A Woman Is No Man

by Etaf Rum

  “Yes, you do,” Sarah said. “You always have a choice. You’re always in control. Have you ever heard of a self-fulfilling prophecy?”

  Deya sighed irritably. “I’ve read about it.”

  “It says we attract what we think. Whatever belief a person has about the future comes true because the person believes it.”

  “You mean, like Voldemort in Harry Potter?”

  Sarah laughed. “That’s one example. Everything we draw into our life is a mirror of our thought patterns and beliefs. In a way, we can control the outcome of our future just by thinking more positively and visualizing only the things we want for ourselves. Of course, Voldemort did the exact opposite. He made his own worst-case scenario come true by believing in it too hard.”

  Deya only looked at her.

  “What I’m trying to say is that if you believe you have power over your life, then you ultimately will. And if you believe you don’t, then you won’t.”

  “Now you’re really starting to sound like Dr. Phil,” Deya said, rolling her eyes.

  Sarah clucked her tongue. “I’m serious, Deya. You know what you have right now? The entire world at your fingertips. You can go home and tell my mother, ‘I’m not getting married right now. No matter how many suitors you find me, I refuse to marry any of them. I’m going to college first!’”

  “I can’t say that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because there’s no way Fareeda will let me go to college.”

  “What is she going to do if you apply to college and get accepted? Stand at the door every morning and stop you from going to class?”

  “I don’t know what she’ll do, but I don’t want to find out.”

  “Why not? What do you have to lose?”

  “I don’t know . . . I don’t know. But I don’t want to upset her. I can’t just defy her. I’m scared . . .”

  “Scared of what? What could she possibly do? Hit you? Don’t you think standing up for your future is worth a beating or two?”

  “I don’t know!” Deya said, feeling herself bubble with anger. “Please, just stop. You’re making light of the situation. You’re making it sound like I have more power over my life than I actually do, and it’s not fair. If things were really that simple, then why didn’t you do that yourself? You could’ve said the same thing to Teta, you could’ve never run away. But it’s not that simple, is it?”

  “It is simple,” Sarah said softly. “No matter how you may feel now, this is a fact: your life is in your hands. If I had known that when I was your age, I would’ve done many things differently. I would’ve been less afraid of the future. I would’ve had more faith in myself. Believe me, not a day goes by that I don’t regret not standing up to my family. I haven’t seen them in over ten years, and I miss them. But most of all I wish I could’ve stayed and watched you and your sisters grow up, maybe even raised you myself.” She paused. “I don’t want you to end up like me, thinking your life isn’t in your hands. Making decisions out of weakness and fear. I ran away to escape the shame of what I’d done, but that came at a cost.”

  “What cost? Your life seems pretty great to me.”

  “Belonging,” Sarah said.

  “Belonging?”

  “It’s hard to explain. . . . I still struggle to accept myself and it would have been better if I’d started sooner, much sooner. It’s hard to belong anywhere, truly belong, if we don’t belong to ourselves first.”

  Deya stared at her. “Are you saying you never made any friends? You never dated?”

  “No, I’ve made friends and I’ve dated.”

  “Are you with someone now?”

  “No.”

  “Why not? You live by yourself. You can do whatever you want.”

  “I think that’s what I mean by truly belonging,” Sarah said. “I’ve met a lot of guys over the years, but it was hard for me to really connect with anyone. I wasted a lot of years pretending to be someone that I wasn’t.” She met Deya’s eyes. “Maybe if I’d had someone to trust back then, to help me find courage and believe in myself, I wouldn’t have had to lose my family to find freedom. That’s why I reached out, Deya. I want to help you find another way.”

  Deya looked at her aunt for a long time. If Sarah, this Americanized woman, who had gone to college and managed a bookstore and lived freely—if she had regretted her choices, was there any hope for her? She felt herself sink into her chair. Would she always be afraid? Would she ever learn courage? Listening to Sarah now, she didn’t think so.

  “What’s wrong?” Sarah asked, trying to meet her eyes. “Why the sad face?”

