HHS Summer Reading – Honors English 10 2015-2016

HONORS 10 SCHOOLOGY CODE = K4F2D-6NS86

This year’s summer reading includes a variety of texts that are centered on a theme specific to the literature you will be studying next year. Honors English 10 is focused on the study of World Literature, which is literature from various cultures. Therefore, the theme of your summer reading is Understanding and Appreciating Differences Among Cultures. Each short story, poem, and non-fiction text you read will explore this idea in one way or another.

THE ASSIGNMENTS

1. You will need to register for a Schoology account if you don’t already have one. Go to Schoology.com toregister. Registration is simple, but if you have any problems or questions, do not wait until the due dates toask. It is your responsibility to make sure you are registered before the assignments are due. You will need theSchoology access code in the box below. Schoology allows you to type your response into the assignment boxif you don’t have a word processing program (such as MS Word, Pages, etc.). It also allows you to save yourwork and come back to it later to finish.

2. LITERARY TERMS DEFINED ASSIGNMENT – Deadline: June 30, 2015 (25 points)At the end of this packet is a list of 75 literary terms. Research their definitions as they apply to literature since many of the terms have general meanings that are different than their meanings as literary terms.

Save your file as (Last_Name)-Literary Terms and upload the document to the “Literary Terms Defined Assignment” folder in the HHS Honors 10 Summer Reading Schoology account no later than June 30, 2015.

3. ANSWERS TO STUDY GUIDE QUESTIONS ASSIGNMENT – Deadline July 30, 2015 (25 points)Please copy and paste the 25 study guide questions in this packet into a new document and answer the studyguide questions in complete sentences. Save the document as (Last_Name)-SG Questions and submit it to theSchoology account no later than July 30, 2015.

4. IDENTIFYING THE USE OF LITERARY DEVICES IN TEXT ASSIGNMENT– Deadline: July 5, 2015 (25 points)

Create a document titled (Last_Name)-Literary Terms in Text.

Use the stories and poems from the packet to identify the use of 15 DIFFERENT literary terms. Please underline each term and supply information and explanations to support your answers.

Submit the document to the (Last_Name)-Literary Terms in Text in the assignment folder on Schoology no later than August 5, 2015.

IMPORTANT: Please read the example answers. Structure your answers like the example answers.

EXAMPLE ANSWERS 1. metaphor, "The Shawl" page 1, line 10, "Her knees were tumors on sticks" 2. external conflict, "The Shawl"

The external conflicts for all of the characters are the brutal conditions at the concentration camp.

***** EMAIL zimmerly@goldenrams.com if you have questions about Schoology.*****

EARLY TURN-INS - You can submit the assignments early. You do not have to wait for the deadline. LATE TURN-INS - Each assignment will lose 5 points a day for each day that it is late.

HHS Summer Reading – Honors English 10

2015-2016

1. characters 2. climax 3. conflict 4. denouement 5. dialogue 6. exposition 7. falling action 8. foreshadowing 9. introduction 10. narrator 11. plot 12. resolution 13. rising action 14. setting 15. stage directions 16. allegory 17. biographies 18. drama 19. fiction 20. nonfiction 21. novel 22. novella 23. parables 24. radio play 25. satire 26. science fiction 27. short story 28. television play 29. alliteration 30. assonance 31. dialect 32. figurative language 33. figure of speech 34. hyperbole 35. imagery 36. idiom 37. metaphor 38. onomatopoeia 39. personification 40. pun 41. repetition 42. simile 43. slang 44. allusion 45. characterization 46. direct characterization 47. indirect

characterization 48. chronological order 49. dynamic characters 50. external conflict 51. juxtaposition 52. fact

53. first-person point of view

54. inference 55. internal conflict 56. irony 57. limited third-person

point of view 58. mood 59. motive 60. omniscient third-

person point of view 61. opinion 62. overgeneralization 63. paradox 64. point of view 65. purpose 66. rationalizing 67. static characters 68. stereotype 69. style 70. suspense 71. symbol 72. synonyms 73. theme 74. third-person point of

view 75. tone

Literary Terms

HHS Summer Reading - Academic English 10 2015-2016

Study Guide Questions The Shawl by Cynthia Ozick

1. Describe how Ozick presents the setting of her story.2. Why do you not receive a clear picture of how things look? Why does Ozick present the details as she

does?3. In paragraph 15, what is on the other side of the fence? Explain Ozick’s description here.4. What character is the center of interest in The Shawl? Why is she being treated as she is?5. What are her impressions of the conditions and circumstances around her? What are her responses to

hunger and deprivation?6. Explain the function of the more unpleasant and brutal details of the story. What do you need to know

about the circumstances of the story to respond to these details?

