I’m shaking inside. That hurried departure for Sana’a, my father’s anger, Mona’s sadness, her obsessive attention to me: now I understand.

“Years later, when our father told us that Nujood was going to be married, I felt sick about it. I kept begging him to think it over, telling him that Nujood was too young, but he wouldn’t listen. He said that once she was married, she would be protected from kidnappers and the men always hanging around our neighborhood. He’d already had enough problems, he argued, because of me and Jamila. When the men of the family gathered to sign the marriage contract, they even talked about having a sighar, the traditional ‘marriage exchange,’ to wed the new husband’s sister to my brother Fares, if he ever returned from Saudi Arabia.

“The evening of Nujood’s wedding, I couldn’t help crying when I saw her, lost in that dress, far too big for her. She was much too young! Hoping to protect her, I even went to talk to her husband. I made him swear before God not to touch her, to wait until she reached puberty, to let her play with children her age. ‘It’s a promise,’ he said. But he didn’t keep his word. He’s a criminal! Men are all criminals. Never listen to them. Never, never.”

I can’t take my eyes off Mona’s niqab. How I would love, at this very moment, to see the slightest bit of her face, hidden behind that black net, and the tears I imagine are streaming down her cheeks.

I’m ashamed of having suspected her of wanting to spy on us. If only I’d known! All that suffering, for so many years, endured without a protest or complaint, never raising her voice or taking refuge under a sheltering wing. Mona, my big sister, the prisoner of a fate even more tragic than mine, trapped in a maze of troubles. Her childhood was stolen from her, as mine was from me, but I now understand that, unlike Mona, I’ve had the strength to rebel against my fate, and the good fortune to find help.

“Mona! Nujood! Look at us! Watch us!”

Looking up, we see Haïfa sitting on a swing, with little Monira wedged between her knees, bubbling with laughter. Mona goes over to them, and I follow her. The swing next to the girls is empty.

“Nujood, help me fly away,” she says.

Mona sits on the swing. I climb up behind her, placing a foot on each end of the wooden seat, and I grab the ropes on either side. Pumping with my legs, I start the seat swinging backward and forward, backward and forward, more and more quickly.

“Faster, Nujood, faster!” Mona shouts excitedly.

I feel the wind in my face, so cool and fresh. Mona laughs, the first time in a long while that she has laughed so lightheartedly. And this is the first time we’ve ever been on a swing together-I feel like a feather on the wind. It’s so good, recovering this feeling of innocence.

“Omma’s flying! Omma’s flying!” Monira giggles from the swing next to ours.

Mona’s yelping with joy. She doesn’t want to stop.

After a few minutes, my scarf blows loose in the wind, and for once, I don’t rush to readjust it. My hair tumbles down around my shoulders, rippling in the breeze. I feel free. Free!

10. The Return of Fares

August 2008

I’ve eaten a “bizza.” That was a few days ago, in a very modern restaurant where the waiters all wore caps and shouted their orders into a microphone.

The bizza tasted so strange! It crunches under your teeth, like a big khobz flatbread, with lots of good things to eat on top: tomatoes, corn, chicken, olives. At the table next to us, there were ladies wearing scarves who looked like the women in the Yemen Times offices. They were very stylish, and even used a knife and fork to bring the pieces of bizza to their mouths.

I tried to imitate them, cutting my slice the same way. At first it wasn’t easy; I got bizza everywhere. As for Haïfa, she saw a girl empty a bottle of spicy tomato sauce over her plate, so she wanted to try that, too. Except that, from the first mouthful, her throat was on fire and her eyes got all red! Luckily, one of the waiters finally left his mic to bring her a big bottle of water.

Now we have a new game: when we help Omma prepare meals, we pretend we’re customers in a “bizzeria” who’ve come to choose their favorite dishes.

“How may I help you?” asks Haïfa, laying out the sofrah in our main room.

“Let’s see, today, I think I’ll have a cheese bizza.”

Actually, I say cheese because when I rummaged through our pantry bag, I realized that that’s all we have left to eat. Too bad; we’ll cope.

“Come to the table,” announces Haïfa, inviting the rest of the family to join us.

We’ve barely begun to eat, though, when someone knocks on our front door.

“Nujood, are you expecting more reporters?” Mohammad asks me suspiciously.

“No, not today.”

“Then perhaps it’s the water truck, to fill the cistern. But he usually comes in the morning.”

Frowning, Mohammad gets to his feet, still chewing his mouthful of bread, and hurries to the front door. Who could be visiting us at this hour, in this stifling August heat? During very hot weather, visitors usually come at the end of the day.

Mohammad’s cry startles us all.

“Fares!” he shouts. “Fares has come back!”

I feel faint. Fares, my beloved brother, whom I haven’t seen in four years! Supporting herself against the wall with trembling hands, our mother staggers to the front door, and we’re all close behind her, with little Rawdha trying to sneak ahead of us by slipping between our legs. Our tiny hall has never seemed so long.

The young man at the door has a gaunt face and deeply tanned skin; how he has changed! Tall and thin, Fares is no longer the adolescent in the photo I’ve studied so often, down to the slightest details. Now I must look way up to observe him closely. His eyes have a harder look, and his forehead bears a few dark creases, like Aba’s. He has become a man.

“Fares! Fares! Fares!” moans our mother, clinging to his white tunic, hugging him tightly.

“We’ve missed you so much,” I tell him, when it’s my turn to kiss him.

Ramrod straight, Fares is silent. He seems exhausted; his eyes are empty, almost sad. Where has it gone, the ebullience that suited him so well?

“Fares, Fares!” Rawdha sings like a robot, without really understanding that this tall gentleman is her big brother, who left our home when she was still nothing but a little bitty baby.

Since that short phone call from Saudi Arabia, two years after his flight, we hadn’t heard a thing from him, until an unexpected call one evening, just last month. When Omma recognized his voice on the other end of the line, she shrieked with joy. Then we’d all torn the phone from her hands, one after another, to listen to him. He’d seemed distant, very far away, but it had warmed my heart to know he was alive.

“Are things going well for you, over there?” our father had hastened to ask, his voice cracking, on the verge of tears.

Aba wanted to know everything from Fares: For whom was he working? Did he like it there? Was he earning a good living? In answer, my brother had simply repeated the same question several times, as if possessed: “And you, how are you?” Then he told us, “I’m very worried about my family. I’ve heard things. Please tell me that everything’s all right.”

And he was worried-you could hear it in his voice. He explained to us that over there, rumours were circulating about our family. All the way out there, in Saudi Arabia, so remote that I couldn’t even find it on a map! Yemeni travelers had told Fares that we’d had some problems, but they hadn’t given him any details. And then one day Fares had seen a photo of our father and me in a local paper. But after years of playing hooky-he’d abandoned school at the end of the first year-he was simply incapable of reading the article beneath the picture, so that mysterious story had kept tormenting his mind, until he could no longer sleep.