My body is like some of those women. I have a skinny girl’s waist with woman hips and large breasts. I know my body is sexy; I can tell by the way men look at me, by the way men have always looked at me. I try to hide it in front of my family, and most days I go to school early so I can change out of my loose pants and elbow-length shirts into tighter clothes that make my body show more. Some of the girls are jealous of me because I am like a woman and they are still little girls, but more because guys like me even though I’m not easy like some girls, but if I like someone, then I’ll make him happy. Not to mention that I am exotic.

I like to have fun, to enjoy myself and to feel good. I have always been that way. My mother tells me how wrong this is, like it is evil or something and my sister says the same thing. I think they think it’s wrong because they don’t know what it is to be satisfied, and it scares them. It seems all of the women in our family are like this. Even though married ladies talk about sex, it is always within the context of a marriage and you have to have been a virgin. At least my parents aren’t as bad as Khadija’s father, who thinks that his daughter’s reputation is the most important thing in the world.

Her father hits her and her brothers for anything. One time Khadija took two dollars from her older brother, Muhammad, to buy a barrette. Her mother wouldn’t pay for it because they have no extra money ever and she doesn’t think she should spoil her, so she took it from Muhammad who got really mad when he realized that she was the one who took it. That day when he came home from school, he told his father that he saw Khadija at school kissing a boy behind the gym during lunch hour. Khadija’s father didn’t ask her if it was true, he just came after her with a belt, yelling slut and whore at her. She didn’t go to school for two days, and the next time I saw her she wouldn’t look at me, just held her head down like her shoes were the prettiest things ever.