A Woman Is No Man

by Etaf Rum

  “I changed my mind,” Deya told her grandparents that night as they sat together in the sala. It was snowing outside, and Khaled had forgone his nightly ritual of playing cards at the hookah bar because the cold worsened his arthritis. On nights like this, Khaled played cards with them instead, shuffling the deck with a rare smile, his eyes crinkled at the corners.

  Deya looked forward to these nights, when Khaled would tell them stories of Palestine, even if many of them were sad. It helped her feel connected to their history, which felt so far away most of the time. Long ago, Khaled’s family had owned a beautiful home in Ramla, with red-tile rooftops and bright orange trees. Then one day when he was twelve years old, Israeli soldiers had invaded their land and relocated them to a refugee camp at gunpoint. Khaled told them how his father had been forced to his knees with a rifle dug into his back, how more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs had been expelled from their homes and forced to flee. It was the Nakba, he told them with somber eyes. The day of catastrophe.

  They were playing Hand, a Palestinian card game, and Khaled shuffled together two decks of cards before dealing. Deya picked up her hand, scanning all fourteen cards, before saying again, louder, “I changed my mind.”

  She could feel her sisters exchanging looks. On the sofa beside them, Fareeda turned on the television to Al Jazeera. “Changed your mind about what?”

  Deya opened her mouth, but nothing came. Even though she’d been speaking in Arabic her entire life, even though it was her first tongue, sometimes she struggled to find the right words in it. Arabic should’ve come as naturally to her as English, and it often did, but other times she felt its heaviness on her tongue, needed a split second of thought to check her words before speaking. Her grandparents were the only people she spoke Arabic with after her parents died. She spoke English with her sisters, at school, and all of her books were in English.

  She put down her cards, cleared her throat. “I don’t want to sit with Nasser again.”

  “Excuse me?” Fareeda looked up. “And why not?”

  She could see Khaled staring at her, and she met his eyes pleadingly. “Please, Seedo. I don’t want to marry someone I don’t know.”

  “You’ll get to know him soon enough,” Khaled said, returning to his cards.

  “Maybe if I could just go to college for a few semesters—”

  Fareeda slammed the remote down with a thump. “College again? How many times have we talked about this nonsense?”

  Khaled gave Deya a sharp glare. She hoped he wouldn’t slap her.

  “This is all because of those books,” Fareeda continued. “Those books putting foolish ideas in your head!” She stood up, waved her hands at Deya. “Tell me, what are you reading for?”

  Deya folded her arms across her chest. “To learn.”

  “Learn what?”

  “Everything.”

  Fareeda shook her head. “There are things you have to learn for yourself, things no book will ever teach you.”

  “But—”

  “Bikafi!” Khaled said. “That’s enough!” Deya and her sisters exchanged nervous looks. “College can wait until after marriage.” Khaled shuffled the cards for a new deck and turned his eyes to Deya again. “Fahmeh? Do you understand?”

  She sighed. “Yes, Seedo.”

  “With that said . . .” He returned his eyes to the deck. “I don’t see what’s wrong with reading.”

  “You know what’s wrong with it,” Fareeda said, shooting him a wide-eyed look. But Khaled wouldn’t look at her. Fareeda’s jaw was clenching and unclenching.

  “I don’t see anything wrong with books,” Khaled said, studying his cards. “What I think is wrong is you forbidding them.” His eyes shifted to Fareeda. “Don’t you think that will lead to trouble?”

  “The only thing that will lead to trouble is being easy on them.”

  “Easy on them?” He fixed Fareeda with a glare. “Don’t you think we shelter them enough? They come straight home from school every day, help you with all the household chores, never step foot out of the house without us. They don’t have cell phones or computers, they don’t talk to boys, they barely even have friends. They’re good girls, Fareeda, and they’ll all be married soon enough. You need to relax.”

  “Relax?” She placed her hands on her hips. “That’s easy for you to say. I’m the one who has to keep them out of trouble, who has to make sure they maintain a good reputation until we marry them off. Tell me, who will be blamed if something goes wrong? Huh? Who will you point to when these books start putting ideas in their head?”

