The Green Bicycle Read Free

that she loved most. Music moved her, lifted her. As she straightened the sheets on her bed and threw her slippers underneath, she rocked her hips and shook her shoulders in time with the beat. It was going to be a fun day, and Wadjda was ready for it to begin.
    It was going to be hot, too. Already, the sun was burning through the small window above her desk. Wadjda had covered the window with wallpaper, but even that thick sheet failed to block the intense desert heat. Climbing onto her desk chair, Wadjda added a few pictures to the collage she’d started on top of the wallpaper, using images cut from magazines. Her father brought them back from the oil company on the east coast where he worked.
    Scrambling down, Wadjda flipped through one of those magazines now, looking for pictures of girls her age. They smiled out at her from the glossy pages: two girls on skateboards hovering at the top of a jump; a girl strumming aguitar; a group of kids sitting on the beach, boys and girls together, arms slung around one another’s shoulders. The heat burned against Wadjda’s fingers as she climbed up again, pressing these new pictures onto the wallpaper. Her collage was her checklist, a reminder of all the things she would do as soon as she got the chance.
    On the radio, the DJ introduced the next song. Wadjda dashed to her tape deck and hit record as the new single from Grouplove began. She wasn’t sure what the DJ had been saying about the song, or what the band was singing about—her English couldn’t quite keep up with the fast pace of the lyrics. But she loved the feeling the song gave her. Flinging out her arms, Wadjda spun in a circle, closed her eyes, and let the beat move her. She knew the song was good. The DJs had played it more than a dozen times in the last few days. Only a hit would get so much attention.
    Wadjda prided herself on her taste in music. Nine times out of ten, the songs she picked to record went on to become hits. And as much as she loved music, she loved sharing it even more. The mixtapes she made sold for real money at school—five Riyals each. And this latest mix was so good that her classmates would probably buy it even if she charged a lot more!
    The thought of selling the tape made Wadjda pause in her dance.
Better be safe
. Quickly, she clambered up ontothe bed and ran her fingers along the length of cord she’d strung in through the window, making sure it connected properly to the back of the radio. The cord led to the roof, and from there to the makeshift antenna Wadjda had rigged up to capture songs from stations all over the world.
    She’d found the antenna discarded next to a garbage bin on one of her rambling walks home from school.
Who still uses these?
Wadjda had thought, squatting in the dirt.
I bet it’s someone old
,
because there’s a satellite dish on every roof in Riyadh!
    Not till later, when she was sitting in their satellite dish-less house, straining to make out the song buzzing through her radio’s fuzzy speakers, did Wadjda realize the antenna was perfect—for her. But what if she’d missed her chance? In Riyadh, if you didn’t take something when you saw it, it was usually gone by the time you went back.
    Still, she had to try. The next day, she erupted out of school the minute she was dismissed and raced through the streets, her heart thudding against her chest. Magically, the antenna was still there. Waiting for her like a gift.
    Dragging it all the way to the roof took hours of panting, sweaty work. But it was worth it. The antenna was Wadjda’s tunnel to a faraway world. The music it carried into her room created a private space, a place far from the shrieky Turkish soap operas her mother adored, from the gloomynews reported daily on TV. Wadjda’s radio played music made especially for her.
    Turning over the English name of the song she was recording in her mind, Wadjda carefully wrote down her own version of