I tell them what they want to hear, which is nasty stories about young men sticking their things into goats and some twelve-year-old girl being carried off on a camel to be third wife to old Shaykh So-and-So and the five oil wells my father owns.

My mother exploded the first time she heard about a story I told. “You have to show the best of us, not the ugly lies.”

But I let my ambassador sister and cousins do that while I talk ghetto slang.

“That’s not English!” my sister yells.

“My ass this ain’t English!” I yell back.

My mother is disappointed that I am not a good daughter, but she won’t admit that she has anything to do with it and says instead that I have a weak spirit and have been “taken in by the lie that is America: freedom, freedom, freedom.” I know she can’t wait until next year is over and I’m done with high school so she can marry me off and concentrate on the things that matter to her, like her house and her hair.

My sister and cousins are the way my mother wishes I were and she is always comparing us and telling me what good girls they are and how I am just a headache. “You are like labor that never ends: pain everywhere all the time.” She can’t accept that my way of being different is just as good as everyone else’s way of being the same. I like to enjoy myself, unlike my sister Pauline who, despite her American name, is very conservative and believes that all answers lie in God’s words and that suffering is good. My cousin Khadija is conservative too, but I like her, except when her parents are around and she acts stupid like she can’t think for herself.

Mawal, who lives in Nawara, would be my mother’s version of perfect if she weren’t so fat, like her mother, Aunt Saher. They are twins, famous for sitting still and eating up people’s stories, gobbling them like maqluba. Everyone from our family and from our village goes to them. They bring their problems or aches or secrets with them. Like helium in super-stretch balloons that get bigger and bigger and never explode, my aunt and cousin accommodate any hardship. Then the people leave, their burdens gone, and my aunt and cousin are a little fatter than before.

My cousin Hala, who didn’t grow up here and lives in Arizona now, is my mother’s favorite because she is “such a good Arab girl,” but I say she is boring with a capital B and even my mother agrees that she should get her nose out of books more often. Hala has Auntie Fay wrapped around her finger and willing to give her all the freedom in the world, and all she wants to do is sit at home and read.