Eleven by Sandra Cisneros 7. What is the narrator’s view on Birthdays?8. What does the narrator mean when she says that growing old is like an onion?9. Why does the narrator wish that she were 102? What can we predict she is about to explain?10. Why is the narrator so afraid of people thinking that the sweater is hers? What can we infer?11. Why do you suppose Sylvia says that the sweater belongs to Rachel?12. Rachel says that Mrs. Price is “right” because she is the teacher. What can we infer about Rachel’s past

experiences with Mrs. Price?13. Why does Rachel cry?14. Rachel says that when she gets home that there will be a Birthday Party for her, but that it’s too late. What

does she mean by this?

Theme for English B by Langston Hughes 15. What is the tone of the speaker’s self-assessment? What does the tone indicate about his feelings toward

the situation in the class and at the Y?16. What tone is implicit in the fact the speaker, in response to a theme (essay) assignment, has written a poem

rather than an essay?17. What is the tone of lines 27-30, where the speaker indicates his likes? In what way may the characteristics

brought out in these lines serve as an argument for social change?

Nikki-Rosa by Nikki Giovanni 18. What is the tone of the speaker?19. What points does the speaker make about (1) childhood in general (2) the childhoods of Blacks (3) and her

own childhood?20. What ideas about the ways in which whites understand or misunderstand blacks does this poem explore?

“For Fasting and Football, A Dedicated Game Plan” by Samuel Freedman 21. In what ways are sports and sacrifice related?22. What connection does the author make between sports and religion?23. Using evidence from your life, your knowledge, and the text, discuss the ways in which the sports field can

absorb the tensions of the political world. How can playing sports “neutralize” conflict?24. Look at paragraphs 5 and 12. Why does the author list the names of the players here? What does this

accomplish?25. How do you think the author of the article feels about the people he features in it? Explain using specific

evidence from the article to support your response.

 The Shawl by Cynthia Ozick Acd Eng 10

“It was a magic shawl, it could nourish an infant for three days and three nights.”

Stella, cold, cold, the coldness of hell. How they walked on the roads together, Rosa with Magda curled up between her sore breasts, Magda wound up in the shawl1. Sometimes Stella carried Magda. But she was jealous of Magda. A thin girl of fourteen, too small, with thin breasts of her own, Stella wanted to be wrapped in a shawl, hidden away, asleep, rocked by the march, a baby, a round infant in arms. Magda took Rosa’s nipple, and Rosa never stopped walking, a walking cradle. There was not enough milk; sometimes Magda sucked air; then she screamed. Stella was ravenous. Her knees were tumors on sticks, her elbows chicken bones.

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Rosa did not feel hunger; she felt light, not like someone walking but like someone in a faint, in trance, arrested in a fit, someone who is already a floating angel, alert and seeing everything, but in the air, not there, not touching the road. As if teetering on the tips of her fingernails. She looked into Magda’s face through a gap in the shawl: a squirrel in a nest, safe, no one could reach her inside the little house of the shawl’s windings. The face, very round, a pocket mirror of a face: but it was not Rosa’s bleak complexion, dark like cholera, it was another kind of face altogether, eyes

blue as air, smooth feathers of hair nearly as yellow as the Star sewn into Rosa’s coat. You could think she was one of their babies.

Rosa, floating, dreamed of giving Magda away in one of the villages. She could leave the line for a minute and push Magda into the hands of any woman on the side of the road. But if she moved out of line they might shoot. And even if she fled the line for half a second and pushed the shawl-bundle at a stranger, would the woman take it? She might be surprised, or afraid; she might drop the shawl, and Magda would fall out and strike her head and die. The little round head. Such a good child, she gave up screaming, and sucked now only for the taste of the drying nipple itself. The neat grip of the tiny gums. One mite of a tooth tip sticking up in the bottom gum, how shining, an elfin tombstone of white marble gleaming there. Without complaining, Magda relinquished Rosa’s teats, first the left, then the right; both were cracked, not a sniff of milk. The duct-crevice extinct, a dead volcano, blind eye, chill hole, so Magda took the corner of the shawl and milked it instead. She sucked and sucked, flooding the threads with wetness. The shawl’s good flavor, milk of linen.

