Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood

by Ibtisam Barakat

Overview

"When a war ends it does not go away," my mother says."It hides inside us . . . Just forget!"
But I do not want to do what Mother says . . . I want to remember.

In this groundbreaking memoir set in Ramallah during the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War, Ibtisam Barakat captures what it is like to be a child whose world is shattered by war. With candor and courage, she stitches together memories of her childhood: fear and confusion as bombs explode near her home and she is separated from her family; the harshness of life in the Middle East as a Palestinian refugee; her unexpected joy when she discovers Alef, the first letter of the Arabic alphabet. This is the beginning of her passionate connection to words, and as language becomes her refuge, allowing her to piece together the fragments of her world, it becomes her true home.

Transcending the particulars of politics, Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood is an illuminating and timely book that provides a telling glimpse into a part of the Middle East that has become an increasingly important part of the puzzle of world peace.

Winner of the Arab American National Museum Book Award for Children's/YA Literature

“In vivid, beautiful prose, Ibtisam Barakat transports readers into a place few Westerners have ever seen—the interior life of a young girl and her family in the occupied West Bank. This book, appropriate for readers young and old, holds literature’s great power: the power to humanize the ‘other,’ and to therefore change the way we understand our world.” —Sandy Tolan, author of The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250097187
Publisher:	Square Fish
Publication date:	10/25/2016
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	208
Sales rank:	238,405
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.60(d)
Lexile:	870L (what's this?)
Age Range:	11 - 15 Years

About the Author

Ibtisam Barakat is the author of Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood, which received three starred reviews and was the winner of the Arab American National Museum Book Award. She is also a poet, speaker, and social justice advocate, especially in the lives of children and teens. She was born in Beit Hanina, East Jerusalem, grew up in Ramallah, Palestine, and currently lives in Columbia, Missouri.

Read an Excerpt

From Tasting the Sky
Father turned to Mother. “We must leave now,” he said. His voice was sharp like a knife.

My brothers were ready. They held each other’s hands tightly. Mother had secured my baby sister between her arms. My father strained to see the road from behind the mound of clothes and blankets he carried. But in spite of my desperate attempts to obey my parents’ commands, my three-and-a-half-year-old hands were unable to lace up the one shoe I had put on. My right foot was still shoeless.

“Yamma, Yaba! Help me!” I cried in a hushed voice, lest I attract attention and we all die. But no one answered.

At that moment, a new wave of fleeing villagers rushed by.
As they disappeared, everything faded into stillness. And my family was gone.

Had they just walked into the crowd and left me behind? Fear dug a hole in my heart. I could not grasp what had happened.
I wanted to cry aloud, hurl their names across the darkness, but dread stifled my voice. I knew that the only hope for me was to instantly run in the same direction, leaving my shoe behind.

As I moved, sounds of distant gunshots and screeching swelled and then subsided. I kept running. When I looked behind, I could no longer see the giant shadow of our home. The world within and around me seemed to fade into the unknown. The gravel grated sharply into my skin. Once again, I commanded myself not to feel.

Reading Group Guide

Discussion Questions
1. Consider the author's dedication. How does it set the tone for the book?
2. What is your understanding of the conflict in the Middle East? Referring to the Historical Note and resources listed in To Learn More, as well as other Web sites such as The History Channel's "Middle East" site (http://www.history.com/encyclopedia.do?articleId=216411), draft a time line of significant events.
3. Research the Six-Day War. What were the ramifications of the war?
4. Read the quotes the author uses to frame the book: at the start, the translation from the Arabic song "Ya Dara Douri Fina," and at the end, the quote attributed to Philo of Alexandria. What meaning do the quotes have for you before reading the book? After? Why might the author have selected them?
5. The book begins with "A Letter to No One" and ends with "A Letter to Everyone." Discuss why the author addressed them as such and what purpose the letters serve.
6. What does Alef represent to Ibtisam?
7. Why are poetry, letters, and writing so important to Ibtisam?
8. Do you think Abdel Nasser's statement, which Ibtisam's mother repeats, "Freedom of the word is the first prelude to democracy" (p.162), influenced Ibtisam? Do you agree or disagree with the statement?
9. Ibtisam's mother urges her to "Forget, just forget" the war and occupation. What do you think you would do in Ibtisam's place?

