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

Ma’s armpit, where she had burrowed close under the blankets, and Ma rubbed the melted starlight into her cheeks like cream.
    â€œWhere did Baba go?” I asked. I kept my head down to avoid the feeling of reverse vertigo I got from the stars.
    She drew the points of a constellation in the sand to change the subject. “Can you find the Big Dipper?” I followed her finger while she ran a line between the stars in the sand; this seemed to ease my astrophobia. “Find that one,” she ordered.
    I tried, but had to squint to avoid feeling dizzy. The sky astigmatized into a bright lacework of light and before I could find the constellation, I was off in a comforting deep sleep.
    At some point late in the night, Ma woke me. A meteor shower of rosy gold and silver was passing in the sky. I rubbed my eyes and hugged her close. She squeezed me back. “Sophia, I’m going to have a new baby,” she said.
    â€œWill it be like you or like Baba?” was my first question.
    â€œBoth of us, of course, honey.”
    â€œWill it be a boy?” was my second question.
    â€œWe’ll see.”
    â€œWhat are the chances?” I asked.
    Ma didn’t answer as I hugged her belly, enlivened with the idea of a new sibling, and put my eye to the taut, heavy barrel where our new baby lived. I imagined it was a window through which I could see the transparent body of my new brother or sister, backlit in orange and pink. It smiled at me: infinitely wise, alien, imaginary.
    â€œYou cannot tell your father. Do you understand?”
    I nodded solemnly as she curled me back against her belly. The shadow of the tribesman stood sentry at the top of the dune all night long.
    When light broke, the desert was damp, sand still cold with traces of the winter moonlight. The tribesman remained in the same spot and it was only when the camels craned to the east at the sound of an approaching truck that he relaxed his leg and went down to the herd. Baba’s Land Cruiser appeared over the dune with a rev that made Ma sit upright from our bundle of blankets, already working her anger up into wrath. By the time Baba pulled the truck up and rolled down his window, all Ma could do was let out a little peep of steam: “That’s it!” Baba placed Dima and me in the car without saying a word to her. Ma let him do it, waiting for an apology. But Baba refused eye contact. Ma drew her arm back, first balling it into a fist, and then slapped him.
    â€œGod damn you! Goddamnit! How could you leave us? How could you leave us here? How?”
    Her voice sounded like it was shredding her throat. But Baba maintained the dead air between them. We drove away from that place without an answer. It would be many months before we got one. I looked back out the rear window of the truck as we drove back toward the city; our guardian, the silent tribesman, stood watch with the camels all around. I waved at him until we were out of sight.
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    Almost five months after our night in the desert, Baba still didn’t know Ma was expecting, and the rift between them seemed to be growing. When he called from the rig, he started making an effort to speak to Dima and me in Arabic. To Ma, this seemed to be a way to exclude her and a sign of his wavering allegiance. Whenever he called and said “ salam alaikum ” instead of “hello,” she hung the phone up on him. There was finality in Ma’s movements when she did this, as though she knew it was over before anything was said. She also knew as she harbored the new stranger in her womb that if it were a boy, he would change everything for us, especially within the tribe. Our presence, which for now was at the periphery, would become more central. A boy—a brother—would draw our presence in bolder blood. She wasn’t sure what Matar would make of this news. And she didn’t tell him until it was too late.
    â€œI felt like if I didn’t say it out