by Etaf Rum
“How’s business?” she asked Omar, reaching for a warm pita from the plate Nadine had just set on the table.
“Alhamdulillah, bringing in a steady income,” he said, smiling gently as he caught Nadine’s eyes.
Fareeda raised her eyebrows at the sight. She reached for the shakshuka, her favorite dish, scooping a bite full of poached eggs and tomatoes into her mouth. Still chewing, she said, “Maybe now you can focus on having another child.” She stole a glance at Nadine, who was blushing, as she said this. Fareeda knew her words were pointless, that Omar and Nadine would have another child when they wanted to, but she spoke anyway. The satisfaction of making Nadine uncomfortable was enough. Omar was a fool. Instead of putting his foot down, as she’d told him, he let his wife run the show. At least Adam had listened to her, and look at Isra now. As quiet as a graveyard. Not mouthy and insolent like Nadine. Let’s see where that will get Omar, Fareeda thought. She turned to Ali. “What about you, son? How is college going?”
“It’s going,” Ali mumbled.
Khaled looked up. “What did you say?”
Ali slumped into his chair. “I said it’s going.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Here he goes again, Fareeda thought, regretting that she had asked. Lately, most of her fights with Khaled had been about Ali. He thought she was too lenient with him; she thought he was too tough. That he expected too much.
“I’m trying,” Ali said. “I’m really trying. I just”—Khaled’s eyes were wide now, and Fareeda realized she was holding her breath—“I just don’t see the point of college.”
“You don’t see the point of college?” Khaled was shouting now. “You’re the first person in this family to go! Adam couldn’t because he was working to help us pay the bills, Omar couldn’t even get in, and now you’re saying you don’t see the point of it? Walek, do you know what I would’ve done for an education?” The room was silent. All Fareeda could hear was the sound of her own chewing. “I would’ve given an arm and a leg. But instead I worked like an animal to bring you here, so that you could go to college! So that you could live the life your mother and I couldn’t have! And this is how you repay me?”
Ali looked at him with panic. Fareeda knew her children couldn’t understand what she and Khaled had endured. They weren’t even born when the Israeli soldiers had come, sweeping them out of their homes like dust. They knew nothing about life, about how easily everything could be taken from you.
She reached for another scoop of shakshuka. But what did she know about life then, either? She was only six years old when the occupation began. Fareeda could still remember the look on her father’s face as he surrendered, both hands in the air, when they were forced to evacuate. But it wasn’t only her family. Tanks had rolled into Ramla to drive out its inhabitants. Some villagers had been killed as Israeli militia burned their olive groves. Others had died in the makeshift trenches, trying to protect their homes. She had always wondered why her family had fled, why they hadn’t stayed and fought for their land. But her father would always say, “We had to leave. We never stood a chance.”
“The boy doesn’t like school,” Fareeda said. “We can’t force him.”
“What about all the money we’ve already spent on his tuition?” said Khaled.
“Didn’t you want sons so badly?” Fareeda shot him a sidelong glance. “Well, this is what having sons means, paying for things. It’s an investment in the future of our family. You should’ve known it would be expensive. Besides, you have Adam to help you out. I’m sure he’ll understand.”
She hoped Adam would understand. Lately he hardly spoke to anyone, including her. Especially her. At first, she thought he blamed her for Isra, who was only getting worse, retreating to the basement as soon as her chores were completed, barely a word to anyone. But now Fareeda was beginning to wonder if he was mad at her, at them, for all the responsibility they put on him. She thought back to when he was sixteen, how he would spend his days after school reading the Holy Qur’an. He’d wanted to be an imam, he’d told her. But he was forced to leave that dream behind when they went to America. What was she supposed to do? He was the eldest son, and they needed him. They’d all left things behind.
She turned to Ali. “So what do you want to do now?”
He shrugged. “Work, I guess.”
“Why don’t you work in the deli?” She turned to Khaled. “Can’t you hire him?”
