On the many Arabic words for love

THIS BOOK IS 30% OFF FOR A REASON. PLEASE GIVE IT TO A TEACHER, A PARENT, A BELOVED CHILD. DISCOUNT APPLIED IN PROCESSING: promo code UHIBBOUKUM 

Weeks ago, I placed orders for beautiful children's books to fill our shop and your homes with colour and build warm connections between you and the kids in your lives. I was so excited to choose Eleven Words for Love, a celebration of the way the Arabic language distinguishes between many forms of love, written by Palestinian-Egyptian author Randa Abdel-Fattah.

It arrived today, though it's not officially published for another week. Maxine Beneba Clarke's utterly gorgeous illustrations glow with the saturated colours of desert skies and flowers and lemon trees, and a refugee family's treasures as they carry their memories of all these loves to their next stopping place. I unpacked it and excitedly started to flip through.

I had not cried about Palestine until today.

I couldn't stop. I made a mess of this keyboard and the UPS guy asked if I was okay. All the distance, all the helplessness, all the rage/grief has come crashing in with this one lovely book and I just could not any more.

I cherish the uniqueness and dignity and resilience of Jewish culture in its resurgence from the Shoah and the many brutalities that drove its diaspora. I also, deeply and firmly, cherish the uniqueness and dignity and resilience of Palestinian culture in the face of the Nakba that has shadowed the Arab collective awareness since before I was born. The willingness of any individual or group to inflict that on another will only ever baffle and enrage me. 

I can't fix the last 75 years or change the path of a nation-state, but I can share with you this little celebration of the resilience and beauty of the Palestinian people. I think it needs to be seen. I invite you to appreciate a small part of why Palestinian culture is precious and worthy of care, and more broadly why a singular experience of the world is worth preserving. So. Eleven Words goes on sale so that as many people as possible can welcome this Palestinian view of love into their lives. Please enter UHIBBOUKUM at checkout. It's Arabic for 'I love you all.'

For my Lebanese dad and every great-uncle and cousin whose lives have been blown apart in land wars in the Levant; for Ziad, dad's Palestinian best man, the wild-hearted charter pilot, who went home and disappeared there; for every Palestinian I have ever known who can't go home, or who has less and less home to go to, and tries to build what is precious about home wherever they land; for every queer Arab who walks fine lines trying to cherish a culture that often doesn't give space to queerness but has so many words for love, this small thing, simple when other things are complicated. Uhibboukum, habeybi.

--Nena Raoudahtel-Balah 

 A bookseller's 9/11

On a day when many folk share memories, I offer you this one that contributed to my formation as a bookseller and literary host:

My job as events coordinator at a Portland bookstore involved making sure that the show went on, whenever possible, but on that Tuesday my second thought upon hearing the news was that impossible must surely have just happened. Feeling sure our scheduled author guest would want to cancel, I made haste to call her media escort and offer all understanding for any decision the author made.

Jemiah Jefferson reads from Mixtape for the Apocalypse

The response came back quickly: No, please, she was a New Yorker stranded on the west coast, with no way to reach her family and no clear idea of when she would be able to fly home. She needed to do her work, and be with others. She hoped to connect with readers who also needed simply to gather. All right. I wasn't sure if anyone would come but the hospitality of the bookstore would be at her service. I set up the chairs and hoped she'd get a turnout, but I doubted. I doubted worse than Thomas. Worse, I cared that it looked like we were about to have a flop.

I underestimated everyone.

The audience did come. The author did read, beautifully, but briefly. Then she said that she was glad to keep reading but she didn't feel it was the most meaningful thing she could do at the moment. She asked the audience if they wanted her to open the floor to just talk, and listen to each other. And so they did, and she did.

I learned a great deal that evening, not about the author's writing, but about holding space. It's an overused and often misused term, but when I hear it I remember that woman, and the neighbours who came to the reading, looking for people to be with in a place that would let them. These were not folks who would seek out a church or other traditional place of solace, and they didn't want to buy rounds of drinks. They came to meet this New York writer stuck across the country from her beloveds, and hold space for her, and each other. She showed up and did the same for them, and together they taught me everything I hadn't known before about how and why to do that as a bookseller. 

Willy Vlautin signs The Free

It took me a long time to understand what I learned. After over 20 years, I can no longer remember the author's name, nor the title of her book. I lost those bits of information sometime in the years I took off to raise babies and edit books, when I thought I was out of retail for good. I can't find her by searching on the details I do recall. (I haven't given up yet--just tried again.) This makes me very sad, because she was amazing and deserves to know that she is remembered for her graceful, thoughtful handling of such an awful day, the gift of her time and presence to a community that needed a focus for coming together, and an invitation. I wish she could know that I learned from her not to rate looking professional above being human, and how precious the third place of a bookstore could be. I learned to trust communities of readers and believe in the power of holding space. I learned that a slow night was not as important as a night together. I learned to love this specific part of a bookseller's work, possibly more than any other. (Do I sometimes feel anxious about whether it's going to go well, or if I'm doing it right? Oh yes. It's still worth doing and I can't imagine stopping, short of another public health disaster.)

Since then I've hosted literal hundreds of author events and that author has been on my mind at every one. I've been getting ready to welcome artists and authors into this new third place so she's been with me again. (Unapologetic plug: there's an Events tab on the home page of our website if you want to keep track of the doings!) And here it is, the 22nd anniversary of the day I met her, so I thought I'd share. If you happen to come to an event here, in a way, you'll meet her too. 

--Nena

on one-month anniversaries

Monthiversaries are for new relationships and new babies. This bookstore is both. Happy monthiversary from this baby bookstore to all of you, with whom we are now in a new relationship!

On the way into work today, I pondered the last month. Every thought was accompanied by waves of gratitude. If you took me in for a brain scan right now I expect my frontal lobes would be glowing kaleidoscopically. And it's been like this for a while. 

I began this project feeling grateful to the longtime friends who were so determined to help me succeed and support my family that they gave me masses of money. (In a society where you can't thrive without it, money is love made tangible.) Now I'm pretty much floored with gratitude every day, when new people walk in the front door. 

Y'all are so dang kind. You've said things to me like 'I'm so glad you're here,' and 'Oh, this is so welcoming,' and 'Thank you for creating this here.' You bring your kids, your siblings, your friends, your partners, your secondhand books. You share us on your socials. You pick out books, yes, that too. You lift us up, you wrap us in community.

Especially all our queer folk. It's such a privilege to be creating this space. The gratitude many of you have expressed when you visited tells us that this place needs to exist, and grow. (We shouldn't have to be grateful just for not being actively excluded, loves!) And being with you over Pride weekend, at Dyke March and during Martha Shelley's reading on Saturday evening, was just the best thing. The best thing.

So thank you, all and some, for a memorably lovely first month. Stick with us and we'll make more.

--Nena

Currently reading: The Stars in Their Eyes by Kristy Gardner