It was a magic shawl, it could nourish an infant for three days and three nights. Magda did not die, she stayed alive, although very quiet. A peculiar smell, of cinnamon and almonds, lifted out of her mouth. She held her eyes open every moment, forgetting how to blink or nap, and Rosa and sometimes Stella studied their blueness. On the road they raised on burden of a leg after another and studied Magda’s face. “Aryan,” Stella said, in a voice grown as thin as a string; and Rosa thought how Stella gazed at Magda like a young cannibal. And the time Stella said “Aryan,” it sounded to Rosa as if Stella had really said “Let us devour her.”

But Magda lived to walk. She lived that long, but she did not walk very well, partly because she was only fifteen months old, and partly because the spindles of her legs could not hold up her fat belly. It was fat with air, full and round. Rosa gave almost all her food to Magda, Stella gave nothing; Stella was ravenous, a growing child herself, but not growing much. Stella did not menstruate. Rosa did not menstruate. Rosa was ravenous, but also not; she learned from Magda how to drink the taste of a finger in one’s mouth. They were in a place without pity, all pity was annihilated in Rosa, she looked at Stella’s bones without pity. She was sure that Stella was waiting for Magda to die so she could put her teeth into the little thighs.

Rosa knew Magda was going to die very soon; she should have been dead already, but she had been buried away deep inside the magic shawl, mistaken there for the shivering mound of Rosa’s breasts; Rosa clung to the shawl as if it covered only herself. No one took it away from her. Magda was mute. She never cried. Rosa hid her in the barracks, under the shawl, but she knew that one day someone would inform; or one day someone, not even Stella, would steal Magda to eat her. When Magda began to walk Rosa knew that Magda was going to die very soon, something would happen. She was afraid to fall asleep; she slept with the weight of her thigh on Magda’s

1 Shawl ‐A square or oblong piece of cloth worn as a covering for the head, neck, and shoulders 1 | P a g e

 The Shawl by Cynthia Ozick Acd Eng 10

body; she was afraid she would smother Magda under her thigh. The weight of Rosa was becoming less and less; Rosa and Stella were slowly turning into air. 50 

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Magda was quiet, but her eyes were horribly alive, like blue tigers. She watched. Sometimes she laughed—it seemed a laugh, but how could it be? Magda had never seen anyone laugh. Still, Magda laughed at her shawl when the wind blew its corners, the bad wind with pieces of black in it, that made Stella’s and Rosa’s eyes tear. Magda’s eyes were always clear and tearless. She watched like a tiger. She guarded her shawl. No one could touch it; only Rosa could touch it. Stella was not allowed. The shawl was Magda’s own baby, her pet, her little sister. She tangled herself up in it and sucked on one of the corners when she wanted to be very still.

Then Stella took the shawl away and made Magda die. Afterward Stella said: “I was cold.” And afterward she was always cold, always. The cold went into her heart: Rosa saw that Stella’s heart was

cold. Magda flopped onward with her little pencil legs scribbling this way and that, in search of the shawl; the pencils faltered at the barracks opening, where the light began. Rosa saw and pursued. But already Magda was in the square outside the barracks, in the jolly light. It was the roll-call arena. Every morning Rosa had to conceal Magda under the shawl against a wall of the barracks and go out and stand in the arena with Stella and hundreds of others, sometimes for hours, and Magda, deserted, was quiet under the shawl, sucking on her corner. Every day Magda was silent, and so she did not die. Rosa saw that today Magda was going to die, and at the same time a fearful joy ran in Rosa’s two palms, her fingers were on fire, she was astonished, febrile2: Magda, in the sunlight, swaying on her pencil legs, was howling. Ever since the drying up of Rosa’s nipples, ever since Magda’s last scream on the road, Magda had been devoid of any syllable; Magda was a mute. Rosa believed that something had gone wrong with her vocal cords, with her windpipe, with the cave of her larynx; Magda was defective, without a voice; perhaps she was deaf; there might be something amiss with her intelligence; Magda was dumb. Even the laugh that came when the ash-stippled wind made a clown out of Magda’s shawl was only the air-blown showing of her teeth. Even when the lice, head lice and body lice, crazed her so that she became as wild as one of the big rats that plundered the barracks at daybreak looking for carrion, she rubbed and scratched and kicked and bit and rolled without a whimper. But now Magda’s mouth was spilling a long viscous rope of clamor. “Maaaa—“

It was the first noise Magda had ever sent out from her throat since the dying up of Rosa’s nipples. “Maaaa…aaa!”