Khaled shook his head, looking at her like she was an idiot. “The deli barely brings in enough money to pay the bills. Don’t you see all the work Adam does just to keep it running? Why do you think I want Ali to go to college?” He waved his hands. “So he isn’t stuck behind a cash register like we are. Don’t you understand a thing, woman?”
“I don’t know,” Fareeda mocked. “Do I? The last time I checked, I’m the reason we made it to America in the first place.”
Khaled said nothing. It was true. If it hadn’t been for Fareeda, if she hadn’t forced Khaled to give her his daily earnings, they never would’ve made it to America in 1976, or likely ever. It was Fareeda who had saved enough money for them to purchase their plane tickets to New York, and later, she who had saved Khaled’s earnings at his first job, an electronics store on Flatbush Avenue, in a navy-blue shoe box under her bed. She who had become ever more resourceful, limiting the amount of money she spent on food and household items, washing her children’s clothes daily so they didn’t need more than two outfits each, even baking ma’amool cookies for Khaled to sell his customers, who were enthralled by the foreign combination of figs and butterbread. Soon she had saved ten thousand dollars in the navy-blue shoe box stuffed beneath their bed, which Khaled had used to open his deli.
Fareeda took a sip of her chai, looking away from Khaled. “The boy wants to work, so let him work,” she said. “Maybe I’ll ask Adam to give him a job in his store.”
Ali jumped in. “What about Omar’s store?”
“What about it?”
“Maybe I can work there instead?”
“No, no, no,” Fareeda said, reaching for another loaf of pita. “Omar is still getting on his feet. He can’t afford to hire anyone right now. Adam has a steady business going. He’ll hire you.”
Khaled stood up. “So that’s your solution? Instead of encouraging him to stay in school, to do something on his own, you turn to Adam, again, as though he is the only man among them? When will you stop spoiling them? When will you start treating them like men?” He turned to his younger sons, his index finger shaking. “You two don’t know a thing about this world. Not one damn thing.”
Oh, for goodness sake, Fareeda thought, though she said nothing. Instead, she pulled the skillet of shakshuka closer, taking two, three bites in a row, chugging her chai to keep the food moving. Food, it was the only thing left that gave her comfort. She was considerably thicker now than she’d once been. But that didn’t bother her. In fact, she would spend all day eating if it didn’t cost so much. Of course she knew that burying her feelings in food was unhealthy—that it could kill her. But there were other things that could kill her, too, things like failure and loneliness. Like growing old one day and looking around to find a husband who resented you, kids who no longer needed you, who despised you despite all you’d done for them. At least eating felt good.
Isra
Spring 1994
The books kept Isra company. All it took to soothe her worries was to slip inside their pages. In an instant, her world would cease to exist, and another would rush to life. She felt herself come alive, felt something inside her crack open. What was it? Isra didn’t know. But the longing to connect to something filled her. She went to bed bewildered that she had felt herself so vividly in another place, that she could almost swear she’d come to life by night and the fictional world was the place she actually existed.
But there were also days when the books didn’t seem quite as soothing. Days when reading would turn her mind and force her to
question the patterns of her life, which only made her more upset. On these days, Isra dreaded getting up in the morning. She was aware in a fresh way of how powerless she was, and this realization flipped her upside down. Listening to the characters in her books, it was clear to Isra how weak she was, and the enormous effort it would take to transform herself into one of the worthy heroines of these tales, each managing to find her voice by her story’s end.
Isra didn’t know what to do with her conflicting thoughts, didn’t know how to fix her life. If she were a character in one of her books, what would she be expected to do? Stand up to Adam? How, when she had a handful of children depending on her in a foreign place, with nowhere to go? Isra resented her books in these moments when she thought about the limits of her life and how easy courage seemed when you boiled it down to a few words on paper.
You can’t compare your life to fiction, a voice inside her head whispered. In the real world, a woman belongs at home. Mama was right all along.
