<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Malika\u2019s trip began ominously. Her parents picked her up at the airport and drove to the family\u2019s new villa. She stepped out of the car and fell into a dirt hole as deep as she was tall. The shock of finding the car\u2019s front tires inches from her face erased the effect of any injury or hurt. No one came to her aid. Instead, her parents started bickering with each other.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou didn\u2019t warn her about the hole?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou forgot and parked right next to it!\u201d her mother scolded her father.<\/p>\n
The car stood on the side of a partially tarmacked road in front of a line of fancy houses, some finished, others in varying states of construction. The newly opened gated community rising from the desert was earmarked for the latest influx of foreign professionals. Many, according to Malika\u2019s father on the drive in, were Palestinian and Egyptian. It didn\u2019t matter that they were Arab nationals like he was; they weren\u2019t Kuwaiti. The indigenous population required protection from corrupt foreign influences from other parts of the world, Islamic or otherwise.<\/p>\n
Once Malika was safely ensconced in her parents\u2019 spacious, air-conditioned, three-story villa, with nothing more than a scratch from the fall, her mother, Rania, let drop that four men in a car had followed her as she drove home from work that afternoon. \u201cThey turned away once they saw the guard at the gate,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou weren\u2019t scared?\u201d asked Malika.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, not really.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat did they want?\u201d Malika was alarmed by her mother\u2019s nonchalance.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt must have been a novelty for them to see a woman at the wheel. Whenever women leave the house, they\u2019re usually driven by their chauffeurs.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSuch a backward country!\u201d snorted her daughter.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot backward,\u201d her mother corrected, \u201cjust rich. Kuwaiti women don\u2019t drive, as a rule; it\u2019s not part of their culture.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s no excuse for threatening women \u2014 for threatening you!\u201d<\/p>\n
Their conversation ended abruptly at the sound of a car door slamming and a girlish voice thanking someone for the lift home. Sixteen-year-old Fidaa came bounding into the house with a stack of schoolbooks and a pair of scuffed white ice-skates, their blades protected by hot pink guards.<\/p>\n
Her first words to her older sister were, \u201cAbout time you visited,\u201d and then: \u201cI can\u2019t believe I live here!\u201d It was a sneer, followed by a glare directed towards Rania, who immediately stood up and excused herself. \u201cI\u2019d better go help your father in the kitchen,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Both daughters were incredulous as their mother exited the living room. \u201cWhat does Mom know about cooking?\u201d scoffed Fidaa. Unlike their other women relatives in Detroit, Rania hardly ever cooked, except for making toast in the morning. Family meals had always been their father\u2019s responsibility.<\/p>\n
Malika asked Fidaa, \u201cHow did you survive when Dad was in Kuwait?\u201d He had lived in the country for six months and then returned to the US for a quick visit, before Rania and Fidaa went out to join him in the Gulf. Little Sister grimaced: \u201cTakeaways and handouts from Teta and the aunties!\u201d<\/p>\n
Conversation didn\u2019t improve over dinner. \u201cSkating was okay,\u201d Fidaa answered her father stiffly. Then, softening, she turned to Malika. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing to do here but skate. I\u2019m finally getting my Axels, double toe loops, and figures down.\u201d<\/p>\n
