Nana looked so mad that Mariam feared the jinn would enter her mother's body again.
But the jinn didn't come, not that time. Instead, Nana grabbed Mariam by the wrists, pulled her close, and, through gritted teeth, said,
You are a clumsy little harami This is my reward for everything I've endured An heirloom-breaking, clumsy little harami.
At the time, Mariam did not understand. She did not know what this word harami--bastard--meant.
Nor was she old enough to appreciate the injustice,
to see that it is the creators of the harami who are culpable, not the harami, whose only sin is being born.
Mariam did surmise, by the way Nana said the word, that it was an ugly, loathsome thing to be a harami, like an insect,
like the scurrying cockroaches Nana was always cursing and sweeping out of the kolba.
Later, when she was older, Mariam did understand.
It was the way Nana uttered the word not so much saying it as spitting it at her that made Mariam feel the full sting of it.
She understood then what Nana meant, that a harami was an unwanted thing; that she, Mariam, was an illegitimate person
who would never have legitimate claim to the things other people had, things such as love, family, home, acceptance.
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