The Space Between Our Footsteps

Selected by Naomi Shihab Nye. Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 1998, 143 pp. List: $19.95; AET: $15.00.

Reviewed by Randa Kayyali

Palestinian-American novelist Naomi Shihab Nye has produced yet another stellar book, The Space Between Our Footsteps. This time Nye selected poems and paintings collected from all over the Middle East and from Arab Americans. The end result is a “must have” for those who hold the Middle East dear.

In a phone interview from her home in San Antonio, she explained her goal for this compilation of paintings and poems: “What I want to do in my anthologies is to include poems that have integrity” and “give a larger sense of the poetry [of the Middle East],” she said.

Nye’s books are written both for young readers and upward because, she reasons, the stories she loved as a teenager are still her favorites. In the introduction to Space Between Our Footsteps, Nye writes that she deliberately chose works that were not “heavily embellished or romanticized.” The simplicity of the poems in this collection is refreshing to those familiar with Arab literature. Nye further wrote, “This is what I want a book of poems and paintings to be—a surprising spring waking us from our daily sleep. A feast of little dishes.”

These “dishes” include both a wide variety of poems and glossy reproductions of paintings by Arab, Arab-American, Israeli, Persian, and Turkish artists. Nye said that “poetry is a world that is greater than politics, more enduring” and that her decision to include Israeli artists was based on her wish to bridge Middle Eastern differences.

The collection includes a moving poem by Hanan Ashrawi about a real-life four-year-old girl who was shot and wounded by an Israeli soldier:

I hear a nine-month-old

has also lost an eye,

I wonder if my soldier

shot her too—a soldier

looking for little girls who

look him in the eye—

I’m old enough, almost four,

I’ve seen enough of life,

but she is just a baby

who didn’t know any better.

The reproductions of paintings complement the poems with color as well as illustration. A bright, yet serene, painting of family members in their backyard by a Lebanese-American, Linda Sawaya, titled, “In the Garden,” is opposite a poem translated from Turkish, “My Uncle Wore a Rose on his Lapel.” As Nye brings together two forms of art—the visual and the written—she also unites the experiences and viewpoints from different cultures.

This bright, hardcover book of literature is an invitation to artistic exchange and exploration for any reader interested in the Middle East. It is also an opportunity just to sit back and enjoy a good read.

Randa Kayyali is the AET Business Manager.