The Language of Baklava by Diana Abu-Jaber Page A

boys with narrow faces and quick, narrow eyes—stare at us and our abundance of ice cream, and some big girls hold hands and talk, affectionately tilting their heads on each other’s shoulders. I look straight ahead and notice that somehow we crossed an enormously busy street to get inside the circle—cars and taxis careen around us, horns blaring.
    It dawns on me that I’m not entirely clear about how we did this or how we will undo this. The cars whir by, blurring the air. A haze of smoke and dust hangs in a ring around us, and a quivering sense of anxiety runs up my arms and down my spine. The tough boys seem to be moving in closer, and the ice cream man is shutting up his stand as if disavowing all responsibility. I see that my youngest sister has lost her ice cream in a gluey mass down the front of her shirt, and though I’ve finished mine, I still taste the awful vanilla in the back of my throat—medicinal, wrong. I reach for my sisters’ sticky hands. Everything is wrong: I hear English-Arabic, French-Arabic— someone is leaning in too close to talk to me, and the makeup around her eyes turns to smoke. The flower lady. Her words come to me as if from far away: “What is your name, little girl?” she asks in English. Then she tries French: “Where do you live?”
    I say, “My name is Diana, and we live on the other side of the traffic circle!” But for some reason this comes out in Arabic.
    She looks so startled that for a few seconds she doesn’t speak. Eventually she exclaims in Arabic, “You’re Jordanian! How could it be?”
    Then, from off in the distance, I hear a familiar voice, and this sound cuts through my imminent panic like a bell in the fog. I look over the bank of cars through the haze to the opposite street, and there is Hamouda. His limp is distinctly more pronounced as he hurries, nearly running toward us, his face contorted and working.
    I’m faint with relief and squeeze my sisters’ hands so my middle sister, Suzy, complains. But when Hamouda gets closer, I realize that he’s crying. I’ve seen children cry and I’ve seen a few women cry, but never before a man. I didn’t think that men actually could cry, and even through my panic and shock and relief, I can’t stop staring. He runs directly into the swirl of traffic, and as Jordanian drivers are masters of sudden shocks, their cars part seamlessly as he hobbles across, dodging, swerving, and jumping, patting and pushing hoods as if he is wading through a herd of wild goats. He runs his lopsided run the last steps of the way, and when he reaches us, he calls out, again and again,“ Alhumdullilah! ”
    I run to him, inhaling the musty tobacco scent of his shirt, shut my eyes and memorize the feel of his hands on my shoulders, the sense of pure, ineluctable rescue. I gaze at him, drink in the sight of his eerie pale eyes in that dark country of a face and the transparent lines of tears. He woke and we were gone, he tells me. He wondered for a second if he had dreamed us. He looked for us everywhere, and finally Mrs. Haddadin told him where we went.
    “ Alhumdullilah, ” I echo like an old Bedouin or an old Circassian. It is exactly the thing to say at a time like this, like letting out a breath. And he stares at me a moment. Then the tiny man bends over, takes the three of us in his arms, and hoists us like an offering. His arms are tough and wiry as cables. “ Alhumdullilah, ” he says again, very seriously and purposefully. He hugs us wildly. I laugh and look up, and the sky over his head is as blue and sleek as a piece of slate.
    AMAZING ARABIC ICE CREAM
Done right, this is incredible.
     
    *Sold in specialty stores.
    Dissolve the sahlab in 1 tablespoon of the cold milk. Put the rest of the milk in a saucepan with the cream and sugar and bring to a boil. Sprinkle in the milk-and -sahlab mixture, stirring. Stir the mastic into the milk, lower the heat, and simmer for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.
    Add the orange