Again! Magda was wavering in the perilous sunlight of the arena, scribbling on such pitiful little bent shins. Rosa saw. She saw that Magda was grieving for the loss of her shawl, she saw that Magda was going to die. A tide of commands hammered in Rosa’s nipples: Fetch, get, bring! But she did not know which to go after first, Magda or the shawl. If she jumped out into the arena to snatch Magda up, the howling would not stop, because Magda would still not have the shawl; but if she ran back into the barracks to find the shawl, and if she found it, and if she came after Magda holding it and shaking it, then she would get Magda back, Magda would put the shawl in her mouth and turn dumb again.

Rosa entered the dark. It was easy to discover the shawl. Stella was heaped under it, asleep in her thin bones. Rosa tore the shawl free and flew—she could fly, she was only air—into the arena. The sunheat murmured of another life, of butterflies in the summer. The light was placid, mellow. On the other side of the steel fence, far away, there were green meadows speckled with dandelions and deep-colored violets; beyond them, even father, innocent tiger lilies, tall, lifting their orange bonnets. In the barracks they spoke of “flowers,” of “rain”: excrement, thick turd-braids, and the slow stinking maroon waterfall that slunk down from the upper bunks, the stink mixed with a bitter fatty floating smoke that greased Rosa’s skin. She stood for an instant at the margin of the arena. Sometimes the electricity inside the fence would seem to hum; even Stella said it was only an imagining, but Rosa heard real sounds in the wire: grainy, sad voices. The farther she was from the fence, the more clearly the voices crowded at her. The lamenting voices strummed so convincingly, so passionately, it was impossible to suspect them of being phantoms. The voices told her to hold up the shawl, high; the voices told her to shake it, to whip it, to unfurl it like a flag. Rosa lifted, shook, whipped, unfurled. Far off, very far, Magda leaned across her air-fed belly, reaching out with the rods of her arms. She was high up, elevated, riding someone’s shoulder. But the shoulder that carried Magda was not coming toward Rosa and the shawl, it was drifting away, the speck of Magda was moving more and more into the smoky distance. Above the shoulder a helmet glinted. The light tapped the helmet and sparkled it into a goblet. Below the helmet a black body like a domino and a pair of black boots hurled themselves in the direction of the electrified fence. The electric voices began to chatter wildly. “Maamaa, maaamaaa,” they all

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The Shawl by Cynthia Ozick Acd Eng 10

hummed together. How far Magda was form Rosa now, across the whole square, past a dozen barracks, all the way on the other side! She was no bigger than a moth.

All at once Magda was swimming through the air. The whole of Magda traveled through loftiness. She looked like a butterfly touching a silver vine. And the moment Magda’s feathered round head and her pencil legs and the balloonish belly and zigzag arms splashed against the fence, the steel voices went mad in their growling, urging Rosa to run and run to the spot where Magda had fallen from her flight against the electrified fence; but of course Rosa did not obey them. She only stood, because if she ran they would shoot, and if she tried to pick up the sticks of Magda’s body they would shoot; so she took Magda’s shawl and filled her own mouth with it, stuffed it in and stuffed it in, until she was swallowing up the wolf’s screen and tasting the cinnamon and almond depth of Magda’s saliva; and Rosa drank Magda’s shawl until it dried.

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 Eleven by Sandra Cisneros Acd Eng 10

“Because the way you grow old is kind of like an

onion or like the rings inside a tree trunk or like

my little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other,

each year inside the next one.” 5 

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What they don't understand about birthdays and

what they never tell you is that when you're eleven, you're also ten,

and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three,

and two, and one. And when you wake up on your eleventh birthday

you expect to feel eleven, but you don't. You open your eyes and

everything's just like yesterday, only it's today. And you don't feel

eleven at all. You feel like you're still ten. And you are—underneath

the year that makes you eleven. Like some days you might say

something stupid, and that's the part of you that's still ten. Or maybe

some days you might need to sit on your mama's lap because you're

scared, and that's the part of you that's five. And maybe one day when you're all grown up maybe you will need to

cry like if you're three, and that's okay. That's what I tell Mama when she's sad and needs to cry. Maybe she's feeling

three. Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a tree trunk or like my little

wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, each year inside the next one. That's how being eleven years old is. You

don't feel eleven. Not right away. It takes a few days, weeks even, sometimes even months before you say Eleven

when they ask you. And you don't feel smart eleven, not until you're almost twelve. That's the way it is. Only today I

wish I didn't have only eleven years rattling inside me like pennies in a tin Band-Aid box. Today I wish I was one

hundred and two instead of eleven because if I was one hundred and two I'd have known what to say when Mrs.

