Under the Persimmon Tree - Softcover

Staples, Suzanne Fisher

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312377762 ISBN 13: 9780312377762

Verlag: SQUARE FISH, 2008

Inhaltsangabe

Najmah, a young Afghan girl whose name means "star," suddenly finds herself alone when her father and older brother are conscripted by the Taliban and her mother and newborn brother are killed in an air raid. An American woman, Elaine, whose Islamic name is Nusrat, is also on her own. She waits out the war in Peshawar, Pakistan, teaching refugee children under the persimmon tree in her garden while her Afghan doctor husband runs a clinic in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan. Najmah's father had always assured her that the stars would take care of her, just as Nusrat's husband had promised that they would tell Nusrat where he was and that he was safe. As the two look to the skies for answers, their fates entwine. Najmah, seeking refuge and hoping to find her father and brother, begins the perilous journey through the mountains to cross the border into Pakistan. And Nusrat's persimmon-tree school awaits Najmah's arrival. Together, they both seek their way home.

Known for her award-winning fiction set in South Asia, Suzanne Fisher Staples revisits that part of the world in this beautifully written, heartrending novel.

Under the Persimmon Tree is a 2006 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Suzanne Fisher Staples, a former UPI correspondent, is the author of many acclaimed books for young readers, including Shiva's Fire, Dangerous Skies, and the Newbery Honor Book Shabanu. Her newest book, The House of Djinn, is being published by FSG in Spring 2008. She lives in Nicholson, Pennsylvania.

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Under the Persimmon Tree

By Suzanne Fisher Staples

Square Fish

Copyright © 2008 Suzanne Fisher Staples
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780312377762

Under the Persimmon Tree

NAJMAH Golestan Village, Kunduz Province, Northern Afghanistan October 2001

1

The day begins like every day in the Kunduz Hills, following the rhythms of the sun and moon. Before first light--even before the first stars begin to fade--my mother tugs at my quilt.

"Get up, sleepy one," she says. "It's time to light the fire!" I feel as if I've just gone to sleep. How can it be time to begin another day so soon after the last one has ended?

Mada-jan leans then over my older brother, Nur. To him she says, "Get up, sleepy one. It's time to get water so that I can make tea!"

Nur grumbles, and the quilt rustles as he turnsover. But Mada-jan does what she always does when we try to ignore her: she yanks the quilt up from the bottom and tickles his bare feet with a piece of straw. The quilt makes a popping sound as Nur kicks out. But Mada-jan is quick to get out of the way--despite her belly, which is enormous with my unborn brother. I am sure it's a brother because my mother has been well and happy throughout her pregnancy. I have named my unborn brother Habib, which means "beloved friend." I know Habib will be my friend, unlike Nur, who teases me mercilessly.

Before Nur goes out the door, he picks up the nearly empty water tin and flicks a few drops into my face. It's icy and chases away any thought I might have of sleeping a few minutes longer.

"If the rooster is up, so must the hen be up," he says, and his hand sloshes again in the water.

"Nur, stop playing!" Mada-jan says. "Najmah, get up!" She tugs at my quilt again. "After you fetch firewood you must feed this bukri," she says, motioning to the brand-new baby goat that stands on quivering, sticklike legs near the head of the cot where I sleep. She was born yesterday, and her mother won't feed her.

I hold out my hand to the kid, who nuzzles the underside of my fingers, butting my palm with her nose. Then I throw back the quilt and reach for myshawl. The autumn morning air is chilly, and I savor the cool, knowing how hot it will be before noon.

"Baba-jan is already milking the goats, and when he gets back he'll want his breakfast," says Mada-jan, folding my quilt so that I can't change my mind and crawl back under its warmth. At the thought of the milk my father will bring, my stomach grumbles.

Outside, Nur finds the pole and ties the ghee tins to either end of it with goat sinew. He hoists it to his shoulder and waits for me to walk with him to where the path leads down the hill to Baba Darya, the little stream at the bottom. Baba means "old man" as well as "father." We call it "Old Man River" because its thin ribbons twist together like the wisps of an elder's beard.

