Other Words for Home

Fiction | Novel/Book in Verse | Middle Grade | Published in 2019

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Vocabulary

Essay Topics

Quiz

Part 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1: “Changing”

Part 1, Poems 1-5 Summary

Jude lives in a Syrian city on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. It is the summer before her seventh-grade year. Tourists from places like Damascus, Beirut, Doha, and Aleppo usually crowd their seaside city; this year, though, the city expects far fewer tourists from Aleppo. Jude’s father (Baba) frowns upon her asking questions of tourists and strangers; he tells her “Jude, skety” (4), which means “be quiet, don’t talk.”

Jude explains that her seaside city, “where the rest of Syria comes when they want to / breathe” (5-6), looks different from cities like Aleppo, with their crowded buildings and noise. Jude’s closest friend and cousin, Fatima, thinks that no one will come to visit their city this year. Fatima is 24 days older than Jude, and they grew up together, “always in step, / four feet pointed in the same direction” (7). Now, though, Jude thinks Fatima is “kilometers ahead” (8); Fatima has begun menstruating and wearing the traditional headscarf, making her one of the first in their grade to do so.

At asroneyah (afternoon snack), either Jude’s Mama or Fatima’s mother (Jude’s Aunt Amal) gives them food like olives, bread, and jebnah (cheese). Fatima likes olives, but Jude prefers the soft bread from Hibah’s bakery. They also watch older American romantic comedies like those made popular by Julia Roberts and Sandra Bullock. Jude and Fatima want to be movie stars: “The wanting pulses so hard in my chest that it / sometimes hurts” (10). Jude recalls a time when her older brother Issa, who used to enjoy the movies too, imitated Reese Witherspoon and acted out scenes. One day Baba witnessed this and shook his head disapprovingly. Issa no longer watches the movies.

Jude and Fatima think that Fatima’s eyes resemble Sandra Bullock’s in their expressiveness. Jude thinks her own mouth resembles Julia Roberts’s. She dreams of a day when others might see her performing and notice a resemblance.

Part 1, Poems 6-12 Summary

Jude goes for a walk with Issa, whom she calls her “favorite person in the whole world” (14). He used to talk about American music but now focuses on change and revolution in their country, which he says Jude should also care about. Jude wants to know if Issa will be at ghadah (dinner) but sees from his apologetic expression that he will not. He will be at a meeting of revolutionaries, which Baba calls treasonous. Issa’s opinion is that the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, is oppressive; Issa wants democracy, but Baba argues that stability is better. Jude tells Issa she cares about Syria, but privately reflects that what she really wants is for her family to eat peacefully together again.

Last summer Jude and Fatima became friends with a girl named Samara (Sammy) who was visiting from Damascus. Sammy’s family is wealthy and stayed in the fancy beachfront hotel where Jude would someday like to go. Jude and Fatima met Sammy in Baba’s store, which is a magazine stand near the fancy hotel. Jude and Fatima enjoy spending time there watching people; sometimes Baba gives them soda and chips. Sammy overheard them talking about American movies and asked them which they had seen, but when Jude named movies like Runaway Bride and Practical Magic, Sammy called them “old.”. Sammy later took Jude and Fatima to see a current American movie. Jude and Fatima had never been to a movie theater and marveled quietly at the opulence, but Jude did not like the movie as much as Miss Congeniality.

On a “soupy” morning when a protest march is planned, Jude has a breakfast of feta cheese and pita. Baba is at work, as he works long hours at the store in the summer. Mama tells Issa he should not go to the march; he tells her living situations are not good for the Syrian people in the way she has been trained to think. Jude doesn’t understand what Issa means when he says he wants a country where “anyone can be / anyone / they want to be” (26), but she knows that their tourist-loving town, which is near the mountains where the president grew up, thinks “Revolution / and war are not good / for business” (27). Mama forbids both Issa and Jude from going to the protest, but Issa goes anyway. Jude sits quietly looking into the courtyard at an overgrown mint plant and wonders if she can hear the protest from miles away. To her, Issa and the other “angry students” are not just shouting for things like democracy (which she does not understand very well) but also at Baba, who is not listening.

Jude is enjoying a free candy bar at Baba’s store when Baba pushes a newspaper at her with images of “bloodied and cowering” people in a war-torn city (32). Baba demands whether that kind of violence is really what Issa wants. Jude thinks Issa’s intent is much different from “Those men who spill blood and manipulate the Quran to say / things that the rest of us know it does not say” (32).