Price put the red sweater on my desk. I would've known how to tell her it wasn't mine instead of just sitting there

with that look on my face and nothing coming out of my mouth. "Whose is this?" Mrs. Price says, and she holds the

red sweater up in the air for all the class to see. "Whose? It's been sitting in the coatroom for a month." "Not mine,"

says everybody, "Not me." "It has to belong to somebody," Mrs. Price keeps saying, but nobody can remember. It's

an ugly sweater with red plastic buttons and a collar and sleeves all stretched out like you could use it for a jump

rope. It's maybe a thousand years old and even if it belonged to me I wouldn't say so. Maybe because I'm skinny,

maybe because she doesn't like me, that stupid Sylvia Saldivar says, "I think it belongs to Rachel." An ugly sweater

like that all raggedy and old, but Mrs. Price believes her. Mrs Price takes the sweater and puts it right on my desk,

but when I open my mouth nothing comes out. "That's not, I don't, you're not . . . Not mine." I finally say in a little

voice that was maybe me when I was four. "Of course it's yours," Mrs. Price says. "I remember you wearing it

once." Because she's older and the teacher, she's right and I'm not. Not mine, not mine, not mine, but Mrs. Price is

already turning to page thirty-two, and math problem number four. I don't know why but all of a sudden I'm feeling

sick inside, like the part of me that's three wants to come out of my eyes, only I squeeze them shut tight and bite 1 | P a g e

 Eleven by Sandra Cisneros Acd Eng 10

down on my teeth real hard and try to remember today I am eleven, eleven. Mama is making a cake for me for

tonight, and when Papa comes home everybody will sing Happy birthday, happy birthday to you. But when the sick

feeling goes away and I open my eyes, the red sweater's still sitting there like a big red mountain. I move the red

sweater to the corner of my desk with my ruler. I move my pencil and books and eraser as far from it as possible. I

even move my chair a little to the right. Not mine, not mine, not mine. In my head I'm thinking how long till

lunchtime, how long till I can take the red sweater and throw it over the schoolyard fence, or leave it hanging on a

parking meter, or bunch it up into a little ball and toss it in the alley. Except when math period ends Mrs. Price says

loud and in front of everybody, "Now, Rachel, that's enough," because she sees I've shoved the red sweater to the

tippy-tip corner of my desk and it's hanging all over the edge like a waterfall, but I don't care. "Rachel," Mrs. Price

says. She says it like she's getting mad. "You put that sweater on right now and no more nonsense." "But it's not—"

"Now!" Mrs. Price says. This is when I wish I wasn't eleven because all the years inside of me—ten, nine, eight,

seven, six, five, four, three, two, and one—are pushing at the back of my eyes when I put one arm through one

sleeve of the sweater that smells like cottage cheese, and then the other arm through the other and stand there with

my arms apart like if the sweater hurts me and it does, all itchy and full of germs that aren't even mine. That's when

everything I've been holding in since this morning, since when Mrs. Price put the sweater on my desk, finally lets

go, and all of a sudden I'm crying in front of everybody. I wish I was invisible but I'm not. I'm eleven and it's my

birthday today and I'm crying like I'm three in front of everybody. I put my head down on the desk and bury my face

in my stupid clown-sweater arms. My face all hot and spit coming out of my mouth because I can't stop the little

animal noises from coming out of me until there aren't any more tears left in my eyes, and it's just my body shaking

like when you have the hiccups, and my whole head hurts like when you drink milk too fast.

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But the worst part is right before the bell rings for lunch. That stupid Phyllis Lopez, who is even dumber

than Sylvia Saldivar, says she remembers the red sweater is hers! I take it off right away and give it to her, only Mrs.