  The atmosphere shifted. Khaled shook his head. “That’s the price of coming to this country,” he said. “Abandoning our land and running away. Not a moment goes by when I don’t think of what we’ve done. Maybe we should’ve stayed and fought for our home. So what if the soldiers had killed us? So what if we had starved? Better than coming here and losing ourselves, our culture . . .” His words faded out.

  “Hush,” Fareeda said. “You know there’s no use in that kind of thinking. The past is the past, and no good will come from regret. All we can do now is move forward the best we can, and that means keeping our granddaughters safe.”

  Khaled did not reply. He sighed and excused himself to shower.

  Deya and her sisters were straightening the sala when Fareeda appeared at the doorway. “Come with me,” she said to Deya.

  Deya followed her grandmother down the hall into her bedroom. Inside, Fareeda opened her closet and reached for something from the very back. She pulled out an old book and handed it to Deya. A wave of familiarity washed over Deya as she dusted off the hardcover spine. It was an Arabic edition of A Thousand and One Nights. She recognized it: it had been her mother’s.

  “Open it,” Fareeda said.

  Deya did as she was told, and an envelope slipped out. Slowly she lifted the top. Inside was a letter, in Arabic. In the darkness of the bedroom, she squinted to read:

  August 12, 1997

  Dear Mama,

  I feel very depressed today. I don’t know what’s happening to me. Every morning I wake up with a strange sensation. I lie beneath the sheets and I don’t want to get up. I don’t want to see anyone. All I think of is dying. I know God doesn’t approve of taking a life, be it mine or someone else’s, but I can’t get the thought out of my mind. My brain is spinning on its own, out of my control. What’s happening to me, Mama? I’m so scared of what’s happening inside me.

  Your daughter,

  Isra

  Deya read the letter again, then again, then one more time. She pictured her mother, with her dark, unsmiling face, and felt a flicker of fear. Was it possible? Could she have killed herself?

  “Why didn’t you show me this before?” Deya said, springing from the bed and waving the letter in Fareeda’s face. “All these years you’ve refused to talk about her, and you’ve had this all along?”

  “I didn’t want you to remember her this way,” Fareeda said, eyeing her granddaughter calmly.

  “So why are you showing this to me now?”

  “Because I want you to understand.” She looked into Deya’s eyes. “I know you’re afraid of repeating your mother’s life, but Isra, may Allah have mercy on her soul, was a troubled woman.”

  “Troubled how?”

  “Didn’t you just read the letter? Your mother was possessed by a jinn.”

  “Possessed?” Deya said in disbelief. But deep down she wondered. “She was probably just depressed. Maybe she needed to see a doctor.” She met Fareeda’s eyes. “The jinn aren’t real, Teta.”

  Fareeda frowned and shook her head. “Why do you think exorcisms have been performed all over the world for thousands of years, hmm?” She moved closer, snatching the letter from Deya’s fingers. “If you don’t believe me, go read one of your books. You’ll see.”

  Deya said nothing. Could her mother have been possessed? One of the memories she’d tried to forget hurtled to the front of her mind. Deya had come home fr
om school one day to find Isra hurling herself off the basement stairs onto the floor. And not just once, but over and over. She had jumped again and again, both hands curled against her chest, her mouth hanging open, until she had noticed Deya standing there.

  “Deya,” Isra had said, startled to find her watching. Quickly she had stood, dragged herself across the basement. “Your sister is sick today. Go upstairs and get some medicine from the kitchen.”

  The feeling that had come over Deya that day, the twist in her stomach, she would never forget. She had wanted to tell Isra that she felt sick, too. Not with a cold or fever but something worse, only she couldn’t find the words. Physical symptoms—is that what it meant to be sick? What about what happened on the inside? What about what was happening to her, Deya, what had been happening since she was a child?

  Deya cleared her throat. What if Isra had been possessed? It would explain her memories, the letter, why her mother thought about dying. Suddenly she looked up at Fareeda. “The letter,” she said. “When was it written?”

