Where the Streets Had a Name

Randa Abdel-Fattah is the award-winning author of young adult novels
Does My Head Look Big in This?
and
Ten Things I Hate About Me
. She is twenty-nine and has her own identity hyphens to contend with (Australian-born-Muslim-Palestinian-Egyptian-choc-a-holic). Randa is active in the interfaith community and is a member of the Coalition for Peace and Justice in Palestine.

Randa also works as a lawyer and lives in Sydney with her husband, Ibrahim, and their two children. Her writing has received acclaim around the world – most recently Randa was awarded the Kathleen Mitchell Award, a biennial literary award that acknowledges excellence in writers under thirty.

 

Also by Randa Abdel-Fattah

Does My Head Look Big In This?
Ten Things I Hate About Me

 

First published 2008 in Pan by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited
1 Market Street, Sydney

Copyright © Randa Abdel-Fattah 2008
The moral right of the author has been asserted

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Abdel-Fattah, Randa.

Where the streets had a name / Randa Abdel-Fattah.

978 0 330 42420 2 (pbk.)

Children, Palestinian Arab–Jerusalem–Social conditions–Fiction.
Jerusalem–Social life and customs–Fiction.

A823.4

Cover model: Jennine Abdul Khalik
Quotes on pages 26 and 217 reproduced courtesy of Bashar Barghouti,
barghouti.com
Translation of lyrics on page 269 by Adnan Abdel-Fattah
Internal design by Melanie Feddersen, i2i design
Maps by Map Illustrations
Typeset in 12/17pt Minion by Post Pre-press Group
Printed in Australia by McPherson's Printing Group

Papers used by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

 

 

These electronic editions published in 2008 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd
1 Market Street, Sydney 2000

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.

Where the Streets Had a Name

Randa Abdel-Fattah

Adobe eReader format: 978-1-74198-259-6
Online format: 978-1-74198-436-1
EPUB format: 978-1-74198-318-0

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www.macmillandigital.com.au

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Cover

About Randa Abdel-Fattah

Also by Randa Abdel-Fattah

Title page

Copyright

Dedication

Map

Glossary

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Acknowledgements

 

To my grandmother Sitti Jamilah, who passed away on 24 April 2008, aged 98. I had hoped you could live to see this book and that you would be allowed to touch the soil of your homeland again. It is my consolation that you died surrounded by my father and family and friends who cherished you. May you rest in peace.

And to my father – may you see a free Palestine in your lifetime.

 

Bethlehem, West Bank, 2004

It's six-thirty in the morning. I stumble out of bed and splash cold water on my flushed face. The portable fan has been switched off during the night, probably by Sitti Zeynab, who sleeps with a thick blanket even in the sweltering summer nights. I grab my sister's toothbrush. For the past weeks we've been sharing, but Mama was disorganised during last night's lifting of the curfew and I still don't have a new one.

We were permitted to leave our houses for two hours. We raced to Abo Yusuf's grocery store. By Baba's calculations we had one hour and fifteen minutes to stock up, load the shopping into our car and return home. Sitti Zeynab wanted to come. But it takes her an entire broadcast of
Al-Jazeerah
to raise her eighty-six-year-old body from her armchair and walk to the toilet. Two hours don't cater for the Sitti Zeynabs of this world.