Malika was still confused about the sport Fidaa had taken up when she was ten, after Dorothy Hamill won a gold medal at the 1976 Olympics. By then, Malika had already left Michigan for college in New York. She only saw Fidaa skate when she went back to Detroit for a visit. \u201cDon\u2019t be mad,\u201d she said to Fidaa, \u201cI don\u2019t remember what an Axel is.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fidaa was academic in her description. \u201cYou take off on your left foot and go up on relev\u00e9. In the air, your free right foot steps up. After a half-turn, you straighten your knee and fold into a backspin position. You do one and a half revolutions in the air before landing backwards.\u201d She stressed, \u201con your right<\/em> foot.\u201d<\/p>\n Rania joined in. \u201cThe jump distinguishes average skaters from more advanced skaters.\u201d<\/p>\n Fidaa watched as her mother continued: \u201cIt\u2019s scary to take off on the forward edge of the blade on one foot and land on the other foot\u2019s backward edge of the blade. It\u2019s a challenge every time you do it, because the transfer of weight in the air is difficult. When done correctly, in a sense you\u2019re defying gravity.\u201d<\/p>\n Fidaa nodded solemnly before she added, \u201cThe double toe loops \u2014\u201d<\/p>\n Malika held up her hand and stopped her. \u201cI know. They\u2019re jumps.\u201d Although it was figures eights she remembered Little Sister learning first, as she traced endless symbols for infinity, on the ice.<\/p>\n Their father interrupted them. \u201cAnd where did you skate?\u201d he asked Fidaa pointedly. Malika thought it a peculiar question. How many ice rinks could there be in Kuwait City?<\/p>\n Fidaa picked at the food on her plate. \u201cI practiced on the little rink\u201d \u2014 her voice grated \u2014 \u201cbut for the open session I moved onto the big rink. And nobody,\u201d she stressed matter-of-factly, \u201csaid a thing.\u201d<\/p>\n Her parents exchanged furtive glances before her father said softly, but firmly, \u201cHoney, you know you shouldn\u2019t do that.\u201d<\/p>\n The teenager turned to Malika for support. \u201cThey built a brand-new ice-skating complex a year ago. But get this\u201d\u00a0 \u2014 the expression on her face was one of sheer incomprehension \u2014 \u201cgirls skating by themselves are supposed to stay on the small rink, while the boys are taught on the Olympic-size one. Officially, girls can only go on the big rink accompanied by their families, but never alone or in groups.\u201d Fidaa spent her every free moment on ice in a new facility that had been built for a sheikh\u2019s daughter, another skating friend of Fidaa\u2019s.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat happens if girls skate there?\u201d asked Malika.<\/p>\n Their father answered for Fidaa: \u201cIt\u2019s just not done.\u201d<\/p>\n His younger daughter\u2019s tone was caustic. \u201cYeah, what is<\/em> the problem if I skate there? Haven\u2019t turned into a pumpkin yet!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t talk to your father like that,\u201d Rania interjected wearily.<\/p>\n Fidaa muttered something about not being hungry, and left the table at lightning speed. After a few seconds of silence, Malika glanced over at her mother and asked, \u201cIt\u2019s culture, again, right?\u201d<\/p>\n Rania muttered over her food, \u201cIt\u2019s taking all of us a while to get used to living here.\u201d<\/p>\n Malika cleaned up after the meal. When she stuck her head around the living room door, her parents were in quiet discussion, and suddenly looked up in surprise. It was obvious they had forgotten she was there. Her room, the guest or maid\u2019s room, was at the top of the villa. She retrieved a bag from her suitcase, went to the floor below and knocked on her sister\u2019s door.<\/p>\n \u201cCome in,\u201d Fidaa called out. Her dark eyes brightened at the sight of Malika. \u201cI was hoping it was you \u2014 not Dad and another lecture!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe this will help,\u201d said Malika, handing her the gift bag.<\/p>\n \u201cCool!\u201d First out was a copy of Just Seventeen<\/em> magazine, which Fidaa leafed through until she found the \u201cProblems\u201d page. \u201cSome kid\u2019s written here he doesn\u2019t think he has \u2014 she couldn\u2019t believe it herself \u2014 \u201cthe \u2018right equipment.\u2019\u201d She put down the magazine and examined the other gifts in the bag: a pair of pointy retro sunglasses, some dangling white plastic earrings, and two 45 record singles.<\/p>\n Fidaa immediately put on the earrings and sunglasses. To complete the picture, she held up Duran Duran\u2019s single \u201cGirls on Film\u201d next to her face and copied the pouting expression of the five English boys in make-up on the record sleeve.<\/p>\n \u201cOooh, sexy!\u201d she exclaimed. \u201cWhat\u2019s England like?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBet you didn\u2019t know Birmingham is home of the New Romantics!\u201d said Malika. \u201cI see their fans in the streets: The boys look like Edwardian dandies in frilly, ruffled shirts, while the girls strut around in power pantsuits with these angular shoulder pads.