Audiobook Mia's Odyssey Chapter 1 English Mastered Audio
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EnglishVoice Age
Young Adult (18-35)Accents
Arabic (General) North American (General) North American (US General American - GenAM)Transcript
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Chapter one A little girl in Palestine. I sat with my hands folded on my lap, wearing my long black dress and black hijab. My mother was chatting and laughing with two women, while a thoroughly unpleasant man sitting near her stared at me with what I could only interpret as a sort of curious lust. I was 15 years old and I was doing my best to be invisible, but it obviously wasn't working. They were discussing the idea that I might become this man's wife. I was born in 1977 in the town of Cida in Palestine. The place Israelis called the West Bank side a is an ancient city on a hill where only a few 1000 people live. The streets are narrow, built centuries before anyone could have imagined things like cars or busses. The buildings are mostly made of stone and on the outside they are the same light beige color. This made the whole town look a little bit like a black and white photograph with occasional splashes of color where red ceramic tile was used to trim a fancy roof. My house was large because my family was large. I was the youngest of 13 Children and I grew up with four brothers and eight sisters. Three other Children in my family died as toddlers many years before I came along. I'm not sure how I came to know this because my mother never spoke of the Children she lost, but those three siblings were buried somewhere under our house. The house I grew up in is traditional in that part of the world two stories high and built around a large courtyard. It was near the edge of town and a dark blue gate separated the courtyard from the busy street. Outside that gate was solid metal on the bottom, but more open on top so you could see only things that were very tall. Go by outside the courtyard. In the morning my mother and father would get up early, do their morning prayers and have tea in the courtyard. My sisters and I love to sit out there when we could find a moment between our chores sipping tea and listening to the birds and the trees On the main floor where our bedrooms, a couple of formal living rooms, two kitchens and an enormous room for family gatherings and parties. I shared a bedroom with four of my sisters upstairs. Two of my brothers had apartments, complete with kitchens where their whole families lived above the second floor. The roof was flat, which is how you make a roof in a place where there is no snow or ice and not much rain. That rooftop was a wonderful place where a young girl could sit and watch the sun go down over the sea or lie on her back and count the stars by Palestinian standards. We were fairly prosperous. My father owned a store, maybe a 15 minute walk from our house. It seemed to me that everyone in. Saida knew my father and it was probably true in a town as small as that, nearly everyone would have bought something from him at one time or another. He sold all sorts of things, including food, produce, clothing, school supplies, and many other things. It was like a small walmart. It had everything. My father's store was a wonderland for a young girl, but it was also a pretty good place to get in trouble. I remember one time during almonds season, I wanted to bite into the fresh young almonds. My father had for sale in the store, but I didn't have any salt. I ended up poking a hole in one of the bags of salt on the shelf so I could hold my almond next to it. I got so busted. My father also had many, many acres of land outside of town where he grew olives, plums and cherries. We had so many olives that we would sell some to the other dealers, sell some in the store and still have plenty for us to make olive oil ourselves. My friends and I love to go to my father's fields to play games or to eat the cherries off the beautiful cherry trees. They were usually still bitter when we ate them, but with a little bit of salt, I thought they were wonderful. All my memories of my father are of a kind and gentle man. He was small and thin with big ears, a big nose and a warm smile. He smoked cigarettes on Fridays. We had friday prayers and I would iron his pants for him and polish his shoes, I would watch him get ready shaving and clipping the hair out of his ears and his nose. Everyone inside the knew him as honest and reliable. He was busy, constantly working, but he seemed to always have time to spend playing with his Children, especially with me. I don't have any idea if I actually was his favorite, but in my eyes and in my heart I was, I followed him everywhere. He went attached to him like a shadow. When I hung around the store, my father's business associates would tease me with comments like, who is this tiny creature? I would draw myself up as tall as possible, which really wasn't very tall at all and tell them indignantly, I'm not a creature. I'm a girl and I'm his daughter. Can you not see that? My mother, on the other hand, was not a nice woman, She ruled the house. And my father in a sort of simmering rage. And I'm sad to say that every memory I have of her is angry. I don't know how any mother could hate her daughters. But I really believe that my mother hated my sisters and me in Palestine life is not easy for a girl. The tradition in our world is that women exist mostly to have babies and to serve the needs of men. And I think my mom wholeheartedly believed that my older sister radia said of our mother. If I saw her frying in **** on a stick, I would never forgive her for making my life the way it is. My mom had earned this by turning radia into a house, made every marriage proposal radio got my mother sabotaged. It seemed she had decided that raja would stay and take care of her the house, my brothers and even my brother's kids as if my sister was some kind of live in servant. Finally, after my mom died, Rhodia got married but she was at an age when she couldn't have Children any longer. My mother's selfishness had denied my sister the chance to have a child to hold, to have the feelings only a mother can experience to look into her child's eyes and cry knowing that she made that child. This might seem strange. But for the most part, I have never felt very close to my siblings. Some of my sisters were so much older than me that I had nothing in common with them. They were married and gone when I was still very young, the others were around but they were not terribly interested in little Mia. My two oldest sisters have never gotten along and to this day they can't stand to be in the same house together. My sister Nawal was one exception. She was about seven when I was born and for as long as I can remember, she was my guiding light. When I was very young she treated me as I imagined. A loving mother would treat her daughter in a perfect world. My mother gave birth to me and that's about it. Noel was there to hold me and to comfort me when I was frightened or upset, she dressed me up like I was her little doll. She let me listen to her favorite music with her. She helped me with my homework. The day Noel got married and left our house was one of the worst days of my life. When we were young. I was close to my sister. Degreed who was three years older than me. I would play tricks on her and then save her. She and I were very different. I was interested in school and my studies but she wanted to hang out with her friends and never wanted to do her homework. Even though I was younger, I would try to do it for her. Her marriage was also hard for me. Doc Reid's husband and Noelle's husband are brothers and they are both horrible men. I was never fond of any of my own brothers. This might sound like I simply don't like men. But it's not true. You have to understand how it is in that world. My brothers consider themselves to be superior beings. They were the important ones and we were just there to make them happy. They had been taught that girls were an inferior species and they were happy to embrace that teaching my sisters and I felt affection for them. But I never felt that they cared about us. We were simply maids to them. We had to cook for them and serve them and basically do everything a servant would have to do. My mother not only preferred my brothers over my sisters and me, but I felt like she worshiped them. I remember a night when I was about seven years old, sitting down at the dinner table with a piece of chicken on my plate. I was little, but I was hungry before I could take a bite. My brother ali came into the kitchen and my mother took my plate and gave him my chicken to this day. I can still feel that empty feeling of betrayal and sadness and hunger. When my sisters got married, it was like they were sold to another slave family. Most of their husbands treated them even worse than our brothers treated us. So I always felt terrible when one of my sisters went off to her fate. One exception was Abraham who married my sister, Nyla. He was always good to my sister and he was good to me When they were engaged, he would bring my sister a gift and I, the bratty little sister would say, what about me? Then? He would always have some little thing for me. He must have felt it was his duty to keep me safe from other guys because he protected me. When I was in high school, there was a guy who would follow me to school and try to talk to me and I was not comfortable with that. So I talked to Abraham about it the next day Abraham walked to school with me and that guy never bothered me again. You may have noticed that I speak of members of my family in past tense. This is because I have hardly any contact with my family anymore. The way my life has unfolded is not acceptable to their way of thinking and they have cast me out as not worthy of our family name. One of my brothers has even promised to bury me alive if I ever returned to Cida.