Rania Wonders Why the Moon Follows the Car

It was late in the evening, and Rania's family was driving home from her aunt's house in the countryside.

Rania was sitting in her car seat in the back, wrapped in her favorite blanket, the purple one with little white stars. Her baby brother Karam was already asleep beside her, his mouth open in a tiny round O. In the front, her father was driving, and her mother was humming a quiet song.

Outside the window, the world was dark blue. Fields and trees slid past. Now and then, a little house with a yellow window went by, and then it was gone.

Rania pressed her nose against the glass. And that was when she saw it.

The moon.

It was big and round and white, hanging above the hills. It was so bright that it made the edges of the clouds glow silver.

Rania watched it. The car drove past a farm. The moon was still there. The car drove past a row of tall trees. The moon peeked through the branches, and then it was still there. The car went around a long, curving bend.

And the moon was still there, right outside her window.

"Mama," said Rania, "the moon is following us."

Her mother turned around and smiled. "Is it?"

"Yes," said Rania. "Everything else goes away. The trees go away. The houses go away. The cows go away. But the moon stays right next to my window. It is following our car."

"Why do you think it does that?" asked her father, looking at her in the little mirror.

Rania thought very hard. "Maybe it wants to come home with us," she said. "Maybe it is lonely up there."

Her father chuckled softly. "That is a lovely idea. Shall we find out what is really happening?"

"How?" asked Rania.

"Let us do an experiment," said her father. "Look at that tree up ahead, the one by the gate. Watch it, and watch the moon too."

Rania watched. The tree by the gate came closer and closer. It got bigger. Then it whooshed past her window and was gone behind them.

"The tree went by fast," she said.

"Yes," said her father. "Because the tree is very close to us. Now look at the hills, far away."

Rania looked at the dark hills. They were moving too, but very, very slowly. They slid along so gently that she almost could not tell.

"The hills are slow," she said.

"That is because the hills are far away," said her father. "Things that are close to us seem to rush past. Things that are far away seem to move slowly. And the moon..."

"Is even farther than the hills?" asked Rania.

"Much, much farther," said her mother. "So far that if you could drive a car all the way there, it would take about five whole months. Day and night, without stopping."

Rania's eyes went round. "That far?"

"That far," said her father. "The moon is so far away that even when we drive a long way, it hardly seems to move at all. So it looks as if it is coming with us."

Rania looked out at the moon again. It was still there, calm and bright, floating above the fields.

"So it is not really following us?" she asked.

"Not really," said her mother. "But here is the wonderful thing. Right now, your aunt is looking out of her window, and she can see the moon too. Grandma is in her house in the city, and she can see the same moon. Children all over the world are looking at it tonight. And to every one of them, it looks as if the moon is following them."

Rania was quiet for a long time. She was thinking.

"So the moon is not following only me," she said slowly. "It is keeping everybody company."

Her mother reached back and squeezed her foot through the blanket. "That is exactly right."

Rania smiled at the moon. Now it looked even friendlier than before. She imagined her aunt at her window, and Grandma at hers, and a little girl in another country, all looking up at the same round, white face.

"Baba," she said, "I want to do another experiment."

"What kind?" asked her father.

"When we get home," said Rania, "I want to look out of my bedroom window and see if the moon is still there."

"That is a good experiment," said her father.

The car hummed along the dark road. The trees whooshed by. The hills slid slowly past. And the moon floated beside them, silver and quiet, all the way into the city, past the bright shops and the streetlights, and down their own street.

At last, the car stopped. Her father lifted sleeping Karam out of his seat. Her mother unbuckled Rania and carried her inside, still wrapped in her starry blanket.

Rania's eyes were very heavy now. Her mother helped her into her pajamas and brushed her teeth for her, because she was much too sleepy to do it herself.

But before she climbed into bed, Rania padded over to her window and pulled back the curtain.

There it was. Big and round and bright, shining over the rooftops and the water tanks and the neighbor's lemon tree.

"It came all the way home," she whispered.

"It did," said her mother, sitting on the edge of the bed. "It will be there all night, keeping watch over everyone."

Rania climbed under her covers. Her mother left the curtain open just a little, so a stripe of silver moonlight fell across the floor.

"Good night, Mama," said Rania.

"Good night, my clever explorer," said her mother, and she kissed her forehead.

Rania looked at the stripe of moonlight. She thought about the trees that rushed by and the hills that moved slowly and the moon that was so far away it seemed to come along. She thought about all the children everywhere, looking up at the same moon.

"Good night, Moon," she whispered. "Good night, everybody."

And with the moonlight resting softly on her blanket, Rania fell asleep.