The Turtle of Oman (6 page)

Big Day

“M
aybe you can find me some special treasures in Michigan. Look for more old coins like that one you gave me, and bottle caps. Don't forget that I love mysterious things that wash up on beaches. Even lake beaches. I don't know anything about those. Maybe you'll find a message in a bottle.” Sidi had changed the subject. This was one of his specialties and Aref liked the way he did it, though it sometimes made him grumpy to have one of his complaints left dangling in the air.

Once, Sidi and Aref had written notes in Arabic and English, stuck them into a small green bottle, taped the top shut with heavy tape, and flung it out to sea, but they never got a message back from anywhere.

Today Sidi said, “Remember our bottle? I think the fish are keeping it in their library.”

He bent over and picked up a flat gray stone. He pulled out the black permanent marker he always carried in his pocket, along with the tiny strand of wooden prayer beads his father had given him, and his keys. He held up the stone and drew a shy smile on its flat surface. He gave it two eyes looking off to one side.

Aref pressed the warm stone to his cheek. He slipped it into the pocket of his blue jeans. “
Shookrun
, Sidi. Thanks,” he said.

Sidi then picked up a brown stone with gray speckles curved on the top and a plain section on the bottom, like a half-and-half ice-cream cone, and drew a round mouth on the plain part saying
O
. “This stone is surprised,” he said. “It thought it was the prettiest stone, but no one even looked at it for three hundred years. One day in 1838 the Sultan's great grandfather stepped right over it. Today is its big day.”

Aref laughed. “My bad day, its big day.”

“Pack them in your suitcase! You can think of the waves that carried them and listen to the stones whispering—come back to Muscat!”

Aref juggled them together in his hand. They felt warm and made a nice click.

“Do they really say that?”

He lifted his hand to his ear and pretended to listen.

“Pssss, psssss, psssss. I think they are speaking Russian. Oh no, it's stone language. Yes, yes they do say that. Come back.”

Aref slipped them into his pocket happily. Now his pants felt big and bunchy on that side but he liked it.

What makes a place your own? What makes a home a home? It wasn't something simple, like a familiar bench, or a fisherman's yellow sweater vest with a hole in it, or the nut-man's fat red turban. It was more mysterious, like a village with tiny stacked houses, so many windows, and doors with soft flickers shining out into the night. You weren't sure who lived in any of them, but you felt you could knock on any door and the people inside might know some of the same things you knew or welcome you in—just because you all belonged there. They might tip their heads and say, “Oh yes, aren't you that boy with the stones in his pockets? You want some soup?” and it would be lentil soup, which you loved. Or maybe it was how the beach air smelled—salty and sweet in whirls. You didn't have to do anything to feel comfortable here. You just walked outside, took a long breath and thought—
Yes. Sure. Here I am.

Faces

T
he only hard thing about going to the beach was leaving it. “Do we have to?” asked Aref, running circles around Sidi as they walked the long ladder of steps back to the jeep.

“My knees say yes,” said Sidi. “They need a rest.”

On the way home, they stopped at the Sim-Sim Nuts Store, down by some other little shops that sold toys and sink faucets and car parts. This was their favorite place to stop when they felt a little tired.

“Let's get roasted almonds!” said Aref, hopping down from Monsieur.

Sidi was unable to hop at this point. He put one hand on Aref's shoulder and stepped out very slowly.

Najib the Nut-Man weighed the almonds on a balance scale, then poured them into a brown paper cone. They ate them all the way home. Sidi said they tasted smokier than usual, but Aref thought they were perfect. When they got home they offered the rest of the cone to Aref's mother, and she poured them into her little glass bowl shaped like an open shell in the middle of the coffee table.

Sidi stayed for dinner. They ate braised cabbage and roasted potatoes and fish from the almost bare freezer. That night, after Sidi went home, promising to return the next day, Aref's mother came into his room to check on his packing, and say good night.

“Aref, I see stones in your suitcase,” she said. “I thought you were packing up your rock collection to leave here. You can't take stones to America!”

“I have to,” he said.

“They're too heavy! Imagine how many stones you will find when you get there?”

“They're my friends. Sidi gave them to me. Look at their faces.”

His mother shook her head and poked around in the suitcase. “I thought you wanted to take a flashlight and a few favorite books and your playing cards and . . . what is this? You're taking your rain stick?” she said.

“Thanks for reminding me,” said Aref. “I'll gather those other things tomorrow.”

Harmony

A
fter his mom had turned out the light and pulled up the sheet and kissed him goodnight, and Mish-Mish had stood on her hind legs to stare into his face, then hopped onto the comforter beside him, Aref got out of bed again. He pulled the curtains back and gazed through the window at the distant water tower and some sailboats with loops of lights strung from their masts and thought about his grandfather. Sidi's memory was very deep. He really remembered the days before electricity came to Oman, when everything was lit by kerosene lamps or tiny bulbs run by generators or candles in cups. Matches were precious then.

