The Girl Who Fell to Earth by Sophia Al-Maria

Author:Sophia Al-Maria [Al-Maria, Sophia]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2012-10-19T13:00:00+00:00

14

UPSILON SCORPII • THE STING •

Everything was changing, and I couldn’t do anything to stop it. The house was hectic with preparations for Uncle Faraj’s imminent wedding in Saudi, and very little of it had to do with the groom, who was sent on errands, mostly to the tailors or the souq. A photo of Amna, the bride-to-be, circulated around the house. She was fat but beautiful, or rather fat and beautiful, and everyone used the word delouaa to describe her, as though it were a good thing to be the human equivalent of veal—milk-fed and sheltered. I spent a lot of time staring at the picture, studying what set of attributes stacked up to make her such a prized beauty. She was five years older than me, cinched into a tight dress, body contorted to display her hair and ass and face all at once. Her makeup was extreme and caused her to look like a drag queen, a persistent look that is still the fashion in the Gulf.

I stood in front of the mirror in Falak’s wardrobe and pulled my jalabiya in tight to reveal a bloated paunch, lopsided hips, and flat butt. Something terrible seemed to have happened to my body over the past two months in Doha. Rather than feeling the fabled sense of completion everyone kept promising womanhood would bring, I felt frantic and aimless, as though I’d lost something important. I became cranky and aggressive and paced the house, loitering in doorways and moaning in English about how bored I was. I pestered Tiny, the maid, while she made flatbread on a burner in the carport; I bothered Umi while she churned butter in her goatskin and Aunt Zayna while she pumped milk from her swollen breast to feed her baby. It was as though when Falak told me not to go there, she had drawn a line in the sand and dared me to cross it, and I always ended up back at the side door that led to the men’s majlis. The majlis had begun to take on, for me, the expansive feeling of the “outside.”

I peeked into the majlis. Aunt Moody’s sons were playing Super Nintendo. I sized the three of them up. Like most boys from our family they were wiry, with sharp, beaky noses. I watched silently as the little one worked Sub-Zero up into decapitating Johnny Cage. I stepped in, lurking at the back of the majlis. AbdAllah was the most hostile, and the youngest seemed almost afraid. It was like walking into a bar and wanting a turn at the pool table. I shuffled up closer and sat behind them to watch. AbdAllah scooted away from me, then lost to Zayed when he took his eyes off the screen. I reached for the player B controls to get a turn. I took my place and blinged through the players. Of course, I chose Sonya Blade. Zayed eyed me sideways and waved his hand in front of his face like I stunk.

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