But Isra wasn’t entirely convinced. As much as she tried to console herself with these thoughts, inside her a flicker of hope had been reignited. The hope that perhaps, she, Isra, deserved a better life than the one she had, as far-fetched as that hope seemed.
Some days she believed she could actually achieve this life if she tried. Hadn’t the characters in her books struggled, too? Hadn’t they stood up for themselves? Hadn’t they been weak and powerless, too? Wasn’t it true that she had as much control over her life as they had? Perhaps she too had a chance to be happy. But just as quickly as these thoughts came, they went, leaving Isra overwhelmed with hopelessness. She couldn’t possibly take control of her life. And it wasn’t Adam’s fault but her own. It was her fault for asking Sarah to bring her books, for reading them obsessively in this way. She was to blame for raising her expectations of the world, for not focusing on Adam and her daughters instead, for dreaming and wanting too much. Or maybe it was her books’ fault for turning her mind the way they had. For tempting her to disobey Mama as a young girl, to believe in love and happiness, and now, for taunting her over her greatest weakness: that she had no control over her own life.
But despite the war inside her mind, Isra couldn’t part with her books. Each night she read by the window. She decided she would rather go on living conflicted with books by her side than be tormented all alone.
“I have some books for you,” Sarah whispered to Isra one evening as they cooked dinner together. As the sun set, the windows darkened, and Fareeda retreated to the sala to watch her favorite Turkish soap opera, Isra and Sarah roasted vegetables, simmered stews, and prepared assortments of hummus, baba ghanoush, and tabbouleh. Sometimes Nadine would enter the kitchen to find them whispering together, and to their relief, she would join Fareeda in the sala. In these private moments, as they lingered near the stove, wrapped in a blanket of steam, the savory smell of allspice thickening the air, Isra would feel her heart swell.
Lately, Sarah had been sneaking into the basement a few times a week after dinner with a handful of books she had brought home for Isra. In the past, on nights like this one, Isra would have put her daughters to sleep and spent the evening gazing out the basement window until Adam came home. But now she waited up for Sarah, eager to see which books she’d brought. Some nights they would even read together. Last week they’d rushed through Pride and Prejudice in four nights so Sarah could write an essay on it for her English class. They’d sat together on Isra’s bed, knees grazing, the book like a warm fire between them.
“You’re going to love these,” Sarah told Isra that night. She placed a pile of books on the bed, and Isra scanned them, noticing that a few were picture books. She picked up Oh, the Places You’ll Go! by Dr. Seuss.
“I know you wanted more books for the girls,” Sarah said. “I think it’s really great that you’re reading to them. It will help with their English. You don’t want them to struggle with it when they start school like I did.”
“Thank you,” Isra said with a smile. Ever since Sarah had started bringing her picture books for the girls, she had begun gathering her daughters around her before she put them to bed, a picture book spread across her lap. She thought they liked the softness of her voice in English, the sound of her tongue as she pronounced unfamiliar words. A gust of happiness would fill her in those moments as she watched her daughters, smiling wide, looking up at her as though she was the best mother in the world, as though she hadn’t failed them every day of their lives.
“Is there anything specific you want to read tonight?” Sarah asked. “There’s lots of good books here.” She pointed to a black-and-white cover. “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is one of my favorites, but I don’t know if you’ll love it as much as I do.”
Isra looked up. “Why not?”
“Because it’s not a romance.”
“Good. I’m glad.”
“Glad of what?”
“That it’s not a romance.”
Sarah met her eyes. “Since when?”
“I just don’t have a taste for romances anymore,” Isra said. “I’d rather read a book that teaches me something.” She paused. “A story that is more realistic.”
“Are you saying you don’t think love stories are realistic?”
Isra shrugged.
“What’s this? Isra, a cynic?” Sarah laughed. “I can’t believe my ears. What have I done to you?”
Isra only smiled. “What are you reading in class?”
