A Woman Is No Man

by Etaf Rum

“You don’t have a choice.”

  “Is that what you think? That I don’t have a choice?” Despite the defiance in Sarah’s voice, Isra sensed her anxiety. “We’ll see about that.”

  Later, Sarah appeared in the kitchen wearing an ivory kaftan. Outside, the trees moved slowly, their branches still bare, a residue of ice visible from the kitchen window. “You look beautiful,” Isra told her.

  “Whatever,” Sarah said, walking past her. She grabbed a serving bowl from the cabinet and began filling it with fruit. “Let’s just get this over with.”

  “What are you doing?” Isra asked.

  “What does it look like I’m doing? I’m trying to serve our guests.”

  Isra took the bowl from her. “You’re not supposed to serve the fruit first.”

  “Then I’ll make coffee,” Sarah said, grabbing a small beaker from the drawer.

  “Coffee?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sarah, you never serve coffee first.”

  She shrugged. “I’ve never paid attention to these stupid things.”

  Isra wondered if Sarah was serving the Turkish coffee first on purpose, the way she had done years ago, or if she really didn’t know better. “Just arrange the teacups on a serving tray,” Isra said. “I’ll brew the chai.”

  Sarah leaned against the counter, arranging glass cups on a serving tray. Isra counted them in her head: Fareeda. Khaled. The suitor. His mother. His father. Five in total.

  “Here,” she said, handing Sarah a tray of sesame cookies. “Go serve these while I pour the tea.”

  Sarah stood frozen in the kitchen doorway. Isra wished she could do something to help her. But this was the way of life, she told herself. There was nothing she could do about it. Her powerlessness even comforted her somehow. Knowing that she couldn’t change things—that she didn’t have a choice—made living it more bearable. She realized she was a coward, but she also knew a person could only do so much. She couldn’t change centuries of culture on her own, and neither could Sarah. “Come on,” she whispered, nudging Sarah down the hall. “They’re waiting for you.”

  That night, Isra couldn’t sleep. She couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that Sarah would be gone soon. She wondered if they would still be friends after she left, if Sarah would be able to visit still, if she would miss her. She wondered if she would ever read again. Isra had grown enough now to know that the world hurt less when you weren’t hoping. She had even started to think that perhaps her books had done more harm than good, waking her up to the reality of her life and its imperfections. Maybe she would have been better without them. All they had done was stir up false hope. Still, the possibility of a life without books was far worse.

  In the sala the next day, Fareeda waited for the suitor’s mother to call and announce her son’s decision. Isra flinched every time the phone rang—at least half a dozen times in the course of the afternoon. She studied Fareeda’s expression as she answered each call, a rush of panic rising in her. Sarah alone seemed undisturbed. She sat cross-legged on the sofa, her face in a book, as if she hadn’t a care in the world.

  The phone rang again, and Fareeda rushed to answer it. Isra watched as she muttered a lively salaam into the phone, noticed how quickly she fell quiet. Her eyes grew wide and her mouth hung open as she listened, but she didn’t say a word. Isra bit her fingers.

  “They said no,” Fareeda said when she’d hung up the phone. “No. Just like that.”

  Sarah looked up from a copy of The Handmaid’s Tale. “Oh,” she said, before flipping the page. Isra felt her heart thumping wildly against her nightgown.

  “But why would she say no?” Fareeda looked hard into Sarah’s eyes. “You said your conversation with the boy went well.”

  “I don’t know, Mama. Maybe he didn’t like me. Just because you have a decent conversation with someone, that doesn’t mean you should necessarily marry them.”

  “There you go again with your smart remarks.” Fareeda’s eyes were bulging. She snatched the book from Sarah’s fingers, flung it across the room. “Just wait!” she said, turning to leave. “Just wait until I find a man to take you off my shoulders. Wallahi, I don’t care if he’s old and fat. I’m giving you away to the first man who agrees to take you!”

  Isra turned to Sarah, expecting to find her caved into the sofa, but her friend had sprung gracefully to her feet and was scanning the floor for her book. Catching Isra’s eyes, she said, “There is nothing in the world I hate more than that woman.”

  “Shhh,” Isra said. “She’ll hear you.”

  “Let her.”

  When she’d finished brewing a kettle of chai to calm Fareeda’s nerves, Isra retreated downstairs to read. Beside her, Deya scribbled in a coloring book. Nora and Layla played with Legos. Amal slept in her crib. Watching them as they scattered across the room, glancing over to her every now and then, Isra felt a jolt of helplessness deep within her. She had to do something, anything, to help her daughters.

  “Mama,” Deya said. Isra smiled. Inside she wanted to scream. “My teacher said we have to read this for homework.” Deya handed Isra a Dr. Seuss book. Isra took the book from her hands and signaled for her to sit. As she read, she could see Deya’s eyes widen in curiosity and excitement. She reached out and stroked her daughter’s face. Nora and Layla listened with half an ear each, building a bridge of Legos around her. Amal slept peacefully.

  “I love when you read to me,” Deya said when Isra had finished.

  “You do?”

  Deya nodded slowly. “Can you always be this way?”

  “What way?” Isra asked.

  Deya stared at her feet. “Happy.”

