Not a Fairytale Read Online Free

pinkie of his left hand grazes my cheek and it begins to bleed. The sight of the blood seems to satisfy Papa. Then he tears up some comic books that are lying around the house. The funny part is that they aren’t mine, they’re Faruk-Paruk’s, and the even funnier thing is that Papa can’t read or write in English. At school, my teacher tells me I’m very clever. I can spell any word she gives me, even backwards.
    S - D - R - A - W - K - C - A - B .
    Faruk-Paruk screams at Papa when he gets home and they have a big fight. Later Faruk-Paruk gets me alone and tells me I am adopted. He says my real mother and father left me in a bin. I hope that’s true! Faruk-Paruk says Ma took pity on me and my ugly lips and kept me. I wish she’d left me in the bin. Just to make sure, I ask Ma for my birth certificate, but she says she’s lost it.
    Now I know why Ma hates me. Why she always lets Faruk-Paruk lick the cake bowl and gives him seconds, when I’m only allowed one portion. It explains why I’m so dark and Salena’s so fair. Ma, I mean my evil stepmother, is always comparing us. Telling me how white Salena is and how black I am. Ma says I should stay out of the sun or I’ll end up as dark as my Hindu friends. She caught me comparing our noses today. Mine is as flat as a pancake compared to hers. Obviously she cannot be my mother. But why do people say I look like Papa? What if Papa is my real father but he married a second wife and she died and he gave me to his first wife, Ma? No, that’s not possible. Ma would never have allowed my father to marry anyone else, unlike Rukshana’s mother.
    A few days later I visit Rukshana at home. While we’re eating the cake her mother made, I ask her if she thinks I could be adopted. Ruks says Ma is much too mean to ever look after another woman’s child. She says I have to be her real daughter. She says Faruk-Paruk must be lying. I suppose she’s right. Rukshana’s father has two wives, and they live right next door to each other. He spends one night with Rukshana and her brothers and mother and the next night with his second wife and their children. They’re neighbours, but Ruks says her mother won’t let her play with her father’s other children.
    Rukshana says I should ask Salena. She should know. She was ten when I was born. But when I phone Salena the next day she can’t understand me. Ever since the twins were born, a year after Muhammad, she always looks half-asleep. When I speak to her she doesn’t seem to hear me and it’s impossible to have a conversation on the phone because there’s always a baby crying in the background.
    After the cake we have to stay out in the garden because it is Tuesday and Rukshana’s father has customers. They come to him to get rid of the jinn who have possessed them. I don’t like the sweet smell of the incense he burns while he works. When we were younger Rukshana and I use to chase the incense smoke, pretending it was a ghost. He gets paid a fortune for removing the jinn and putting them in containers – jars, bottles and metal boxes. Rukshana says that’s why he can afford two wives and so many children.
    Once, Rukshana’s father found us rubbing a jinn-jar, hoping that if we released it the jinn would grant our wishes. Her father explained that these jinn are made by Allah, from smokeless fire. They are not like the jinn in Aladdin’s Tale , although they can fly around the world in the blink of an eye. They were created along with angels and people, and they can be good or bad and make their own choices. Sometimes a bad jinn slides into a person’s body and starts to control them. It’s Rukshana’s dad’s job to remove jinn from people and trap them so that they can’t cause mischief.
    Why would you choose to live in someone’s body when you were free to fly? If I could fly, I would escape and try to find my real parents. Rukshana has just finished reading a book about an orphan boy called Oliver, who’s just like