STORY SO FAR: After the attacks of September 11, 2001, the children in school confront Meli and Mehmet and accuse them of being terrorists because they are Muslim. Mehmet threatens to return to Kosovo.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Home at Last

I knew Mehmet couldn’t carry out his threat to return to Kosovo. He was still a boy. He didn’t have any money for airfare, or any idea of how to get a visa. But his fury frightened me, all the same. He had been so much better lately, almost like the old Mehmetthe one we’d known before that awful time.

I watched him at dinnertime. Neither of us ate anything, and Mehmet was absolutely quiet. From across the table I could feel the anger seething behind his stony face. It was as though I had lost my brother for the second time.

Did those bullies know the damage they had done to someone who had just begun to heal? Did they care? It was bad enough to feel alone, as I did, deserted by my only friend, but to have such hatred as well? I couldn’t bear it. I wanted to scream at my silent brother, “Don’t let them do this to you!” But he seemed too far beyond my reach.

That same evening the doorbell rang. When I answered it, both soccer coaches stood there with the woman who had translated for us when we first arrived. For months Mehmet and I had done the translating for Mama and Papa. Our English was excellent. Everyone knew we no longer needed an outside translator. I couldn’t figure out why the coaches had brought herunless, perhaps, they had been a little frightened?

When Mehmet saw who was at the door, he started to go to his bedroom. But Papa stopped him and made him sit down with the rest of us in the living room as we waited to hear why the coaches had come. The boys’ coach looked very uncomfortable. Finally, without looking at any of us, he spoke to the translator.

“Tell Mr. Lleshi,” he said, “that I am very sorry for what happened to his son today. I’m going to kick those boys off the team. I will not tolerate this kind of behavior.” As he spoke, he sat wringing this baseball cap in his big hands.

“Tell Mr. and Mrs. Lleshi that I am going to do the same,” my coach said. “I am cutting every girl who took part in the scene in the locker room today.”

That’s the whole team! I thought. But how did she know what had happened? And then I realized that someone must have been ashamed. Someone had told her about it. I hoped it had been Rachel.

Papa listened, his head bent toward the translator to make sure he understood every word. When she finished, he looked up at the coaches. “Thank you,” he said in English. Then he turned back to the translator. “Tell the kind teachers that it would not be a good thing to remove these boys and girls from the team. They will only become bitter and hate my children all the more. Tell the teachers that my children are strong. They wish to be respected as fellow teammates and not despised because of their religion. That is the way of the old country. This is America, tell them. In America everyone has a new beginning, no matter what their religion.”

The woman repeated Papa’s words to the coaches in English. My coach smiled at Papa and then at me. I watched the embarrassed, angry expression on the male coach’s face gradually soften. He spoke so quietly to the interpreter that I missed what he said, but I heard her say in my own language, “He says to tell you, Mr. Lleshi, that you are a good man. If there were more people like you in the world, there would be no more terrorism and no more wars.”

“Tell the kind teachers,” Papa answered, “that Mehmet and Meli will be back at practice tomorrow.”

And so we were. Mehmet went back only because Papa insisted, but he did go. He is a very skillful player, and even the boys who had attacked him respected that.

I still worry about Mehmet. I wish that his bitterness would completely dissolve, but he is better than he was. Recently he began to coach Isuf’s soccer team, and when he talks with the younger boys, I can see something of Papa’s gentleness growing in him. He continues to swear that someday he will go home to Kosovo, but only when it is a full republic, not so long as it is still a part of Serbia under NATO guard.

As for me, my long road has come to an end. I have determined to be an American. It is not because I believe that this is a perfect country. If it were a perfect country, Papa would have a good job by now and we would never have to be afraid to say we are not Christian. But I think now that there is no perfect country. America has given me a new start and, thanks to Rachel, I am making more friends. Of course, from time to time I am still homesick for Kosovo. I want to see Granny once again before she dies and share tea with Uncle Fadil and Aunt Burbuqe and hear the twins learning to talk. I wish I could know where Zara is and if she and her family escaped all the hard times.

But America is home now. I want to help make it a place where everyoneMuslim, Jew, Christian, some other religion, or no religion at allcan live happily together and at peace.

The Haxhiu family, who inspired this story, would like to share with its readers this message:

To speak or act with a peaceful mind is to bring happiness with you like an inseparable shadow. Hate never dispelled hate. Only love can dispel hate.

(The end.)

Newspaper shall publish the following credit line in each installment of the work:

Text copyright 2005 by Katherine Paterson

Illustrations copyright 2005 by Emily Arnold McCully

Reprinted by permission of Breakfast Serials, Inc.

www.breakfastserials.com