  “I just don’t understand what I’m supposed to do. I thought I was confused about my life before—but now I’m even more confused. You’re telling me I need to accept myself for who I am, that I need to stand up for what I truly believe in instead of running away, but that only sounds good in theory. It doesn’t work like that in the real world. Self-acceptance won’t solve my problems, and courage won’t get me anywhere. These things sound great in some inspirational speech, or in a book, but the real world is much more complicated.”

  “Tell me,” Sarah said, sitting up in her chair. “Why can’t you stand up to my parents?”

  Deya fixed her eyes on the window.

  “You can tell me,” Sarah said. “Be honest with me, with yourself. What are you so afraid of?”

  “Everything!” Deya heard the sound of her voice before she knew she was speaking. “I’m afraid of everything! I’m afraid of letting down my family and culture, only to find out that they were right in the end. I’m afraid of what people will think of me if I don’t do what I’m supposed to do. But I’m also afraid of listening to them and coming to regret it. I’m afraid of getting married, but I’m even more afraid of being alone. There’s a thousand voices in my head, and I don’t know which one to listen to! The rest of my life is staring me in the face, and I don’t know what to do!” She willed herself to stop talking, but the words spilled out. “Sometimes I think I’m so scared because of my parents, but then I wonder if it’s my memories of them that make me sad, or if I’ve been sad all along, before my brain could even make memories. And then there are days when I’m certain I’ve remembered everything wrong, and there’s this horrible feeling inside me, and I think maybe if I remember something good, I’ll be cured. But it never works.”

  Sarah reached out and squeezed Deya’s knee. “Why do your memories of your parents make you so sad? What could you possibly remember to make you feel like that?”

  “I don’t know. . . . I don’t even know if my memories are real. All I know is that my mother was sad all the time. She hated marriage, and she hated being a mother.”

  “But you’re wrong,” Sarah said. “Isra didn’t hate being a mother.”

  “That’s how it seemed to me.”

  “Just because she was sad, that doesn’t mean she hated being a mother.”

  “Then why—”

  But Sarah cut her off. “You have to understand, Isra was only seventeen when she married Adam, and she had no one here besides him. She was exhausted—cooking, cleaning, raising children, trying to please Adam and my mom. She struggled more than any woman I’ve ever met, but she loved you dearly. It hurts me that you don’t remember that.”

  “I’m sure she struggled,” Deya said, “but it was her choice to have all those children. She never stood up for herself, much less for us.”

  A small smile returned to Sarah’s face. “Interesting you should say that. For a minute there, I thought you didn’t believe women like us had a choice at all.”

  “Well, yes, but—”

  Sarah shook her head. “You can’t take it back now. You’ve just admitted you have choices. You’ve done worse than that, really.”

  Deya frowned.

  “If you believe Isra—a Palestinian immigrant, with no job or education and four children to look after, and who didn’t even speak English well—if you believe she had a choice, the
n that speaks volumes about the amount of choice a bright, educated Arab American girl like yourself has.” Sarah shot Deya a playful smile. “Don’t you think?”

  Deya started to protest but found nothing to say. Sarah was right. She did have choices. What she didn’t have was enough courage to make them.

  “I should get going,” Deya said, looking at the clock on the wall. “I don’t want to be late to meet my sisters.” She stood and gathered her backpack. “Time seems to fly in here,” she said as Sarah walked her out.

  “Does that mean you like my company?”

  “Maybe a little.”

  “Well, come back soon then. I want to tell you a story.”

  “A story?”

  Sarah nodded. “About why Isra started reading.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  Isra

  Winter 1993

  The leaves turned brown. The trees were bare. Snow came. Isra watched it all from the basement window. People on the sidewalks rushed by, cars blinked and honked, traffic lights flashed in the distance. But all she saw was a dull painting, flat behind the glass. She had days of overwhelming sadness, followed by days of helplessness. It had been like this ever since the birth of Nadine and Omar’s son. Whenever Adam came home to find her staring dully out the basement window, she did not protest when he neared her. In some perverse way she even looked forward to it. It felt like her way of apologizing for all she had done.