Editorial Reviews

This rare and timely memoir tracks Barakat's amazing story of survival, largely through her belief in the power of words to heal: "Stories may inspire us to join hearts and minds so that, with our collective wisdom, a solution for this conflict—and any other—is possible." As this haunting book opens, Israeli soldiers haul Ibtisam, then a teenager, off a bus in the West Bank in 1981 and detain her without explanation. Ibtisam secretly risks these trips out of her village in order to visit a post office box, where she receives letters from international pen pals—her only link to a saner, safer world. While detained, she flashes back to details of the Six-Day War, in poetic yet searing prose. Ibtisam was little more than three years old when her family fled Ramallah in 1967 to a refugee camp in Jordan, and her memory of it, in a chapter called "Shoelaces," brims with tension and emotion. The narrator's understated tone lacks self-pity and thus allows readers to witness her fear and hope. She poignantly relates the Palestinian experience to that of street dogs: "I knew that they were dying and that they had come to our door only because, like us, they were seeking refuge. But instead of understanding, we shot at them, the way the warplanes shot at us." Ibtisam's reverence for language informs nearly everything she does, and it keeps her alive, whether corresponding with her pen pals or crafting this memoir: "a thread/ of a story/ stitches together/ a wound." Ages 12-up. (May)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Publishers Weekly

Gr 7 & Up - This moving memoir of a Palestinian woman's childhood experiences during the Six-Day War and its aftermath is presented in beautifully crafted vignettes. Barakat, now living and working in the United States, frames the story of her life between 1967 and 1970 with a pair of letters from herself as a high school student in 1981. Detained by soldiers during an ordinary bus trip, she was prompted to try to recall her shattered childhood and share her experiences with others around the world. She begins with a description of her three-year-old self, temporarily separated from her family in their first frantic flight from their Ramallah home as the war began. The author's love for the countryside and her culture shines through her bittersweet recollections. Careful choice of episodes and details brings to life a Palestinian world that may be unfamiliar to American readers, but which they will come to know and appreciate. Readers will be charmed by the writer-to-be as she falls in love with chalk, the Arabic alphabet, and the first-grade teacher who recognizes her abilities.-Kathleen Isaacs, Towson University, MD

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

School Library Journal

A spare elegant memoir . . . What makes [it] so compelling is the immediacy of the child's viewpoint, which depicts both conflict and daily life without exploitation or sentimentality. There's much to talk about here.” —Starred, Booklist

“Beautifully crafted. Readers will be charmed by the writer-to-be as she falls in love with chalk, the Arabic alphabet, and the first-grade teacher who recognizes her abilities.” —Starred, School Library Journal

“A compassionate, insightful family and cultural portrait.” —Starred, Kirkus Reviews

“Brims with tension and emotion.” —Publishers Weekly

“Barakat strives to depict vivid details of everyday life . . . Well worth purchasing to provide a viewpoint not often available to young adults in the United States.” —VOYA

“This is an astonishingly beautiful and heartbreaking book. The resurrected memories of a gifted girl growing up under the crush of war and occupation gave me hope: that if we read carefully, with open hearts, the world just might begin to change.” —Suzanne Fisher Staples, author of Under the Persimmon Tree

“Ibtisam Barakat is not only a luminous writer and thinker, she is a wondrous healer, too. In this exquisite, tender account of her Palestinian childhood, nothing is missing—love, attachment, struggle, fear, humor, resilience. The child in this story carries more wisdom and a keener sense of justice and injustice than do most people in seats of power. Tasting the Sky should be read by everyone with a humane interest in the story of Palestine.” —Naomi Shihab Nye, author of Habibi

“This is a poignant, eloquent testament of a war-torn childhood, a story we in the United States have only glimpsed before now. This generous author has truly opened her heart for all to see.” —Jennifer Armstrong, author of The American Story: 100 True Tales from American History

“In vivid, beautiful prose, Ibtisam Barakat transports readers into a place few Westerners have ever seen—the interior life of a young girl and her family in the occupied West Bank. This book, appropriate for readers young and old, holds literature’s great power: the power to humanize the ‘other,’ and to therefore change the way we understand our world.” —Sandy Tolan, author of The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East

“An extremely compelling memoir about a young Palestinian girl who lived through the Six Day War in the Middle East . . . interesting [and] heartwarming.” —A YALSA YA Galley Teen Reader

“This book is very eye opening — it tells the side of the story that you never learn about in history class and in the news, and it is really well written.” —A YALSA YA Galley Teen Reader

From the Publisher