Price pretends like everything's okay. Today I'm eleven. There's a cake Mama's making for tonight and when Papa

comes home from work we'll eat it. There'll be candles and presents and everybody will sing Happy birthday, happy

birthday to you, Rachel, only it's too late. I'm eleven today. I'm eleven, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three,

two, and one, but I wish I was one hundred and two. I wish I was anything but eleven, because I want today to be far

away already, far away like a runaway balloon, like a tiny o in the sky, so tiny tiny you have to close your eyes to

see it.

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Theme for English B by Langston Hughes Acd Eng 10

THEME FOR ENGLISH B By Langston Hughes

The instructor said, 5

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Go home and write a page tonight. And let that page come out of you---

Then, it will be true. I wonder if it's that simple? I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem. I went to school there, then Durham, then here to this college on the hill above Harlem. I am the only colored student in my class. The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas, Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y1, the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator up to my room, sit down, and write this page:

It's not easy to know what is true for you or me at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I'm what I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you: hear you, hear me---we two---you, me, talk on this page. (I hear New York too.) Me---who? Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love. I like to work, read, learn, and understand life. I like a pipe for a Christmas present, or records---Bessie2, bop, or Bach3. I guess being colored doesn't make me NOT like the same things other folks like who are other races. So will my page be colored that I write? Being me, it will not be white. But it will be a part of you, instructor. You are white--- yet a part of me, as I am a part of you. That's American. Sometimes perhaps you don't want to be a part of me. Nor do I often want to be a part of you. But we are, that's true! As I learn from you, I guess you learn from me--- although you're older---and white--- and somewhat more free.

This is my page for English B.

1 YMCA: an international organization that promotes the spiritual, intellectual, social, and physical welfare originally of young men. Use to provide housing to people in need. 2 Bessie Smith was a famous Jazz singer known as "The Empress of the Blues." 3 Johann Sebastian Bach was famous German composer

Nikki-Rosa by Nikki Giovanni Acd Eng 10

Nikki-Rosa by Nikki Giovanni

childhood remembrances are always a drag 5

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if you’re Black you always remember things like living in Woodlawn1 with no inside toilet and if you become famous or something they never talk about how happy you were to have your mother all to yourself and how good the water felt when you got your bath from one of those big tubs that folk in chicago barbecue in and somehow when you talk about home it never gets across how much you understood their feelings as the whole family attended meetings about Hollydale2 and even though you remember your biographers never understand your father’s pain as he sells his stock and another dream goes and though you’re poor it isn’t poverty that concerns you and though they fought a lot it isn’t your father’s drinking that makes any difference but only that everybody is together and you and your sister have happy birthdays and very good christmases and I really hope no white person ever has cause to write about me because they never understand Black love is Black wealth and they’ll probably talk about my hard childhood and never understand that all the while I was quite happy

1 Woodlawn is a predominantly black suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio 2 A housing development outside of Cincinnati, Ohio

 

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Acd Eng 10 “For Fasting and Football, A Dedicated Game Plan” by Samuel G. Freedman

“For Fasting and Football, A Dedicated Game Plan” The New York Times, October 26, 2005 by Samuel G. Freedman

Dearborn, Mich. - At 5 o'clock in the morning on game day, maybe the last game day of his football career, Ali Ahmad walked from the overnight darkness into the gleaming marble heart of the Golden Bakery. He wore his letter jacket from the Dearborn High Pioneers, with an orange chevron on each shoulder for

his two years on the varsity and the stitching on the back spelling out his nickname, Flea. From a pocket of his sweats he pulled out a few dollars for a Pepsi and the meat-and-cheese pie called lahma ma jibini.

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Since it was Ramadan1, the Muslim holy month of daylight fasting, Ali would not eat or drink again until the sun set in nearly 14 hours. By then, Dearborn would be lining up against Crestwood High, knowing that a victory would put the Pioneers into the state playoffs and a loss would end the season with a mediocre record of 5-4. Weighing all of 135 pounds, Ali realized that he was not going to play any more football after high school. He would go back to watching it on television like the 6-year-old he had been when he discovered this crashing competition, much to the consternation of his parents, refugees from the more lethal forms of competition practiced in the Lebanese civil war.

If the kickoff on this October Friday was delayed a few minutes, Ali would be able to grab some crackers and a swig of Gatorade from the trainer. Otherwise, he would wait until halftime, having stashed a tuna sub in his locker for breaking the fast. As much as football meant to him, as much as it mattered to win, those things only counted for Ali if he was also staying true to Allah.

''To get through the fast,'' he put it, ''I concentrate on the game.''