\u201d<\/p>\n The teenager, who\u2019d discovered punk before she left Detroit, shook her head and admired the jiggle of the earrings in the mirror. \u201cI might be here but at least civilization hasn\u2019t failed in the rest of the world,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Malika chuckled. Fidaa had inherited their mother\u2019s fair complexion, her skin unblemished and smooth. She had the family good looks. She was glamorous in her skating outfits. The sunglasses and earrings gave her camp star quality.<\/p>\n Malika paused then asked, \u201cYou okay?\u201d<\/p>\n Despite the fun in the mirror, Fidaa\u2019s voice was sullen. \u201cNo, not really. Mom and I were doing just fine in Detroit. She was in a better mood. You know, she actually likes<\/em> being a skating mom, or at least that\u2019s how it seemed in America. We\u2019d get up at 5 am and go to the rink for an early-morning lesson before she dropped me off at school and went to work. Sometimes she took a late lunch and picked me up after school, left me at the rink, and collected me on her way home. We spent our weekends there. She really enjoyed the competitions and performances.\u201d<\/p>\n Fidaa removed the sunglasses and the earrings and arranged them absentmindedly on her dresser. \u201cMom would watch my friends skate and say, \u2018Rita, you look like a gazelle on the ice.\u2019 Then she\u2019d turn to me and say, \u2018Fidaa, you don\u2019t!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The sisters cracked up. Rania could be notoriously blunt in her assessment of her daughters.<\/p>\n Fidaa grew wistful. \u201cThe two of us were so busy, we had no time for Turkish coffee at Teta\u2019s, and getting our fortunes read. Mom loved not having to deal with the relatives, and who could blame her!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhy didn\u2019t the both of you stay in Detroit?\u201d asked Malika.<\/p>\n \u201cDunno,\u201d shrugged the teenager. \u201cDad visited us after his first months in Kuwait. You saw him on that trip; he stopped in Birmingham on his way to Detroit. Notice anything funny when he passed through?\u201d<\/p>\n Malika shook her head. She wasn\u2019t going to tell her little sister that their father had refused to stay with her and Keith, and booked himself into a hotel instead. The morning she went to collect him, she found him removing the sheets from his bed. He said it was to help the cleaner before he rushed the two of them out of the room. It was then that Malika had that same, queasy feeling she used to get at home in Michigan. It happened whenever she caught a glimpse of her father\u2019s secret life, the one he tried to keep separate from his wife and daughters and far away from the prying eyes of his relatives who had followed him to America.<\/p>\n \u201cDad got a little odd after he returned to Kuwait the second time,\u201d Fidaa said. \u201cHe stopped answering Mom\u2019s calls and refused to send money home. Mom said he didn\u2019t want to pay for skating lessons. So I wrote him a letter and said, \u2018We really don\u2019t care what you\u2019re up to. Just send the damn money!\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cBefore I knew it,\u201d Fidaa shrugged, \u201cwe had moved to this hellhole.\u201d A look of disgust contorted her young face.<\/p>\n Sitting next to each other on Fidaa\u2019s bed, the sisters hunkered over the record player. Before Fidaa put on one of her new singles, she said, \u201cWe have to keep the volume low, or Mom and Dad will have a conniption fit.\u201d Despite Adam Ant barely shouting \u201cStand and Deliver!\u201d above an audible whisper, the two of them bounced together on the bed, part punk pogo and part Egyptian belly dancing. Afterwards they fell back on the pillows, unable to muffle their screams and laughter. Once they settled down, Malika air-kissed her sister goodnight and tiptoed back upstairs to her room.<\/p>\n She waited until the house was completely silent before she retrieved the hash and tobacco concealed in her toiletries, and rolled herself a joint. She paused in the hallway outside her room and listened for any movement in the rest of the household before she walked up a short flight of stairs. She double-checked the latch on the door so she wouldn\u2019t lock herself out, and stepped outside onto the flat roof.