“We just started one of my favorites, a novel about a world where books are outlawed and burned. Can you imagine life without books?”
If Sarah had asked this question four years before or even one year before, back when Isra had abandoned her books, she would’ve said yes. But now, reading with the same dedication with which she had once performed her five daily prayers, Isra couldn’t imagine it.
“I hope that never happens,” she said. “I don’t know what I’d do.”
Sarah looked at her curiously.
“What?” Isra asked.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you like this.”
“What do you mean?”
“You just seem different.”
“Different how?”
“I don’t know. I can’t explain it.”
Isra smiled at her. “I’m just happy, that’s all.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Thanks to you.”
“Me?”
Isra nodded. “Ever since I started reading again, I feel like I’m in a trance, or maybe like I’ve come out of one. Something has come over me—I don’t know how to describe it—it might sound dramatic, but I feel hopeful for the first time in years. I don’t know why exactly, but I have you to thank for it.”
“You don’t have to thank me,” Sarah said, blushing. “It’s nothing.”
Isra met her eyes. “It’s not nothing, and it’s not just the books. It’s your friendship, too. You’ve given me something to look forward to for the first time in years.”
“I hope you always feel happy,” Sarah whispered.
Isra smiled. “Me too.”
In her bedroom closet, Isra was careful to keep her books hidden beneath a pile of clothes. She didn’t know how Adam would react if she told him she had been reading while he was at work. She assumed he would hit her, or worse, prevent Sarah from bringing her books. After all, if Mama had forbidden Isra from reading Middle Eastern books for fear of any nontraditional influence, she could only imagine what Adam would do if he knew she was reading Western novels. But to her relief, he was barely home.
Still, Isra was surprised Fareeda hadn’t noticed a change in her. Lately, she performed all her responsibilities—soaking the rice, roasting the meats, bathing her daughters, brewing Fareeda her maramiya chai twice daily—in a rush, desperate for a moment alone. Most days, she read by the window in the girls’ room, the sun bright and warm against her face. She pulled the curtains open and leaned against the windowpane. The touch of each hardcover book sen
t shivers down her spine.
She couldn’t remember the precise moment she had stopped reading. Perhaps it had been when she first arrived in America, glancing over her copy of A Thousand and One Nights when she couldn’t sleep and finding it insufficient comfort. Or maybe it was during her pregnancy with Nora, when Fareeda had dangled a necklace over Isra’s belly and predicted a girl, and Isra had read a sura from the Holy Qur’an every night, asking God to change the gender. She had almost forgotten the weight of a book between her hands, the smell of old paper as she turned each page, the way it soothed her someplace deep within. Is this what Adam felt, she wondered, when he drank sharaab and smoked hashish? A surge of happiness. An elation. If this was how he felt—floating as she was now, with a book in her hands—then she couldn’t blame him for drinking and smoking. She understood the need to escape from the ordinary world.
“What makes you happy?” Isra asked Adam one night as she watched him eat his dinner. She didn’t know where the question came from, but by the time it had left her lips, she found herself leaning forward in her seat, both eyes glued on Adam for his answer.
He looked up from his plate, swaying a bit in his seat. She knew he was drunk—Sarah had taught her how to recognize the state. “What makes me happy?” he said. “What kind of question is that?”
Why did she care what made him happy? The man who beat her mercilessly, who had sucked the hope from her? She wasn’t sure, but in that moment it felt important, intensely so. She poured him a cup of water. “I just want to know what makes my husband happy. Surely something must.”
Adam took a gulp of water and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “You know, not once in my entire life has anyone ever asked me that question. What makes Adam happy? No one cares what makes Adam happy. All they care about is what Adam can do for them. Yes, yes,” he said, slurring a little. “How much money can Adam bring home? How many businesses can he run? How much can he help his brothers? How many male heirs can he produce?” He paused, looking at Isra. “But happiness? There’s no such thing as happiness for people like us. Family duty comes first.”