Read Online The Girl Who Fell to Earth by Sophia Al-Maria - Free Book Online

welcome the women into the house.
    When we opened the door, a pack of kids came bursting in and surrounded us. Some of the shy ones hung back near the door, eyes wide and staring at Ma. One of the smaller kids dashed up to her, tagged her leg, and then skittered back off to a safe distance where he could safely observe her. The standoff between Ma and the children broke when she spoke, and although her language was strange, her tone was understood: “I’m not from outer space. I promise.” Then, like Ewoks to Leia, the kids gathered around, taking turns touching the cobalt silk of her dress and her thin white hands.
    My uncle Mohamed’s daughter Alia was closest in age to me, and so we identified one another and immediately fell into cahoots. Despite our language barrier, we communicated in a babelogue of rowdiness. As we got to know one another, the playdate with the other cousins escalated into a riot, and I joined in with the rest in razing the flat. We crowded onto the master bed and leaped for the ceiling, each spring bouncing us higher together. The littlest ones got hurt, tangled in the sheets, or trampled. Somewhere in the savaging of the bedroom we tore the curtains down, we soaked the carpet with the shadafa while sword fighting, and I managed to break my own glasses. The liberation of being in a mob didn’t last. In the end, I wasn’t anonymous enough to escape blame, and Ma snared me out of a skirmish by the nape of my neck and in her deepest, most threatening voice scolded, “You know better than that! What is wrong with you!?”
    But I was so emancipated by the chaos that I felt no shame. Now that I knew there were two authorities in my life, Ma’s rules and the tribe’s rules, assimilation equaled rebellion. I bolted with the pack to the door, where we all made off on different bearings, using the stairwell like monkey bars, jumping in the elevators, and scratching graffiti in the wooden doors of neighboring flats. We made it down into the lobby, where the entrance of the building had been converted into a temporary majlis by our uncles for the visit. They had rearranged the leather sofas in the waiting area and now sat in a row, tribunal-style, on the black marble floor.
    Ma approached the group of men, trailed by the pack of cousins, who emerged from the elevator in a swell and pushed us in close to the men. Dima and I trailed behind her. “ Salam alaikum ,” she greeted them in her wide-voweled Arabic.
    â€œ Wa alaikum salam ,” the men murmured back. They seemed as apprehensive and even bashful as she did at this meeting.
    The men watched silently as she found a perch on the edge of the white leather couch; Dima and I flanked her like cherubs in our fancy dresses and stared back. “Come on, Sophia. Go say hello.” Ma pushed me off my seat like she was sending a little boat out into a current.
    I went as I’d been bidden to the first man, who offered me his beardy cheek for a kiss, and made the rounds of the room this way, pausing at each person and leaning in for an itchy kiss. Stranger after stranger asked me, “Do you know who I am?” Of course I didn’t have a clue and so smiled dimly and nodded “yes,” waiting to be passed on to the next man.
    Dima, who was still barely toddling, had been watching the whole scene. Normally she wouldn’t leave the skirt-clinging radius of Ma, but suddenly and completely on her own she waddled several meters across the carpet toward the row of aged Bedu kings and fell into the arms of a particularly gruff-looking one with an orange beard. “Hi!” she said, and stroked his bright facial hair, fluffing it as though it were a Muppet’s fur. Tears welled up in the old man’s eyes. “Don’ cry. Don’ cry,” Dima lisped, and patted him on the shoulder the way she would a big gentle dog.
    â€œDima, you know who that is?” Ma asked.
    â€œGrampa,”