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Anak mama yang baik

Dear Sophia,

Kaka, mama mau ucapin makasih banyak atas surprisenya pagi ini di hari mother's day. Kaka kasih mama kartu, surat, dan memberi kejutan dengan membuatkan sarapan. Kaka emang anak mama yang baik, pintar, cantik dan sayang sama mama, papa, dan dedek.

Thank you sweety

Love,
Mama

Dede Faira Memakai Minyak Rambut

Sitti's Secrets

SITTI’S SECRETS

by Naomi shihab

First Page

My Grandmother lives

On the other side of the earth.

When I have daylight, she has

night. When our sky grows

dark, the sun is peeking

through her window and
brushing the bright lemons on

her lemon tree. I think about

this when I am going to sleep.

Your turn! I say.

Page 2

Between us are many miles

of land and water.

Between us are fish and cities

and buses and fields

and presidents and clotheslines

and trucks and stop signs and

signs that say DO NOT ENTER

and grocery stores and benches

and families and deserts and

a million trees.

Page 3

Once I went to visit my

grandmother. My grandmother

And I do not speak the same

language. We talked through

my father, as if he were a

telephone, because he spoke

both our languages and could

translate what we said.

I called her sitti, which

means Grandma in Arabic.

She called me habibi, which

means darling. Her voice

danced as high as the whistles

of birds. Her voice giggled and

whooshed like wind going

around corners. She had a

thousand rivers in her voice.

A few curls of dark hair-

Page 3

peeked out of he scarf on one

side, and a white curl peeked

out on the other side. I wanted

her to take off the scarf so I

could see if her hair was striped.

Page 4

Soon we had invented our own language together. Sitti

pointed at my stomach to ask if I was hungry. I pointed to

the door to ask if she wanted to go outside. We walked to

the fields to watch men picking lentils. We admired the sky

with hums and claps.

We crossed the road to buy milk from a family that kept

one spotted cow I called the cow habibi, andit winked at

me. We thanked the cow, with whistles and clicks, for the

fresh milk that we carried home in sitti’s little teapot.

Page 5

Every day I played with my

cousins, Fowzi, Sami, Hani,

and Hendia from next door. We

played marbles together in their

courtyard. Their marbles were

blue and green and spun trough

the dust like planets. We didn’t

need words to play marbles.

Page 6

My grandmother life in the other side

of the earth. She eats cucumbers for

breakfast, with yogurt and bread.

She bakes the big, flat bread

in a round, old ofen next

to her house. A fire burns

in the middle.

She pats the dough between her hands

and pressed it out to bake on a flat

black rock in the center of the oven.

My father says she has been

baking the bread for

a hundred years.

Page 7

My grandmother and I sat

under her lemon tree in the

afternoons, drinking lemonade

with mint in it. She liked me to

pick bunches of mint for her.

She liked to press her nose

into the mint and sniff.

Some days we stuffed little

zucchini squash with rice for

dinner. We sang habibi, habibi

as we stacked them in a pan.

We cracked almonds and ate

apricots, called misb-misb,

while we worked.

Page 8

One day sitti took off her scarf and shook out her hair.

She washed her hair in a tub right there under the sun. Her

hair surprised me by being very long. And it was striped!

She said it got that way all by itself. I helped her brush it

out while it dried. She braided it and pinned the braid up

before putting on the scarf again.

I felt as if I knew a secret.

Page 9

In the evenings we climbed the

stairs to the roof of sitti’s house

to look at the sky, smell the air,

and take down the loundry.

My grandmother likes to unpin

the loundry in the evening so

she can watch the women of

the village walking back from

the spring with jugs of water

on their heads. She used to do

that, too. My father says the

women don’t realy need to

get water from the spring-

anymore, but they like to. It is

Page 9

-something from the old days

they don’t want to forget.

Page 10

On the day my father and I

had to leave, everyone cried

and cried. Even my father kept

blowing his nose and walking

outside. I cried hard when

Sitti held my head against her

shoulder. My cousin gave me

a sack of almonds ton eat on

the plane. Sitti gave me a small

purse she had made. She had

stitched a picture of her lemon

tree onto the purse with shiny

thread. She popped the almonds

into my purse and pulled the

drawstrings tight.

Page 11

Our plane flew to the other side of the world.

I remember the tattoos on my grandmother’s hands.

They look like birds flying away. My father says she has

had those tattoos for a hundred years.

I think about Sitti’s old green trunk in the corner of her

room. It has a padlock on it----she wears the key on a green

ribbon around her neck. She keeps my grandfather’s rings

in there, and her gold thread, and needles, and pieces of

folded-up blue velvet from old dresses, and two small

leather books, and a picture of my father before he came to

the United States, and a picture of my parents on their

weeding day, and a picture of me when I was a baby, smiling

and very fat. Did I really look like that?

Page 12

When I got home, I wrote a

letter to the president of the-

Page 12

United States.

Dear Mr. President,

My grandmother on the other

side of the world has a lemon tree

that whispers secrets. She talks to

it and gives it water from her own

drinking glass. She guesses the

branch where lemons will grow

next. All the old men and women

of her village take good care of

their trees. Some have fig trees

with shiny leaves. Some have

almond trees covered with white

blossoms that fall down on the

road like snow.

Last night when I watched the

news on TV, I felt worried. If the

people of the United States could

meet Sitti, they’d like her, for sure.

You’d like her, too.

My grandmother can read the

stars and the moon and the clouds.

She can read dreams and tea leaves

in the bottom of a cup. She even

said the could read good luck on

my forehead.

Mr. President, I wish you my

Good luck in your very hard job. I

vote for piece. My grandmother

votes with me.

Sincerely,

Mona

Page13

Does my grandmother know what will happen in

the world?

Does the world have a forehead?

Sometimes I think the world is a huge body tumbling in

space, all curled up like a child sleeping. People are far

apart, but connected.

Last Page

My grandmother lives on the other side of the earth.

While I am dreaming, she rises from her fluffy bed and

steps out her door to check the lemons growing on her tree.

The first thing she does every day is say good morning

to her lemons.

All day the leafy shadow of her tree will grow and

Change on her courtyard wall. She will move with its shade.

When she sleeps, she will dream of me.

Sophia Fatima and Sister

Hi Friends,

This is my blog. My name is Sophia and my sister's name is Nahla. We are from Indonesia. I live in Austin Texas with my mom. But, my sister is still live in Indonesia with my grandmother. My mom will pick her up next year. My dad lives in California, but sometimes he visits us in Austin. I am very excited if my dad come to visit us. I am also will be very happy if my sister can come here. My mom said I should be patience to wait until my mom pick her up later.