  “What is this?” Fareeda asked one December morning when Isra came up to help with breakfast, squinting at the blue and purple mark on Isra’s cheek. “You think anyone wants to see this?”

  Isra opened her mouth, but nothing came out. What was there to say? A husband hitting his wife was normal. How many times had Yacob hit Mama? She wondered if Khaled had ever hit Fareeda. She had never seen it, but that meant nothing.

  “There are things in this life no one should see,” Fareeda said. “When I was your age, I never let anyone see my shame.”

  Watching Fareeda, Isra thought she was the strongest woman she’d ever known, much stronger than her own mother. Mama had always wept violently when Yacob beat her, unashamed to display her weakness. Isra wondered what in Fareeda’s life had made her so bold. She must have suffered something worse than being beaten, Isra thought. The world had made a warrior out of her.

  Fareeda led Isra upstairs to her bedroom. She opened her nightstand drawer, pulled out a small blue pouch, and fumbled for something within. First she pulled out a stick of red lipstick, a deep maroon, then shoved it back in. Isra pictured Fareeda’s lips covered in the color. She had worn red lipstick at Isra’s wedding, a bright and upbeat shade. But the dark shade of maroon, the deepness of it, suited her much more.

  “Here,” Fareeda said, her fingers finally producing what she had been searching for. She pumped a few drops of liquid foundation onto the back of her hand. Isra winced when Fareeda touched her skin, but she didn’t seem to notice. She continued smearing the makeup on Isra’s face, coat after coat over the bruises, until satisfied. “There,” she said. Isra risked a peek at herself in the mirror: every inch of shame, every shade of blue and purple and red, had disappeared.

  As she turned to leave, Fareeda grabbed her elbow and pulled her close, thrusting the bottle of foundation into her hands. “What happens between a husband and wife must stay between them. Always. No matter what.”

  The next time Adam left bruises, Isra covered them herself. She had hoped Fareeda might notice her efforts, that it might bring them closer somehow, maybe even back to the way things were in the beginning, before Deya was born. But if Fareeda did notice, she didn’t let on. In fact, she pretended as if nothing had happened, as though Adam had never hit Isra, as though Fareeda had never covered her bruises. It bothered Isra, but she willed herself to remain calm. Fareeda was right. What happened between a husband and wife must stay between them, not from fear or respect, as Isra had initially thought, but shame. She couldn’t have Sarah or Nadine suspecting anything. How foolish would she look if they knew Adam beat her? If she were back home, where a husband beating his wife was as ordinary as a father beating his child, Isra might have had someone to talk to. But Sarah was practically an American, and Nadine had Omar wrapped around her finger. Isra had to pretend nothing was wrong.

  But pretending only worked on the outside. Inside, Isra was filled with a paralyzing shame. She knew there must be something dark stemming from within her to make the men in her life do these terrible things—first her father and now her husband. Everywhere she looked, the view was dreary and dismal, as gray as the black-and-white Egyptian movies she and Mama had loved to watch. Isra remembered clearly the colors of her childhood—the pink sabra fruit, the olive trees, the pale blue skies, even the wide, grassy cemetery—and she understood with dread that color was only seen by worthy eyes.

  That winter, Isra did little but sit by the window, retreating to the basement as soon as her chores were done. She hardly spoke unless spoken to, and even then her responses were muted. She avoided her daughters’ eyes, even when she held them, mothering them in a rush, desperate to return to the window, where she stared in a daze through the glass until it was time for bed. Only she barely slept, and when she did, she wept in her dreams, sometimes even waking in a scream. On those nights, she’d look over to Adam, afraid to have woken him, only to find him in a rough sleep, his mouth hanging wide.

