“Can you believe how young Esmerelda looks?” my mother asked me later when she came and sat next to me again, forgetting that she was mad at me. I nodded, still burning too much to say anything.

4 KHADIJA Sand and Fire

4KHADIJASand and Fire

Khadija. In Islam, Khadija was the Prophet Muhammad’s wife. She was much older than he was and had a lot of money. He was said to have loved her very much.

In America my name sounds like someone throwing up or falling off a bicycle. If they can get the first part of it right, the “Kha” part, it comes out like clearing your throat after eating ice cream. Usually they say Kadeeja, though, which sounds clattering clumsy. It never comes out my mother’s soft way; she makes it sound almost pretty.

It’s not like I’m dying to have an American name. I’d just like a different Arabic one. There are so many pretty names: Amani, Hala, Rawda, Mawal, and they all mean such pretty things—wishes, halo, garden, melody—not just the name of a rich old woman. My father would slap me if he heard me say that. I’m sure the original Khadija was very nice and that’s why the Prophet Muhammad married her and why my father gave me her name, but I’m also sure that if the original Khadija went to school in America that she would hate her name just as much as I do.

I think Princess Diana is beautiful, and even though Diana is a pretty western name, I thought I’d like to have it, so I told my friends at school that I was going to change my name to Diana and they should call me that from now on.

“But you don’t look like a Diana,” Roberta told me.

“What do I look like then?”

“I don’t know. Like a Kadeeja, I guess.”

My father is a mechanic. He is very clever with fixing things and our little house is always filled with tools and engine parts. He works as a third mechanic in a nearby repair shop. The “third” means that he is the extra, yaani, if they have a lot of business, then he has a good job. “Which is not often enough,” my mother says to explain the foreign-looking shame money we get sent every month to buy our groceries with.

My father has many dreams that have been filled with sand. That’s what he tells me: “This country has taken my dreams that used to float like those giant balloons, and filled them with sand. Now they don’t float, and you can’t even see what they are anymore.”

I try to be understanding, but I wish my father wouldn’t tell me these things. I feel empty and scary and have that stomach feeling like something awful will happen.