"I saw a leopard's pug marks in the dust here last night," Nur says, just as we reach the fork in the path that will take me to the woodpile and Nur to the Baba Darya. I hesitate where the two paths split.

"Nur!" Mada-jan says, her voice low with warning. Knowing Nur very well, she has stepped outside the door to listen. "Stop trying to scare her! Najmah, you know there are no leopards here. Now hurry, you two!" Still I hesitate.

"Really!" Nur whispers. "They were this big!" He holds his fist up so I can see it in the creeping light of the sunrise. "It must be a very large leopard."Then he turns his back and walks, humming, down the hill toward the Baba Darya, the tins bouncing from the ends of the pole across his shoulder.

My heart hammers, and I want to run back to the house, but I know Mada-jan will be angry. I turn and run as fast as I can, all the way to the woodpile. There I spread my shawl on the ground and pile several armloads of wood on top. I feel a tingling along my spine the whole time. I think I see yellow eyes gleaming in the dark to the side of the woodpile. I'm sure I hear a low growl.

"Nur was only teasing," I mutter under my breath. "Nur was only teasing." But I really am convinced a large animal with long, pointed teeth is waiting to pounce on me. I am terribly afraid of leopards, although I have never seen one in my life. Mada-jan reminds me of this every time I complain that Nur has told me he's heard one roar. When the shawl holds as much wood as I can carry, I bind up its corners into a knot and heft the bundle onto my head, then hurry back up the path under the heavy load.

Usually Mada-jan fetches the wood, leaving me to make naan inside our mud-brick house, because she knows I'm afraid. But Habib, who will arrive in just a few days, keeps her off-balance when she walks along the steep, narrow paths. My father worries thatshe'll tumble down to the bottom of the hill, and so he has asked me to put aside my fear to help my mother. I feel proud that I can do it, even though I am afraid.

I sit outside the curtained front doorway and make a small pyramid of kindling inside the mud oven. Mada-jan brings out the basket that holds the pads of dough she's made and skewers each piece on a hook that she suspends through a hole in the top of the oven. The goat kid butts insistently at my shoulder, wanting to nurse. A few minutes later I hear Nur huffing under the weight of the water as he climbs the last few feet from the Baba Darya.

And only a moment later Baba-jan comes whistling down the path that leads from the pens that hold our sheep and goats at the base of the foothills of the Hindu Kush. He carries a large pail of milk. The light is a pale green behind the snowy mountain peaks that hover over us, and a few morning stars still float there, waiting for the sun to send them on their way.

"We're going to have to take the sheep and goats farther up to feed," Baba-jan says, sitting down cross-legged in one fluid motion. "The hills are parched, and there isn't enough for them to eat." Usually the rains come in spring and summer, and the hills liecurled on themselves, soft and brilliant, like giants sleeping under a green carpet. Now they seem flatter, gray and misty with dust, just as they do in the dead of winter.

But still our farm feeds us. Twice a week Nur and I make many trips carrying the ghee tins up and down the hill to the Baba Darya, which now moves slowly like a baba, too, since there is little water in it. We carry them to the plot where my father grows vegetables and fruit for the market, and flowers for my mother. Baba-jan carefully pours tin after tin of muddy water in a thin stream between the neat rows of apple, apricot, and almond trees.

We shiver in our shawls as we sit on the dark red Turkoman rug outside the curtained front door of our house, eating gruel with goat's milk and bread and sweet green tea. As I eat, I dip my finger into a cup of milk and hold it out for the kid to suck at greedily. The sun rises, and Baba-jan asks Nur to come with him to the plot.

"You can look after the flock yourself, can't you, my little sugar beet?" Baba-jan asks me. His face is scored with lines from working in the hot sun and worrying about the parched crops and grazing lands. I don't want to say that I am afraid to go into the hills by myself, so I nod dumbly. "Good," he says. "Nur can carry water more quickly than you can, and Idon't want your mother up in the hills when the baby could come at any time."

I want to tell him that I can carry as much water as Nur, who is not much bigger, and as...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: SQUARE FISH
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2008
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0312377762
• ISBN 13: 9780312377762
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 281
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar