Tasting the Sky (15 page)

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Authors: Ibtisam Barakat

BOOK: Tasting the Sky
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Without the help of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (
www.unrwa.org
), millions of other children and I would not have gone to school or learned to read, write, and use our pencils to clear a tiny path through the wreckage of refugee life, thereby plowing a plot of hope inside our hearts so that we could plant our dreams.
In writing
Tasting the Sky
I give my story to the world in the hope that no others ever lose their home, and that the world would lend them a hand if they fell.
I thank you:
 
Suzanne Fisher Staples
Naomi Shihab Nye
Frances Foster
Jennifer Armstrong
Saed Muhssin
Joan Drury
Virginia Duncan
Dan Nickerson
Victor Navasky
Kris Meilahn
Mike Markovits
Sally Seagull Foster
Sharif Elmusa
Patrick McClung
Tracy L. Barnett
Joan McElroy
Jane Franck
Allia Rahman
Melanie Kroupa, Sharon McBride,
and everyone at Farrar, Straus and Giroux
who helped to create this book.
 
And a special thank you
to the quiet city of Columbia, Missouri,
where it is possible to gently face oneself—
long enough to become friends,
a crucial element for world peace.
Copyright © 2007 by Ibtisam Barakat
All rights reserved
by RR Donnelley & Sons Company, Harrisonburg, Virginia
 
 
 
 
Designed by Barbara Grzeslo
 
 
eISBN 9781429998475
First eBook Edition : May 2011
 
 
First edition, 2007
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Barakat, Ibtisam.
Tasting the sky : a Palestinian childhood / Ibtisam Barakat.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN: 978-0-374-35733-7
1. Arab-Israeli Conflict—Juvenile literature. [1. Barakat, Ibtisam.
2. Children, Palestinian Arab—Biography.] I. Title.
DS119.7.B2845 2007
956.95.2044092—dc22
[B]
2006041265
Permission to include the lyrics of “Ya Dara Douri Fina” and “Salami Lakom,” by the Rahbani Brothers from the album “Jesr El Adwa,” has been granted by Mansour Rahbani.
An earlier version of the chapter “Shoelaces” was published by Pocket Books in 1998 under the title “Marked for Destruction” in
Children of Israel, Children of Palestine,
edited by Laurel Holliday. An earlier version of the chapter “Shelter” was first published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2002 under the title “The Second Day” in the book
Shattered: Stories of Children and War
, edited by Jennifer Armstrong.
The Sinai Peninsula, indicated as an occupied territory on the 1967 map, page viii, was returned to Egypt in 1979.
The origin of baklava, disputed on page 9, is widely believed among food historians to be neither Arabic nor Greek but Assyrian, dating to the eighth century. Various nations in the Middle East claim this pastry as their own and have contributed to perfecting it.
The quotation on page 172 is primarily attributed to Philo of Alexandria (c. 20 B.C.E.—C. 50 C.E.). However, Philo scholars continue to debate its location in his writings. Plato occasionally is credited with having said it.

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