<\/p>\n Whirling, mechanical noises from the ventilation fans filled the dry night air. The surrounding villas, identical to her parents\u2019, loomed above streetlamps and the jaundiced light that filled the lanes and in-between spaces of the gated community below. On the roof, Malika found a lawn chair that had been conveniently left in the shadows. She lit the joint. In the distance, outlined in blinking lights, were the towering cranes of Kuwait City, still under construction. When she finished smoking, she wrapped the butt-end in the tinfoil she had taken from the kitchen. She had only spent a few hours in the country, and already it felt totally weird.<\/p>\n The following morning, before she went to school, Fidaa threw a spectacular tantrum and forced their father to iron her clothes. Nothing, it seemed, quelled her adolescent rage \u2014 not even the visit from her older sister.<\/p>\n Most of the time Malika occupied herself by reading or writing cards to Keith, as she waited for her parents to return from work. Bored one afternoon a few days after arriving, she lathered herself with sunscreen, put on her own pointy sunglasses, and ventured outside. Sidewalks had not yet been laid in the gated splendor. The odd car slowed right down when passing her on the street, but this was less bothersome than the sun overhead. Locals obviously knew better than to take walks, or, if they did, they wore hats. She quickly retreated to her parents\u2019 air-conditioned villa.<\/p>\n She used to tag along whenever her father went shopping for food. Their conversations were easier while he was driving the car, as though distraction and traffic enabled him to speak his mind. \u201cI thought you told me you were never going to marry,\u201d he told her.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s what I thought when I was a teenager.\u201d Malika had been heavily influenced by the then-nascent feminist movement, and had smuggled into the house a copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves<\/em>. \u201cThen I met Keith and he changed my mind.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou seem to like Birmingham.\u201d He was referring to his brief visit there.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s okay.\u201d She stopped herself from saying it was better than Kuwait City.<\/p>\n At the villa, her father washed fresh produce from the supermarket in water laced with chlorine, rinsed it a couple of times in bottled water, and spread it out to dry on sterilized kitchen surfaces. \u201cCan\u2019t be too careful with foreign bacteria,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Her mother joined the two of them when they went to buy frozen meat at the Sheraton Hotel. \u201cYou have to wait for a consignment to arrive from the US,\u201d Rania explained. \u201cIt\u2019s a service for expats.\u201d<\/p>\n Malika thought it strange that her mother considered herself an \u201cexpat.\u201d She wasn\u2019t an expat American, she was Palestinian \u2014 an immigrant to the US, an immigrant here.<\/p>\n Rania must have read her daughter\u2019s thoughts. \u201cIt must come from all those years living in Detroit. Funny, I can really taste the difference between US meat and meat that\u2019s local.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI guess that means you\u2019re thoroughly Americanized,\u201d said Malika. No one mentioned halal butchering, although her aunties would have said something if they were there.<\/p>\n Instead Rania gazed out the window. She seemed distracted whenever she, her eldest daughter and husband were together.<\/p>\n Malika liked her trips to the bakery best, in a strip mall filled with sleepy import\/export shops. A motley crowd of Filipina maids, men in Western business suits, and veiled women accompanied by their chauffeurs or husbands in traditional dishdashas<\/em> spilled out from beneath the bakery\u2019s tattered awning into a parking lot full of expensive cars. The skinny bakers, mustachioed men in flour-dusted T-shirts and aprons, often chain-smoking cigarettes, rolled the dough into paper-thin sheets. In seconds, the shrak<\/em> flatbread was baked on hot stones in a cavernous oven. The sheets were peeled off and folded into halves and quarters that the customers carried away in cloth bags or baskets. Malika didn\u2019t miss her mother\u2019s toast in the mornings; she ate shrak<\/em> with lashings of tahini and murabba almashmash<\/em>, apricot jam.<\/p>\n As the interminable afternoons dragged on, she often thought about sneaking up to the roof for a quick smoke, but was fearful of the heat outside. The belief that the nighttime was cooler than the day was, she wrote to Keith, \u201cthe fantasy of people fooled by living in temperate climates.