  Fareeda eyed her nervously. “Why?”

  “I need to know when my mother wrote it.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Fareeda said, waving her hand. “No good will come from obsessing over the letter. I just want you to understand that your mother’s unhappiness had nothing to do with marriage. You have to move on.”

  “Tell me when she wrote the letter,” Deya demanded. “I won’t leave until you do.”

  Fareeda sighed irritably. “Fine.” She took the envelope out of A Thousand and One Nights and opened the letter.

  Deya squinted at the date: 1997. Her stomach sank. That was the year her parents had died. How could it be a coincidence? What if her mother hadn’t died in a car accident after all?

  She looked up at Fareeda. “Tell me the truth.”

  “About what?”

  “Did my mother kill herself?”

  Fareeda took a step back. “What?”

  “Did she kill herself? Is that why you’ve refused to talk about her all these years?”

  “Of course not!” Fareeda said, her eyes chasing a spot on the floor. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  But Deya could feel her nervousness—she was certain Fareeda was hiding something. “How do I know you’re not lying? You’ve kept this letter from me all these years!” Deya fixed her eyes on her grandmother, but Fareeda wouldn’t look at her.

  “Did she?”

  Fareeda sighed. “You won’t believe me no matter what I say.”

  Deya blinked at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “The truth is, you’re very much like your mother. So sensitive to the world.” She looked up to meet Deya’s eyes. “No matter what I say now, you won’t believe me.”

  Deya looked away. Was it true? Had her fears been warranted? Had her mother planted a seed of sadness inside her from which there was no escape?

  “Look at me,” said Fareeda. “I might not know many things in life, but of this I am certain. You need to put the past behind you in order to move on. Believe me, this I know.”

  Isra

  Spring 1990

  Isra awoke feeling adrift and nauseated. She wondered why she hadn’t been awakened at dawn by the distant sound of the adhan. Then she remembered: she was in Brooklyn, twelve thousand miles away from home, in her husband’s bed. She sprang to her feet. But the bed was empty, and Adam was nowhere to be seen. A wave of shame rose in Isra’s chest as she thought of the night before. She swallowed, forcing the feeling down. There was no point in dwelling on what had happened. This was just the way it was.

  Isra paced from wall to wall of her new bedroom, running her hands over the wooden bed frame and dresser that filled the narrow space. Why was there not a single window? She thought longingly of all the nights she had spent reading by her open bedroom window back home, looking at the moon glowing over Birzeit, listening to the whisper of the graveyard, the stars so bright against the midnight sky she got goose bumps at the sight. She retreated to the other basement room, the one with the single window. The window was level with the ground, and from it, she could see past the front stoop, where a row of houses stood side by side, and beyond them, only a sliver of sky. America was supposed to be the land of the free, so why did everything feel tight and constricted?

  Before long she was tired again and went back to bed. Fareeda had said it would take days for her body to adjust to the time change. When she finally awoke at sunset, Adam still wasn’t home, and Isra wondered if he didn’t want to be around her. Perhaps she had done something to upset him the night before when he’d put himself inside her. Perhaps she hadn’t appeared eager enough. But how was she supposed to know what to do? If anything, Adam should’ve taken the time to teach her. She knew he must have slept with other women before marriage. Even though the Qur’an forbade the act for both genders, Mama said that men committed zina all the time, that they couldn’t help themselves.

  It was nearly midnight when Adam returned home. Isra was sitting by the window when she heard him descend the stairs, watched him as he switched on the basement light. He flinched when he saw her sitting by the window, both hands wrapped around her knees like a child.

  “Why are you sitting here in the dark?”

  “I was just looking outside.”

  “I thought you’d be asleep.”

  “I’ve been sleeping all day.”

  “Oh.” He looked away. “Well, in that case, why don’t you fix me up something to eat while I shower. I’m starving.”

