Joumana and the Little Hole in the Garden Wall

At the back of Joumana's garden, behind the lemon tree, there was an old stone wall. It was taller than Papa. Green moss grew in its cracks, and tiny pink flowers poked out between the stones. And near the bottom, just at the height of Joumana's knees, there was a hole.

It was a small, round hole, about as big as an orange. Joumana thought it was a door for snails.

On the other side of the wall was the garden of the house next door. For a long time, nobody had lived there. The windows had been dark, and the grass had grown long and wild.

But one Saturday morning, Joumana heard a big truck rumble down the street. She heard voices and footsteps and the bump, bump, bump of boxes. And in the afternoon, while she was watering her mint plants, she heard something else, right on the other side of the wall.

It was a boy, singing. She did not understand a single word of his song. It sounded bouncy and bright.

Joumana crouched down and peeked through the hole.

She saw a pair of red sneakers. Then the sneakers bent, and a face appeared, and a bright blue eye looked right back at her.

"Oh!" said Joumana, and she fell backward onto the grass.

From the other side came a surprised little "Oh!" too. Soon they were both laughing, one on each side of the wall.

"Hello," said Joumana into the hole. "My name is Joumana. What is your name?"

The boy said something back. It was a long, quick sentence full of sounds Joumana did not know. She frowned. She tried again, slowly.

"Jou-ma-na," she said, patting her chest.

There was a pause. Then a small hand appeared at the hole, patting a small chest she could not quite see. "Lukas," said the voice.

"Lukas," Joumana repeated. "Hello, Lukas!"

"Hel-lo, Jou-ma-na," said Lukas carefully.

That was all the words they had. Joumana wanted to ask him so many things. Where did he come from? Did he like lemons? Did he have a cat? But she did not know how to say them so that he would understand.

At dinner, she told her family.

"A boy moved in next door," she said. "His name is Lukas. But he speaks a different language, and I cannot talk to him."

Mama passed her the bread. "Language is not only words," she said. "When you were a baby, you could not say one word. But you still told us when you were hungry, or happy, or sleepy."

Joumana thought about that all night.

The next morning, she took a piece of paper and her box of crayons. She drew a lemon tree, a yellow sun, and a girl with two braids, smiling. Then she folded the paper small, walked to the back of the garden, and pushed it through the hole in the wall.

She waited. She heard paper crinkling. She heard a happy "Ah!"

Then, a few minutes later, a folded paper came back through the hole.

Joumana opened it. Lukas had drawn a tall house with a pointy roof and lots of snow on top. Next to the house was a boy with red sneakers, and a big fluffy dog with its tongue out.

"He has a dog!" Joumana shouted, running inside. "And he lived somewhere with snow!"

After that, the hole in the wall became their post office.

Every morning, Joumana pushed a drawing through. Every afternoon, a drawing came back. She drew her baby brother eating soup. He drew his grandma knitting a scarf. She drew a camel. He drew a reindeer.

They learned words this way. Lukas drew an apple and wrote his word under it. Joumana wrote her word under his. They passed the paper back and forth until they could both say both words. Apple. Tuffah. Dog. Kalb. Friend.

One day, a drawing came through that made Joumana stop. Lukas had drawn himself alone, sitting on a box, with a small blue tear on his cheek. Around him were lots of empty boxes. In the corner, he had drawn the snowy house, very small and far away.

Joumana looked at it for a long time. She remembered how she had felt on her first day at school, when everything was new and she did not know anyone. Her tummy had felt tight, like a knot.

She did not have a drawing for this. Instead, she ran to the kitchen.

"Mama," she said, "can we bake something?"

That afternoon, Joumana and Mama made little round cookies filled with dates. The kitchen smelled sweet and warm. Joumana pressed a pattern on each one with a fork. When they cooled, she wrapped six cookies in a napkin.

But the napkin was too big for the hole in the wall. Joumana tried and tried. It would not fit.

She stood there, holding the cookies. Then she took a deep breath, walked out the front gate, down the path, and up to the house next door. She knocked. Knock, knock, knock.

The door opened. There stood a tall woman with kind eyes, and behind her legs, peeking out, was a boy with red sneakers and very blond hair. A fluffy white dog pushed its nose between them, wagging its tail.

"Lukas," said Joumana, and she held out the napkin.

Lukas stared at her. Then his whole face broke into a smile. It was the first time she had seen all of it, not just one blue eye through a hole.

"Jou-ma-na!" he said.

He took a cookie and bit into it. His eyes grew round. "Mmm!" he said, and then he said a long happy word that she did not know, but she understood it perfectly.

His mother smiled and said something softly. Then she opened the door wide.

That afternoon, Joumana and Lukas played in his garden, with the fluffy dog running in circles around them. They found a snail on the wall and watched it climb. And when they were tired, they sat side by side on the grass, with their backs against the old stone wall.

Joumana pointed at the little round hole. "Post office," she said.

Lukas tried the word. "Post... of-fice." Then he grinned, pulled a crayon from his pocket, and drew a tiny door around the hole, right on the stone.

From then on, the hole in the wall stayed their secret post office. But now, most days, they did not need it. They simply walked through the front gate.