  Isra sometimes wondered if she was possessed. It was possible. She’d heard countless stories growing up about a jinn entering a person’s body, making her do unseemly things—commit violence or murder, or, most often, go mad. Isra had seen it with her own eyes as a child. Their neighbor, Umm Hassan, had collapsed to the floor one afternoon after learning that her son had been killed by an Israeli soldier on his way home from school. Her eyes had rolled back in her head, her hands pounded her own face wildly, her body shook. Later that night, news had reached Isra that Umm Hassan had been found dead in her home, that she had swallowed her tongue and died. But Mama had told Isra the truth: a jinn had entered Umm Hassan’s body and sucked the life from her, killing her. She wondered if the same thing was happening to her now, only more slowly. If it was, she deserved it.

  Morning, and Isra stared out the window. Her daughters wanted to build a castle with their blocks, but she was too tired to play. She didn’t like the way they looked at her with their dark eyes and sunken cheeks, as though they were judging her. In the glass reflection she could see three-year-old Deya watching her from the corner, her tiny fingers curled around a worn Barbie doll. It was her eyes that haunted Isra the most. Deya was a solemn child. She did not smile easily, let alone laugh the way other children did. Her mouth sat in a tight line, closely guarded, a dark worry behind her eyes. The sight was intolerable, but Isra didn’t know how to make it go away.

  She turned her gaze away from the window, signaling to Deya to come sit in her lap. When she did, Isra clutched her close and whispered, “I don’t mean to be this way.”

  Deya squinted at her, holding the Barbie doll tight. “When I was a little girl,” Isra continued, “my mother never spoke to me much. She was always so busy.” Deya was quiet, but Isra could tell she was listening. She pulled her closer. “Sometimes I felt forgotten. Sometimes I even thought she didn’t love me. But she did love me. Of course she loved me. She’s my mother. And I love you, habibti. Always remember that.” Deya smiled, and Isra held her tight.

  In the kitchen that evening, Isra and Sarah seasoned a chunk of ground lamb for dinner. The men were craving malfouf, cabbage leaves stuffed with rice and meat, and the women only had a few hours to prepare it before they returned from work. They would’ve had more time if Nadine had been helping, but she was upstairs breastfeeding her son, whom, to Fareeda’s fury, she had named Ameer, and not Khaled. More than once Fareeda had called on her, shouting from the end of the staircase that she should stop breastfeeding so she could get pregnant again, only for Nadine to call back, “But
I already gave Omar a son, didn’t I?”

  Sarah passed Isra a smirk, but Isra looked away. Deep down she wondered why she couldn’t be like Nadine. Why was speaking up so hard for her? In the four years she had lived in this house, she could not name a single time she had spoken up to Adam or Fareeda, and it felt as though someone had struck her when she realized this. Her pathetic weakness. When Adam came home and asked for dinner, she nodded, eager to please, and when he reached across the bed to touch her, she let him, and when he chose to beat her instead, she said nothing, sucking down her words. And again she said nothing to Fareeda’s constant demands, even when her body ached from all the housework. What did the rest of it matter then—what she thought or felt, whether she was obedient or defiant—if she could not do something as basic as speaking her mind?

  Tears came, rushing to her eyes. She shook them away. She thought about Mama. Had she felt as Isra felt now, a fool? Holding her tongue in an attempt to earn love, teaching her daughter to do the same? Did Mama live as she lived now—full of shame and guilt for not speaking up? Had she known this would happen to her daughter?

  “She must have done something wrong,” Fareeda said into the phone, both feet propped up on the kitchen table, a small smile on her face. Umm Ahmed’s eldest daughter, Fatima, was getting divorced.

  Isra looked out the window. She wondered what she had done wrong to provoke Adam’s beatings. She wondered if he would divorce her.

  “Poor, poor Umm Ahmed,” Fareeda said into the phone. “Having to look people in the eye after her daughter’s divorce.” But she was smirking so broadly that her gold tooth glowed like the moon. Isra didn’t understand—Umm Ahmed was Fareeda’s closest friend. There was no reason to be happy. Only hadn’t she prayed Nadine would have a girl just to ease her own suffering? She felt her heart squeeze tight.

  “This will be good for you, daughter,” Fareeda told Sarah when she hung up the phone. “If Fatima gets divorced, no one will marry her sister, Hannah.”