  Upstairs, Fareeda had neatly assembled servings of rice and chicken in the fridge, each covered with plastic wrap and marked with one of her sons’ names. Isra searched for Adam’s plate and heated it in the microwave. Then she set the sufra the way Mama had taught her. A cup of water to the right, a spoon to the left. Two warm loaves of pita. A small bowl of green olives and a few slices of tomatoes. An ibrik of mint chai brewed on the stove. Just as the teakettle whistled, Adam appeared in the doorway.

  “It smells delicious,” he said. “Did you cook?”

  “No,” Isra said, flushing. “I was asleep for most of the day. Your mother made this for you.”

  “Ah, I see.”

  Isra couldn’t make out his tone, but his potential disappointment filled her with unease. “I’ll be sure to cook for you tomorrow.”

  “I’m sure you will. Your father mentioned you were a good cook when we came to ask for you.”

  Was she a good cook? Isra had never stopped to consider this, much less think of it as a skill.

  “He also said you were a woman of few words.”

  If Isra’s face had been pink before, she was certain it was now crimson. She opened her mouth to respond, but words wouldn’t come.

  “I don’t mean to embarrass you,” Adam said. “There’s no shame in being quiet. In fact, I appreciate the quality. There’s nothing worse than coming home to a woman whose voice never stops.”

  Isra nodded, though she didn’t know what she was agreeing to. She studied Adam from across the table as he ate, wondering whether he would be capable of giving her the kind of love she yearned for. She looked deep into his face, trying to find warmth in there. But his dark brown eyes were staring absently at something behind her, lost in a faraway place, as though he had forgotten she was there.

  It wasn’t until they were in bed that Adam looked at her again, and when he did, she smiled at him.

  The smile surprised her as much as it surprised him. But Isra was desperate to please him. Last night his body had taken her by surprise, but now she knew what to expect. She told herself perhaps if she smiled and pretended to enjoy it, pleasure would come. Maybe that was all she had to do to make Adam love her: erase all traces of resistance from her face. She had to give him what he wanted and enjoy giving it to him, too. And she would do that. She would give him herself if it meant he’d give her his love.

  It didn’t take Isra long to learn the shape of her life in America. Despite her
hopes that things might be different for women, it was, in most ways, ordinary. And in the ways it wasn’t, it was worse. She hardly saw Adam most days. Every morning he left the house at six to catch the train to Manhattan, and he didn’t return until midnight. She’d wait for him in the bedroom, listening for the door to open, for the clomp of his feet as he descended the stairs. There was always some reason to explain his absence. “I was working late at the convenience store,” he’d say. “I was renovating my father’s deli.” “I couldn’t catch the R train during rush hour.” “I met up with friends at the hookah bar.” “I lost track of time playing cards.” Even when he did manage to come home early, it wouldn’t occur to him to take her out somewhere. Instead he spent hours idling in front of the television, a cup of chai in his hand, both feet lifted up on the coffee table, while Isra worked with Fareeda in the kitchen, preparing dinner.

  When Isra wasn’t helping Fareeda with the daily chores, she spent most of her time peering out the window. Another disappointment. Outside all she saw were rectangular houses. Bricks upon bricks, crammed against one another on both sides of the street. Plane trees stood in neat, straight lines along the paved sidewalk, their roots shooting through cracks in the cement. Flocks of pigeons glided across gray, overcast skies. And beyond the row of dull brick houses and worn cement blocks, beyond the line of London plane trees and dark gray pigeons—Fifth Avenue, with its tiny shops and zooming cars.

  Fareeda was very much like Mama, Isra soon realized. She cooked and cleaned all day, dressed in loose cotton nightgowns. She sipped on chai and kahwa from sunrise until sunset. When Fareeda’s sons were around, she doted on them as though they were porcelain dolls instead of grown men. She prepared dinner just the way they liked, baked their favorite sweets, and sent them off to work and school with Tupperware boxes filled with spiced rice and roasted meats. Like Mama, Fareeda had only one daughter, Sarah, who was to Fareeda what Isra had been to her mother—a temporary possession, noticed only when there was cooking or cleaning to be done.