The balance Ali struck was nothing unusual here in Dearborn, the center of the largest Arab community in the Americas. About one-third of the students at Ali's high school are Muslim2, and the proportion is similar on the football team. Khalil Dabaja at defensive back, Amir Rustom at linebacker, Mohammad Kassab at nose guard, Hassan Cheaib at fullback -- they all have mastered the rhythms of the twin rituals of Islam and the gridiron.

Since Ramadan began in early October, the Muslim players have awakened at 4:30 for the predawn breakfast, shahoor; gone through an entire day of class without sustenance; resisted the temptation of a water break during practice; and started most of their Friday night games before full darkness allows for the evening meal of iftar.

''When you start your day off fasting and you get to football at the end of the day, that's the challenge,'' said Hassan Cheaib, a 17-year-old senior. ''You know you've worked hard. You know you've been faithful. And that makes you much tougher out on the field. You have to have a crazy mentality out on the field, and after fasting all day, you feel like a warrior.''

Khalil Dabaja finds another kind of inspiration, one that puts even the intensity of football in perspective. ''We fast so we can feel for the poor people, to know how they feel,'' said Khalil, 16, a junior. ''I'm going through this hunger and thirst for 12, 13 hours. They're going through it for a lifetime.''

The easy commingling of Ramadan and football season, Middle East and Middle America, has a value beyond the personal. It attests to a fundamental stability in American society, a capacity to absorb difference. Despite the global

1 the ninth month of the Islamic calendar; the month of fasting; the holiest period for the Islamic faith 2 (a person) of the religion known as Islam. 

 

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“For Fasting and Football, A Dedicated Game Plan” by Samuel G. Freedman Acd Eng 10

strains between the United States and much of the Islamic world because of both al Qaeda and Iraq, despite the domestic tensions brought on by the surveillance and detention of Muslims, this country has afforded a public tolerance for immigration and religion far greater than have the nations of Western Europe.

So Dearborn High is a place where the cafeteria serves halal chicken nuggets, girls wear the hijab along with embroidered jeans, the Ramadan food drive gets equal time with the Key Club on morning announcements, and -- to come back to football -- Mohammad Kassab leads his Muslim teammates in al-Fateeha, the prayer that asks God's protection in both spiritual and physical ways, before every game. The divine one notwithstanding, Mohammad also has a favorite cheerleader hold his peanut-butter sandwich on the sideline for iftar.

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While the first wave of Arab immigrants reached the Detroit area before World War II, they were predominantly Christians from Syria and Lebanon. The Muslim influx -- Palestinian, Iraqi, Yemenite -- has come largely in the last generation. At Dearborn High, most of the Muslim students are the children of Lebanese who fled the nation's civil war. By now, 20 years along, the parents have gone from being cooks and truck drivers to engineers, doctors and business owners. They have moved their families onto the city's affluent West Side, formerly the stronghold of white ethnics.

When David Mifsud, the Pioneers' coach, played for the team in the early 1980's, he knew one Muslim classmate. The players of that era were Haas, Kreger, Deorio, Szuba, Mason. Returning to Dearborn after college to start teaching at an elementary school, Mr. Mifsud was unprepared for the transformation. After a class aced a reading test, Mr. Mifsud threw a pizza party, only to learn that the Muslim pupils could not eat any because the pepperoni was pork.

These days, when the coach invites his team over for a barbecue, he has halal meat for the burgers.

THIS season asked for a greater sacrifice than the culinary. The last three games of the regular season fell during Ramadan, meaning many of Mr. Mifsud's 25 Muslim players were practicing and playing on empty stomachs.

After some exasperating mistakes -- twice inside the 5-yard line without a touchdown against Allen Park, and falling for the fullback draw play all night against Monroe -- the team risked missing the playoffs after having gone all the way to the semifinals last year.

Still, the coach made sure never to mention the fast, so as to not to call attention to it. The responsibility belonged to the Muslim players themselves, like Ali Ahmad.

''Sometimes at practice one of the guys'll say, 'Let's just break, it's just one day,''' he said. ''And I'll say: 'It's just a few more hours. You only got a couple more to go. It'll be worth it in the end.'''

Postscript: Dearborn defeated Crestwood, 38-6, last Friday, and this Friday has a rematch with Allen Park. Should the Pioneers win, the next round of the playoffs will fall on Eid al-Fitr, the feast at the culmination of Ramadan.