When We Were Sisters: A Novel

by Fatimah Asghar

I snip and cut and glue an outfit for my Barbie: a short skirt and tube top. She’s wearing that? Aunty says, checking my work as she finishes her last stitch on the shirt, examining it to see if there are any loose threads. Barbie’s not Muslim, I say, holding her up to the light, watching her long plastic legs dangle out of her skirt.

Allah asked us to make language. And so we did. Named all our parts. Named the blue inside us. The heartbreak. The love. Then, we forgot about him. Our language became cement. It settled. Tower. Babel. The fall. The lightning struck. Our throats changed. We separated. We assumed we meant the same thing when we spoke, because we said the same words. But. We were wrong. We were so wrong.