Jude hears rumors of a militia group fighting the government’s army in a nearby town; citizens do not know what side to choose. Mama makes a point to bow to the president’s picture on the wall at the spice shop. As Mama prepares dinner, Issa insists the revolution will continue.

Part 1, Poems 13-20 Summary

Jude notices that armed guards are “now on every corner” in her town and that everyone asks each other what and whom they support (37). Towns no longer under the president’s control are thought to be in dangerous ruins. Jude just wants to be a “girl who likes movies” (38).

Issa moves out of the family home to an apartment “near the local university / and all of the cafes that Baba thinks are full of radicals” (40). Jude is not allowed to visit at first, but finally Mama takes her to see Issa. Mama waits outside. Issa introduces Jude to everyone there. Jude cannot tell who lives there and who is visiting: “There is an energy in the room that excites and frightens me” (40).

Armed police raid the apartment, but Issa gets Jude out safely. When Issa brings Jude home, Mama hugs them both fiercely and echoes Jude’s earlier words to Issa: “They could have taken you” (43).

Jude notices Mama and Baba’s increasing fear. They are more careful to hold Jude’s hand while out and to lock up at night, but they are also whispering more together. Jude worries about Issa.

Mama tells Jude that the two of them will leave for a visit to Mama’s brother in America. Jude knows they are leaving because of the danger in their city. Mama admits this is true but says it will be “only for a little while” (47). Jude cries when she realizes Baba and Issa will stay behind; Baba must keep the store and Issa wants to stay. Mama tells Jude she needs her to be helpful, and Jude correctly guesses that Mama is pregnant, which thrills her:

I am learning how to be

sad

and happy

at the same time (49).

Jude wants a party before she and Mama go away, but Mama says it is not needed since they will be back soon; Aunt Amal brings expensive cake from Jude’s favorite bakery anyway. Fatima worries Jude will forget her. She asks if Jude will take two headscarves she sees in Jude’s room, and Jude packs them. They jokingly practice the English phrases they know, and Jude feels that she and Fatima are close again. As she says goodbye to Issa and Baba, Jude wonders when they will be together again. Issa tells Jude to be brave, and Jude realizes she’s going to have to learn how.

Part 1 Analysis

This first section introduces the threads of several conflicts through a series of juxtapositions, or contrasts. For example, in Jude’s seaside city, the fancy hotel and movie theater are clearly intended for the tourists who come to enjoy the sea and open air rather than for residents like Jude’s family. The novel underscores this through the literary device of synecdoche, when a component part like the “plush white chairs / shaded by white-and-blue-striped canopies” represents a much greater whole or encompassing idea (14). Here, the reserved chairs represent the larger, more expansive dichotomy between the wealthy tourists and the families of average means who actually live and work in the city. Issa brings further clarity to this juxtaposition when he says that soon they (his family) will be allowed to walk on any part of the beach, indicating that after political revolution, the socioeconomic unfairness in Syria will improve.

Another juxtaposition establishes conflict between Baba and Issa. Issa makes it clear that he is eager for change in Syria and attends pro-revolution meetings to that effect. When Issa was younger, Baba disapproved of Issa’s affinity for American movies (and by extension the democracy those American movies represent); now Baba disapproves of Issa’s intent to support change, democracy, and free elections in Syria. Baba supports the current president and a stable, safe Syria. Baba and Issa’s opposing stances foreshadow the end of Part 1, when the political conflict has escalated in their town, and everyone is directly or indirectly taking sides.

Jude and her friends also contrast with one another in various ways: Jude and Fatima with Sammy, a wealthy tourist who told them their beloved American movies were old, and Jude with Fatima, as Jude does not yet “cover,” or wear a headscarf.

Each of these juxtapositions helps to show that Jude is not happy about the potential changes all around her. She is uncomfortable with Fatima maturing before her and has little interest in cultural and political revolution if it means that Issa and Baba argue at dinner. At the same time, when Jude tries to ask questions that might inform a more mature view of the world around her, her mother and father hush her with their usual directive, “Jude, skety.” Jude’s characterization shows a girl who is intelligent, capable, and sensitive, as she comprehends foreign movies, learns English readily, and picks up on subtle sensory details in her environments (candy bars in Baba’s store, the smell of jasmine by the sea, spices on the lamb). However, she also comes across as more youthful and immature than Issa, Fatima, and Sammy in her reluctance to welcome any big change in her country or home. This characterization sets the stage for upcoming dynamic changes to Jude’s character, which the last lines of Part 1 foreshadow when she realizes she must learn courage for the trip to America.