\u201d Beyond the reach of the air-con, summer days and nights in Kuwait were uniformly stifling.<\/p>\n One night after lighting up in the lawn chair, she felt a deep sense of unease. As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she surveyed the upper floors of the villas around her. On the nearest roof, she thought she caught someone moving in the darkness. Whoever it was ducked down behind a parapet once they thought she had seen them. Malika hadn\u2019t noticed anyone on the roofs before. Crushing the joint into the tinfoil, she stood up and took her time to stroll casually across her parents\u2019 roof to the door, intent on giving the impression that nothing was amiss. She didn\u2019t want to appear nervous or fearful. Yet, once inside, she pulled the door behind her and triple-checked to make sure it was locked. In the guestroom, she crumbled the little hash she had left into dust and went downstairs to get rid of it in between layers of kitchen trash. She didn\u2019t think it was safe to mention the incident in her correspondence to Keith. England had made her complacent, and she scolded herself for unwittingly putting herself in danger.<\/p>\n The following afternoon, after she and her father finished shopping, he followed the highway out of the city until the traffic thinned. Eventually he pulled off the road and drove straight into the desert. She wasn\u2019t sure why he had stopped the car, but seized the opportunity anyway and asked, \u201cWhat\u2019s up with you and Mom?\u201d<\/p>\n Her father shrugged. \u201cYou know your mom. She gets these crazy ideas in her head.\u201d He drawled in that funny way of his, like he was a cowboy in a Western. \u201cHalf the time I don\u2019t know what\u2019s she\u2019s saying.\u201d If he thought his explanation was good enough, it only made matters worse in Malika\u2019s eyes.<\/p>\n She had known for a long time that her charismatic father was a terrible liar. It was more than willfulness on his part. The zeitgeist of sex, drugs, and rock & roll she had taken for granted while coming of age \u2014 not so much in Detroit, but after she went to New York \u2014 had affected him in profound ways as well. He left a conservative society and, in the 1950s, moved to an almost equally conservative America. Throughout the 1970s, the sexual revolution had turned everything upside down, including her parents\u2019 marriage. Even the color of his skin, which still made him an object of derision in their own family, had become less of a stumbling block in this new world of free love. Professional success had also helped.<\/p>\n Yet, in Kuwait, he insisted on conforming to social custom. Malika didn\u2019t believe it was religious convention, as the family was Assyrian Orthodox Christian. Despite her father\u2019s own questionable conduct, he thought nothing of curtailing the behavior of \u201chis girls.\u201d Malika wasn\u2019t sure what it was exactly that conspired to keep Fidaa off Olympic ice. His controlling behavior had been one of the reasons Malika had made a life for herself, one radically different to that of her parents, in another part of the world.<\/p>\n To change the mood, her father held his hands wide over the steering wheel and motioned at the desert vista in front of them. \u201cIn the springtime, the sand is utterly transformed.\u201d There was his drawl again, that false bravado. \u201cIt becomes a lush garden filled with tiny green shoots.\u201d She could tell that, in his mind at least, the two of them had put any unpleasantries behind them.<\/p>\n \u201cYou mean after the rains?\u201d Malika said somewhat suspiciously. She was determined not to give in and jolly him along.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s amazing!\u201d He described the trips he had taken into the desert, waxing lyrical about something that had once been, but was no longer there \u2014 for spring, which had come and gone, and had been decimated by the summer heat. Under the circumstances, another season, one that had been fresh and wet, could barely be imagined. Maybe it was the promise that it would come again next year that made her father oddly ecstatic.<\/p>\n By the time the car was turned around and headed towards another view of the same sand, Malika had her own epiphany in the desert. Wherever she and her father had gone, whether within or outside the capital, the landscape had been flat and unchanging. Living day in, day out in monotony was not without consequences. Her father, she realized, was suffering from sensory deprivation, and that\u2019s what she saw in him when he had come back from Kuwait that first time. She remembered their shopping trip together in Birmingham.