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

loud to you it might not be true,” she told Baba as he rushed her, miscarrying, to the women’s hospital.
    Once she was admitted, he was unable to go with her into the “Female Only” maternity ward. Kept at bay by a very aggressive lady security guard, Baba returned to the building, where Dima and I were playing in the lobby under the watch of the Filipino seamstress who ran a shop on our floor.
    â€œYou’re going camping,” he told us.
    â€œBut where’s Ma?”
    â€œShe’s sick. She just needs a little rest.”
    â€œCan’t we stay with her?”
    â€œNo.”
    He packed our clothes and some blankets and that same night took us to the Saudi border, where our uncle Mohamed was waiting to take us away. We arrived long before morning, and were transferred from Baba’s Land Cruiser to the rumbling Suburban garumba full of kids, thermoses of coffee, and carpets. Border guards waved us through the checkpoints, preferring not to deal with the rabble. They knew no contraband would be safe in a truck full of feral kids anyway. I recognized Alia and some of our other cousins from the familial summits at our apartment. We fell fast into loud clapping games, and gorged on Vimto and Aladdin chips, bursting off the cracked cement of Salwa Road and into the unpaved Jafoorah Desert—a track of djinn-haunted land no one dared cross unless they started in the morning and could ensure making it across by dusk.
    As soon as we went off road we hit a dip. All of us piled in the back hovered over the rusted-out floor of the trunk. Just as the tires hit the ground and we hit our heads, the back doors of the Suburban swung open wide like French doors in a thunderstorm. Dima and I clung to each other, but it didn’t seem to bother the other kids at all. Uncle Mohamed drove like a daredevil; he went into a sort of Zen trance, matching gears and speed to the individual personality of each erg. We broke the top of an ordinary-looking dune to find our camp hidden behind it. Consisting of ten large “hair-houses,” or tents woven out of wiry black goat fur, they were so black against the white land that the opening of each looked as though it were the entrance to a deep cave.
    A small Nissan pickup appeared beside us on the top of the dune. The bed of the truck was full of scraggly firewood and at the wheel was our aunt Falak, her twin brother, Faraj, in the passenger seat. She flashed the lights at Uncle Mohamed and guided us down the almost vertical slope into the camp. Falak and Faraj were only about fourteen years old then. I remember being impressed with the two as they stepped out of the truck and came to greet us. Falak wore a fluorescent pink and yellow jalabiya , with a black hijab tied loosely around her head that had fallen off the back like a hoodie. Our uncle Faraj wore a thobe , and his gutra covered his face. Falak put me at ease and Faraj scooped Dima up to tickle her. Despite their youth they were both strangely grown up, as was the case with many of the older boys and girls. Once they had passed the rabble-age (from toddling to about ten), they helped take care of the young stragglers like us.
    Falak led Dima and me to a big tent at the edge of the camp. This was the collective storage tent where everyone piled their bedding during the day. The ground was covered with foam bed pads all sewn into psychedelic floral prints; the edges were stacked with cushions, forming a fortress that was filled with mounded multicolored quilts. Dima and I fell into the soft quilts and fell into a deep sleep from exhaustion, confusion, and a little bit of fear at being so far from our parents.
    When I woke it was dark outside. “I have to pee,” I whined to the darkness. Nothing. “Wake up!” I prodded at Dima. But her wheezy little snores were all I got. The tent had been emptied of all the bedding by now, but for the blanket we were bundled in together. I rose and