When I was a Girl and not very Pretty: Hasna's story

It is the momentous year of 1917; the end of four hundred years of Ottoman Rule, the beginning of the British Mandate, and marks the birth of Salma's seventeenth child - Hasna. Not only is Hasna a girl born into a society that prizes boys, she is cursed with red hair, blue eyes and freckles. They set her apart, leave her excluded, and are viewed with suspicion in a society where superstitions are a part of daily life. Her father refers to her only as the girl; even her mother acknowledges t...