<\/p>\n He had left the Gulf empty-handed and needed gifts for his wife and daughter, who were expecting him in Detroit. The morning Malika picked him up at the Holiday Inn, they went to Birmingham\u2019s best-known department store. She only ever visited Rackham\u2019s on rare occasions, considering her income, and Keith\u2019s. Its food hall was one of the few places in Birmingham she could find brownies, as they weren\u2019t sold in the neighborhood bakery or the Indian grocery stores.<\/p>\n She and her father had pushed open the double doors of the department store to music blaring inside over the loudspeaker. A giant disco ball hung from the ceiling, sending shafts of light over a crowded ground floor filled with attractive assistants behind elaborate displays for make-up and hair and fashion accessories. Her father stood motionless, taking it all in. Then, as though mesmerized, he went from glittering counter to glittering counter and purchased ornaments for Fidaa\u2019s hair and bottles of expensive French perfume for Rania.<\/p>\n In Kuwait, Malika\u2019s father and mother spent their Sunday afternoons at the expats\u2019 club and, over drinks, Malika met the people her parents socialized with. She particularly liked one married couple, a Saudi PhD and his American wife, both scientists in their early thirties. They planned to move to \u201cthe Kingdom\u201d next door to start a family, despite the religious conservatism they knew they\u2019d encounter. Kuwait was a momentary reprieve \u2014 \u201ca toenail in the water\u201d, as the California-educated Saudi described it to Malika. His young American wife, by his side, nodded her consent; she just needed some time to adjust to life in the region.<\/p>\n Malika admired their resolve. Their enthusiasm won her over and made her believe that love could conquer all. The other people she met at the club were less pleasant. A stuffy English couple lost interest in Malika as soon as they heard she lived not in London, but the West Midlands.<\/p>\n Her parents were off in a corner by themselves. Their low, restrained tones told Malika an argument was brewing. Her mother wanted them to collect Fidaa from the rink. Her father said he preferred to stay at the club, and that he\u2019d make his own way home. Rania left in a huff, with Malika trailing behind her.<\/p>\n With only the two of them in the car, Rania held back her feelings until she couldn\u2019t any longer, and blurted out, \u201cYour father\u2019s having an affair with a woman who lives next door. She was at the club. I\u2019m so upset. What should I do?\u201d<\/p>\n Malika knew her father well enough. He often prided himself on providing for his immediate family, not to mention the wider family he had brought to Detroit. He said he had taken the job in Kuwait for the benefit of his wife and children. Shopping, feeding, and cooking for them were his ways of showing his devotion. But he hadn\u2019t been devoted for a long time. Malika thought of Fidaa\u2019s ultimatum to their father \u2014 \u201csend the damn money\u201d \u2014 and the consequences for her mother and sister.<\/p>\n \u201cDivorce him,\u201d Malika told Rania. \u201cGo back to Detroit. You and Fidaa don\u2019t seem happy here.\u201d<\/p>\n Her mother eyed the traffic on the road. An uneasy silence settled in the car, and nothing more was said. Malika understood it would be the first and last time her mother discussed her husband\u2019s infidelities with her daughters.<\/p>\n The Ice Skating Rink of Kuwait City was more than a sports arena. It was an important landmark, a signifier of modernity, the first facility of its kind to open in the arid Gulf. Malika followed her mother through the lobby to the small rink, which had seating for 600 spectators. They checked the locker rooms and cafeteria, but Fidaa was nowhere to be found.<\/p>\n The realization made Rania laugh out loud. \u201cCome on!\u201d She hurried Malika through white-tiled hallways to the other complex. In the far center of the Olympic rink, wearing a short skating skirt and red tights, her long hair held in place on top of her head by bright, shiny barrettes, Fidaa twirled on the blue-white glassy surface.<\/p>\n She skated figures; she skated fast, and she wasn\u2019t alone. A group of six similarly attired teenage girls kept pace behind her. They weren\u2019t as skilled as she was, but they glided over the ice, their heads and bodies erect, and their arms in fluid motion in front of them or by their sides. None of these young women would be cowed, forced to hide on the smaller, inferior rink. The grown-ups on the Olympic ice, some with children and others in couples admired the nimble, fast-moving group. Teenage boys on the sidelines eyed them warily.