Sidi remembered when all the roads of Oman were dirt or gravel or sand. He remembered when there weren't any tourists or people from other countries living in Muscat. You couldn't buy cheese from France or apples from Italy at the grocery store. Now there were students in Aref's own class from Denmark, Thailand, Iraq, the United States, Palestine, India, and Scotland. His school choir was called “International Harmony.”

It struck Aref that he had never wondered too much about how his friends from Denmark and Mexico felt when they moved to Oman. Did they feel the way he felt now? A little nervous and worried? Had he ever asked them how they felt or if they were homesick? He wished he could go back in time and do this. He wished to go even further back and see how dark the world was before electricity.

Now there were giant floodlights at the schoolyard and tiny lights along sidewalks and that blinking light on top of the water tower. But there were no turtles in any gardens with candles stuck to their backs helping people see where to step.

How Quickly a Mood Changes

T
he next day Aref woke up feeling strange again. He sat at the kitchen table swinging one leg, fiddling with the edge of his place mat, rolling and unrolling it. Usually he loved hot
zaater
bread with olive oil for dipping and fresh apricots, but not today.

“What's wrong?” asked his mother. She was polishing a tray, which seemed a strange thing to do first thing in the morning. “My happy boy is not so happy.”

“I am in a very difficult position,” said Aref slowly. “No one seems to appreciate this. I am not a happiness machine, by the way.”

His mom had her orange scarf knotted tightly on her head. He knew that meant she was in an active mood—this was the work-scarf she always wore when she planned to get a lot done. It was like a warning sign at the beach—BIG WAVES! STAND BACK!—and usually meant bad news for him.

“
Habibti
, could you please sweep the kitchen and vacuum the living room carpet after you eat?” she said.

“At your service, madam.” Aref had heard this on TV. “I will eat one apricot fast as lightning, then I will do the chores with the speed of a desperate mongoose.”

She raised her eyebrows at him. “Was it hard for you to sleep?” she asked. “My brain felt so full, I lay awake till three a.m. Then I got on the internet and read the local news in Ann Arbor, Michigan. About summer camps for children and a big local parade with bands playing and a new bookshop—but maybe it was a bad idea—my brain started ticking faster.”

“Lovely,” he said. He sighed, in the old man way.

“Wouldn't you prefer feeling excited too? Our great journey looms nearer every minute. . . .”

He wished he could feel like a pirate. Maybe he needed to wrap a scarf around his own head and get his ear pierced.

“Why does everything in our house have to be so clean if we're just leaving?” he asked.

“People keep stopping by to say farewell. And you know I want things perfect for your aunt and uncle and Hani and Shadi when they move in.”

Aref broke his apricot into two parts and plucked the seed out. “Madam, this apricot is mushy!” He placed it back on the plate and covered it gently with his napkin, as if it were dead. He plucked a banana from the fruit bowl and peeled it slowly and deliberately, as if it were the last, most important banana in the world. Would the bananas in the United States taste as good as the bananas in Oman? He didn't know anything.

When birds migrated, they carried all they needed to know inside their feathered wings, and small bodies. They inherited some astonishing compass inside their brains—same with butterflies. Birds knew how far to fly in a single day and where to land and where it might be safe to make a nest. Turtles knew this too. Turtles knew the exact moment to crawl out of the sea and make a nest on the beach.

Aref did not have this gift. Aref did not feel
this is the perfect moment for me to leave home and crawl up exactly 7,283 miles away on the shores of Michigan
.

His mother was unexpectedly dialing the phone. He could hear her saying, “Good morning! How are you? How is everything? How is the universe? Aref is going to do his chores in a moment, which might take him a while, but he woke up without an appetite, feeling gloomy again and I was wondering . . . what about an overnight? Didn't you mention that last week? Would it work out for you? Could you really take him camping? Eat lunch on the way? You don't mind? I need to get so much done in the next few days and he's not being the best assistant.”

Yes!

Aref danced with the broom, then the vacuum; he wrapped a few more malachites and crystal stones, rearranging them in his rock collection box; he pitched some rolled socks into his suitcase; he crumpled all his math homework papers into balls and threw them into the trashcan, making a game out of it. He scored one hundred and fifty points, more than he had ever scored in math. He took a shower and washed his hair with mint shampoo, and got dressed for a camping trip in his old soft jeans and navy T-shirt with stars on it. He stuffed another T-shirt and some fresh underpants into his blue backpack.

Then he stood outside in the driveway waiting for Sidi and Monsieur to pull up. He looked down the street at the quiet houses and palm trees and blossoming yards and parked cars. A gardener was rolling a wheelbarrow filled with dirt into the driveway of the newest house down the block. The bulldozer men weren't even working yet. Their big yellow bulldozer and digger stood in the empty lot, patiently waiting.

A clean-up day had suddenly turned exciting. It was amazing how quickly a mood could change.