The Language of Baklava by Diana Abu-Jaber

there?” and then grins so we can see he’s missing almost every other tooth in a splendid repeating pattern. Privately I hope that someday he will hike up the pant cuff so we can see this petrified leg, but he never does.
    He is a sweet-natured, sensitive man who tells me that the entire world is contained in our courtyard garden and that I never need leave it, because if I remain in this exquisite place, inevitably all things will come to me. He’s given to exclaiming, “ Alhumdullilah! ” (“Thanks be to God!”) as if everything good—from a clear day to a scrap of bread—has fallen down to him straight from heaven. He has the mystical power to whisper soothing things to my baby sister, Monica, that make her simmer down and stop driving her crib around the room. And he is the one who escorts us out to the big traffic circle for ice cream every afternoon, holding our hands tightly as we dart across the busy streets.
    I adore both Munira and Hamouda, and I worry about their well-being. Hamouda in particular seems so tiny and fragile to me, I’m forever worrying that he will stumble or be injured by some new peril, another crashing horse, perhaps. It comes to my attention that his and Munira’s daily meals consist almost entirely of our family’s leftovers, and every day I fret over whether or not enough food will be left for them. I make sure to always leave half of my dinner on the plate. On one particularly warm day, Hamouda comes in from gardening blotting his temples with a rag, his skin blotchy and uneven. He looks peaked and his limp is more pronounced than usual. While he is taking his daily nap in the storage room, I decide that we will save him the trouble of escorting us to get ice cream. I know where Bud leaves the ice cream money and the extra house key, so I gather up my little sisters and we take ourselves out.
    It’s an easy walk through the lime white streets. After months of running all over the neighborhood with my friends, I already think of these streets as mine. My sisters toddle and bump along, uncomplaining. Even at their tender ages—two and four—they realize it’s more interesting to go for ice cream like this than in the predictable grip of Hamouda’s leathery hand. I have a new little brass bell that Bud bought for me, the kind they drape on goats. I like to wear it around my neck on a piece of string and swing my head back and forth like Frankenstein so I ring with each step and notify the neighborhood of our movements.
    We get to the circle where the ice cream vendor is. As with so many things—fruit, pancakes, eggs—the ice cream here, which looks the same and feels the same as American ice cream, tastes nothing like it. It comes only in a striped Neapolitan, which Hamouda refers to as “Napoleon”: The chocolate is thin and flat, the strawberry is berryless, and the vanilla you generally save for last, until there’s just no avoiding it, its resinous, perfumed flavor tasting faintly of rose petals and soap.
    But it’s ice cream! So we approach the man at his stand, and he stares over our heads, looking for our usual guardian. He gives us a long, dismayed look and says to me in Arabic, “Where is your keeper?” but I simply stare back, afraid that he will send us away. I hold the coins out flat on my palm, and the transaction takes place. He hands us the soft yellow cones with their cylinders of brownwhitepink ice cream. Then my sisters and I huddle together in the busy center, the ice cream sliding all over our hands and faces; and I’m disappointed all over again with Neapolitan and wish for the hundredth time for chocolate marshmallow.
    Inside the big traffic circle, there’s a great deal of commerce and activity. A woman with thick black eyeliner ties up cut flowers in raffia, a man dips falafel balls into vats of spitting oil, another man carves through stacked layers of shawerma meat, piling the grilled tips into pita sandwiches. Children—tough, rakish little