<\/p>\n Rana ushered Malika into the sparsely filled 1,600-seat arena and claimed a couple of front-row seats. \u201cWhat your father doesn\u2019t understand is that skating is first and foremost a performance sport,\u201d she said, assessing her younger daughter\u2019s movements on the ice with a critical eye. \u201cFidaa\u2019s not half bad. Skating isn\u2019t about showing off; she needs to be seen, to perform, in order to improve. Some arts are like that. Practice, of course, helps\u2014but you learn more from the successes and failures you make in front of others.\u201d<\/p>\n Rania sat back, absorbed. For the first time during Malika\u2019s visit, her mother appeared to be enjoying herself.<\/p>\n During their laps around the rink, Fidaa dropped back to her friends and exchanged a few words. The group slackened its pace and fanned out in a line heading towards Rania and Malika. Fidaa, in her dangling new earrings, was closer now, and the swirling skaters gave the impression they were getting ready to come off the ice. Rania cheered them back on. \u201cKeep going,\u201d she yelled in parental approval. \u201cAll of you look enchanting!\u201d<\/p>\n The girls headed out again. Fidaa glanced over her shoulder and shouted out, \u201cMom, this one\u2019s for you!\u201d<\/p>\n Picking up speed, she leaped into the air and momentarily levitated as she executed an Axel \/ double toe jump combination. She landed with grace, on the ice. Rania clapped her approval.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s nothing like a good jump,\u201d she admitted afterwards to Malika. \u201cIt\u2019s \u2014\u201d her eyes were bright \u2014 \u201ctransformative.\u201d<\/p>\n Later, in the dressing room, Malika exclaimed, \u201cAll I can say is \u2018Wow!\u2019 Everyone was impressed.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou bet!\u201d Fidaa was breathless. She unlaced her skates. \u201cDon\u2019t think I\u2019m bragging, but I\u2019m the best skater here. I\u2019ve studied and practiced longer and harder than anyone else in the whole damn country. Of course I should be on the Olympic rink!\u201d She suddenly snickered. \u201cDid you notice those stupid boys?\u201d<\/p>\n Malika nodded.<\/p>\n \u201cWhenever I go to the mall in Kuwait City, they\u2019re the same ones who call me \u2018sharmuta\u2019<\/em>!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThey call you a whore?\u201d Malika was shocked. \u201cWhat for?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201c\u2019Cause of these!\u201d Fidaa held up a pair of jeans she retrieved from her locker. \u201cThey probably call me other dirty names as well, but that\u2019s not my problem, I don\u2019t speak Arabic!\u201d Like many first-generation Arab-Americans, Fidaa and Malika hadn\u2019t been taught the difficult language of their family\u2019s home country: Their parents had been too busy trying to earn a living.<\/p>\n Fidaa went on to explain: \u201cTeenage girls in Kuwait never go out without a male chaperone. So Dad\u2019s always with me in the mall whenever I go. How many times has he tried to reason with these boys in Arabic, but they just laugh at him.<\/p>\n \u201cAt the rink, I<\/em> get the last laugh!\u201d She shook her head and her earrings dangled, in glee.<\/p>\n \u201cReady?\u201d asked Rania as she popped into the dressing room, interrupting her daughters. They gazed up at her, and then, like a burst dam, everyone started talking and joking at the same time. The three, still elated, didn\u2019t even notice when they left the coolness of the rink behind and were enveloped by the caustic heat outside.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cOn Ice\u201d was excerpted from Malu Halasa\u2019s unpublished novella Sweethearts of Morocco.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In an excerpt from an unpublished novella by Malu Halasa, ice skating in the desert is more than just a sport.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":27120,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,2774],"tags":[2792,649,2791,854,1007,1566],"article-category":[],"article-type":[],"coauthors":[2023],"class_list":["post-27060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","category-tmr-33-stories-from-the-markaz","tag-expatriots","tag-fiction","tag-ice-skating","tag-infidelity","tag-kuwait","tag-short-story"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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