared food and songs. On the website you could see its hallways marked with street signs—Courtesy Avenue, Kindness Boulevard.

A few months ago, his mom had ordered Aref a biography of Martin Luther King, Jr. They read some of the book out loud together, discussing it.

 

An American Hero

1. Martin Luther King Jr. jumped out a second-story window when his grandmother died.

2. He was very smart and popular in school. At first he didn't study too hard, but later became a better student.

3. Martin Luther King Jr. believed in all people being brothers and sisters. He stood up for other people's rights and led marches for freedom.

4. His father, who was also named Martin Luther King, spoke against racial prejudice too.

 

The doorbell rang,
bing bong
! Aref jumped up from his bed and raced downstairs to answer it. His mom stepped into the living room looking curious.

Diram, his best friend, was standing on the stoop holding a folded white T-shirt, his own mother behind him. The two moms hugged.

Diram laughed as he always did, with three short bursts, “Ha! Ha! Ha!”

He held up the T-shirt. Their photos were on it, with blue stars floating around their heads. Aref took it with surprise and turned to show it to his mom. “Look!” he said. He had never seen school pictures printed on a T-shirt before.

“Now you can't forget me!” said Diram. Aref's mother waved them in toward the living room, but Diram's mother shook her head and said, “Sorry, we can only stay one minute, we have to pick the twins up at ballet.”

Diram dodged into the house right under his mother's outstretched arm anyway. He ran up the stairs to Aref's room, Aref following right behind him, and stopped short at the doorway.

“Aref! I am going to miss your room!” said Diram.

“I am too!” They had had so much fun in this room together, making tents with blankets, camping out on the floor, dumping the tub of Legos to build new, tall cities. . . .

“Wait, I have something for you too,” said Aref. He gulped. This was going to be hard, but he wanted to do it. He slid open his rock collection drawer and took out the turquoise stone sitting by itself in its folded paper box. Diram loved this stone best. Aref held it out to him. “Here, keep it.”

“
Walla!
Are you sure?” asked Diram. “But you love this one!”

“I know,” said Aref. “But you love it too. Take it.”

Diram clutched it in both his hands, smashing the paper a bit, and ran down the stairs to show his mom.

Aref followed.

“Look what Aref gave me!” Diram said, holding it up.

Both moms smiled. “Nice!” said Diram's mother.

“I will keep it on my desk,” Diram said.

Aref was already missing it a little bit, but he smiled. “Great!”

Diram and Aref had been best friends since kindergarten and now they would not be together. They were the two best soccer players. Diram was the stronger player, scoring the most goals. Aref was second best. He didn't mind. He had less pressure. They even had fun when they lost. Then they would talk about the game, figuring out what to do better next time. They both loved other sports too and hoped to play more of them.

“So, don't forget me, okay?” said Diram.

“I won't forget you,” said Aref. “Will you forget me?”

“No!” said Diram. “We made two shirts. The other one is mine. And . . .” He held up the turquoise stone.

“Wait a minute,” Aref's mother said. She dashed to the side of the house, and returned with a clay pot of mint. “Here,” she said to Diram's mother. “This is the best mint I ever found so far, it loves Omani heat. For your yard!”

“We will think of you with every leaf,” said Diram's mother.

Diram and his mother got back into their car, waving. Aref stood in the doorway holding his shirt.

“What a nice surprise,” his mom said. She looked at him. “Was that hard? The turquoise?”

He smiled. “It was hard.” He liked that she knew that.

She went back inside.

Aref sat down on the step for a moment to think about it all. He was surprised when another car, a blue one, pulled up before he had even gone back inside. It was Sulima and her dad! Aref actually turned and rang his own doorbell himself, so his mom would come outside again and see them too.
Bing bong!

Sulima jumped from the backseat of the car and ran up to him. “Aref! I was worried you had left already!”

“Only my dad left,” he said. “Diram was just here!”

“Muna and Lena too?”

“No, they were at ballet.”

“It's like a parade,” said Aref's mom, stepping outside. “Hi Sulima!”

Sulima held out two packages, one for each of them, wrapped in yellow tissue. Aref opened his and found a blue box with OMAN painted on the top of it. A darker blue sea wave was scrolled across the bottom. “It's for pencils,” Sulima said.

Aref's mother opened her package. Inside was a straw fan woven with pink and turquoise colors. “Remember?” Sulima said. “When I borrowed your fan for the school play and then I lost it? Here's a new one to replace it!”

Aref's mom hugged Sulima. “You are so sweet to remember. I'll take this with me!”

Sulima's father was standing by the car smiling. He used to be a deep-sea diver. “We'll miss you all!” he called, waving.

The thought struck Aref, did he need to give Sulima a stone too?

“Wait here a minute,” he said, and he ran upstairs by himself.

Sulima was Aref's best friend of the girls his own age. She liked digging and rocks too. She told Aref she was going to be an architect or the president of a construction company someday. Their fathers taught in the same biology department at the university, but her father specialized in marine biology. She had lived with her parents in the United States for two years before she and Aref ever went to first grade. He had to give her a stone.

She liked the rectangular chunk of pure white limestone that looked like snow.

He pulled it out of his drawer, pausing only a second, and carried it downstairs. He held it out to her. “For you! I'll see enough snow.”

She looked amazed. “Thank you, Aref!” she said, clutching it tightly in both hands. “Say hi to the United States for me.”

Aref frowned.

“Remember what I told you?” Sulima asked. “The zoos and roller coasters and trains and skating rinks are really fun. The ice cream stores have too many flavors, even more than here. You're lucky!”

Oman had no trains. But Aref didn't feel lucky. “I hope so,” he said. “I really like this pencil box, thank you.”

Mostly he liked that it said OMAN on it.

“Write to me,” said Sulima. “Bye!”

She ran back to the car and hopped in, waving. Her father, who had already said good-bye to Aref's parents more than once, waved from the driver's seat, calling out, “
Maasalameh!
”

Aref's mother put a hand on his shoulder. “You have so many nice friends,” she said.

She paused before they stepped back inside. “We still need to say good-bye to the Al-Jundi family,” she said, looking down the street at their neighbor's plum-colored house.

Saying good-bye was exhausting.