Ten Things I Hate About Me Read Online Free PDF Page A

week.”
    “Dad,” I groan. “I’m sick of being left out all the time. I don’t have a social life.”
    “You’re sixteen years old. Do you expect me to allow you to go? Do you think I left my brains in the trunk of this taxi? I know exactly what goes on in these places.”
    “Don’t you trust me?”
    “Trust, trust, you kids nowadays are fixated on this word. Trust will never be an issue between you and me. I take it for granted that I can trust my daughter.”
    “Then what’s the problem? You know I don’t drink and I’ll never touch drugs!”
    “A place where there is alcohol, drugs, relations between boys and girls is not an environment for my daughter.”
    “I’m not going to do anything wrong, though.”
    “It doesn’t matter how much perfume you have on, if you stand immersed in a rotten smell, it will rub off on you.”
    “Oh, come on, Dad! You can’t be serious!”
    “I am. Not to mention that drugs can be put in drinks so that girls are easily violated. And you want me to send my youngest daughter out as prey? What has got into you, Jamilah?”
    “I’m just so sick of being different…Why does Bilal get to do what he wants?”
    “He doesn’t. You know I disapprove of his lifestyle. But what can I do? I can’t control him like I used to. He’s a young man now. I can only scream so much.”
    “But if Shereen got up to what he did, it would be different. And she’s older. So age has nothing to do with it.”
    “Girls have more to lose than boys.”
    “That’s a double standard!”
    “Nobody said society was fair.”
    “But I deserve fairness! My friends are allowed to go out and nobody has a sunset curfew like I do! I’m a freak!”
    My dad sighs heavily. “It is absolutely out of the question.”
    We’ve arrived at madrasa and my dad parks the car. I jump out, slamming the door behind me.
    “You’re so unreasonable!” I cry, and storm off to class.
    My Arabic studies and music teacher at madrasa is Miss Sajda. She’s in her early forties but I think she’s in denial. She wears thick black eyeliner like Cleopatra, lots of gold bangles, and leopard-print tops. Her hair is dyed light brown with strawberry blonde highlights, and she teases her bangs so high that sometimes I want to yell out a warning for her to duck when she walks through the classroom door. She’s pretty funky and down-to-earth. She’s fiercely proud of her Lebanese heritage. At the same time, she’s fiercely Australian.
    Miss Sajda is a very close friend of my Aunt Sowsan (my dad’s twin sister), so I occasionally see her outside of madrasa. Aunt Sowsan relishes any opportunity to fatten up our family with her superb cooking. Miss Sajda is usually included in the invitation because she’s a divorcee and therefore, in Aunt Sowsan’s opinion, is deserving of extreme sympathy and kindness.
    The members of our band are Mustafa Moqbil, Samira Abdel-Rahman, and Hasan Celik. While we’re waiting for Miss Sajda to arrive, Mustafa announces to the class that he has a new rap number to perform.
    Even though Mustafa, Samira, and Hasan all play traditional Arabic instruments in our band, they’re also wannabe rappers. They insist on starting most of their sentences with “yo” and ending their statements with “man.” They also think they live in the “‘hood” and attend madrasa wearing Adidas from top to bottom, jeans ten sizes too big for them, and bandannas. Mustafa also occasionally comes to madrasa with a Band-Aid on his cheek in reverence to the American rapper Nelly. Miss Sajda has never asked him to remove it. As far as she’s concerned, he has every right to look as ridiculous as he likes provided he can conjugate his verbs.
    Mustafa, Samira, and Hasan have a rap group called Yo, Oz Iz In Da ’Hood. They invited me to join them but I declined.
    The rap band consists of Mustafa (vocals), Samira (who makes spitting noises into the microphone or blackboard eraser, depending on the props available),