"Baby, baby, please, no," he pleaded with her. "Please, off the bike before you fall and hurt yourself."
She rode it anyway, in circles, just out of reach. She mimicked him, speaking in English. "Baby, baby, please. Baby, baby.... " Then she would switch to Arabic. "I know what you can do and what you cannot do. You are not my father. And I am a child. Here I have rights."
One day, without warning, the front wheel of the bicycle twisted on a patch of oil. The bike slid out from under her, and she plunged to the ground. With her thumbless hand, she broke her fall, but the yellow tubes jarred loose and spilled to the pavement.
Saad ran to her.
She dusted herself off, picked up the tubes and looked at her hand. Blood trickled from a gash. The tubes would have to be cleaned and reinserted. Her face trembled, as if she wanted to cry, but she held it in. She couldn't afford to show her tears, not now.
"That's it," Saad said. "I take the air out of the tires. No more biking."
Marwa brushed past him and walked away muttering. Saad translated. She was saying: "I don't want to stay here anymore."
Saad was growing weary and frustrated. He needed a break. He began letting her spend more weekends with other families in the network of Iraqi Americans around Los Angeles.
Sometimes she stayed with the family of Karim and Lily Karam in Palos Verdes Estates. The Karams took her to ride horses and let her try on lipstick. She watched an old Egyptian movie about a belly dancer named ZuZu, who fell into the arms of a blond leading man. "Hi, handsome," Marwa said, in English. "So handsome."
She borrowed the movie and took it back to Saad's, but he wouldn't let her watch it.
"Movies like this, they are totally undermining me," Saad said, burying his head in his hands. "And undermining society. It's taking liberalism into the extreme. As far as the clothes, anything goes. Freedom, freedom. We are free to do whatever we want. I can't have her watching this trash. Not in my house."
One Saturday, Theresa and her fiance took Marwa to Universal Studios. I went along. At Waterworld, a lavish production based on the movie, men in green uniforms strutted in front of us with rifles and grenades. They fired at each other. Water splashed. Explosions thundered. The men screamed.
Marwa held desperately to Theresa's arm. "Theresa, Theresa, is it real? What is happening?"
It was fake, Theresa said.