  “I am happy,” Isra said.

  “You always look sad.”

  Isra swallowed hard, tried to steady her voice. “I’m not sad.”

  “You’re not?”

  “I promise I’m not.”

  Deya frowned, and Isra knew she was unconvinced. Isra felt a sense of failure rising in her. She had tried her best to shelter her daughters from her sadness, the way she wished Mama had sheltered her. She had made sure they were asleep when Adam came home, made sure they never saw him hit her. Sadness was like a cancer, she thought, a presence that staked its claim so quietly you might not even notice it until it was too late. She hoped her other daughters didn’t see. Maybe Deya could even forget. She was still young, after all. She wouldn’t remember these days. Isra could still learn to be a good mother. Maybe she could still save them. Maybe it wasn’t too late.

  “I’m not sad,” Isra said again, with a smile this time. “I have you.” She pulled her daughter in for a hug. “I love you, habibti.”

  “I love you, too, Mama.”

  Fareeda

  Winter 2008

  The sun faded beyond the bare trees, a sliver of it visible from the kitchen window as Fareeda washed the last of the day’s dishes. One of the girls should be washing these, she thought, carefully arranging the wet plates in the dish rack. But they had hurried to the basement after dinner, feigning sickness, leaving Fareeda no choice but to do the dishes herself. “I’m the one who’s sick,” she mumbled to herself. An old woman washing dishes—it was disgraceful! With four teenage girls in the house, she should have been giving orders like a queen. But she still had to cook and clean, still had to pick up after them. She shook her head. Fareeda couldn’t understand how her granddaughters had turned out so unlike her, so unlike their mother. Surely it was America. One quick wipe of the kitchen table, and these girls thought they were done. As if things could be washed so easily. They didn’t understand you needed to scrub hard, crouched on hands and knees, until the house was spotless. These spoiled American children knew nothing about real work.

  When she was done, Fareeda retired to her bedroom. Brushing her hair, she wondered when she had last fallen asleep beside Khaled. It had been so many years she couldn’t remember. She didn’t even know where he was tonight—likely at the hookah bar, playing cards. Not that it mat
tered. He rarely looked at her most nights, staring absently ahead as he ate his dinner in silence, not even thanking her for the food she had labored over all day. The younger Khaled would’ve had some remark to fault her cooking, saying the rice was overcooked, or the vegetables oversalted, or that there was not enough green pepper in the ful. But now he hardly spoke at all. She wanted to shake him. What had happened to the man who used to break belts across her skin? Who never went a day without insulting her? But that man had faded over the years. When had it begun? When had he first started to lose the spark in his eyes, the iron grip he had around his life? She thought it was the day they came to America. She hadn’t noticed it then, the transformation had been too gradual. But she saw it now, looking back. She remembered the day they’d left Palestine. How Khaled had shook as he locked the door of their shelter, weeping while he waved goodbye to his family and friends as their cab drove away. How, at the Tel Aviv airport, he had stopped several times to catch himself, his knees buckling beneath him. How he had worked day and night in a foreign country where he didn’t even speak the language, just to ensure they were fed. The loss of his home had broken his spirit. She hadn’t seen it then, hadn’t recognized that his world was slowly unraveling. But maybe that’s the way of life, Fareeda thought. To understand things only after they had passed, only once it was too late.

  She slipped out of her evening gown and into something warmer. The heating unit in her bedroom didn’t work as well as it once had. Either that, or her bones were getting frail, but she didn’t like to think that way. She sighed. She couldn’t believe how quickly time had passed, that she had gotten old. Old—she shook the thought away. It was not the thought of being old that bothered her rather the realization of what her life had amounted to. What a shame, she thought now as she waited for sleep to come, shuffling through her bank of memories. She didn’t have even a single good memory to look back on. They had all been tainted.

  There was a sound at the door. Startled, Fareeda pulled the blanket over her body. But it was only Deya, breathing heavily in the doorway. Fareeda could sense unease in her presence, perhaps even defiance. It reminded her of Sarah, and suddenly she was afraid. “What do you want?” Fareeda said. “Why aren’t you in bed?”

  Deya took several steps into the room. “I know my parents didn’t die in a car accident!” She was shouting even though she only stood a few feet away. “Why did you lie?”

  For goodness sake, Fareeda thought, holding her breath. Not this again. How many times had she been over this? Your parents died in a car accident, your parents died in a car accident. She had said those words so many times that sometimes even she believed them. She wished she could believe them entirely. Unlike Sarah’s disappearance, Isra’s murder was not something she had been able to hide from the community. By morning, the news had traveled all over Bay Ridge, had even made it to Palestine. Khaled and Fareeda’s son had murdered his wife. Khaled and Fareeda’s son had committed suicide. Their shame was terrible.

  The one thing she had done right was to manage to keep it from the girls. She couldn’t tell them the truth—why, of course she couldn’t! How could she explain what had happened—that their father had killed their mother, that their father had killed himself—without ruining them, too? Sometimes it was best to keep quiet. Sometimes the truth hurt the most. She couldn’t have them walking around like they were damaged goods. Sheltering them was the only way they had a chance at normal lives. She had hoped people would forget in time, wouldn’t ostracize them, would even ask for their hands in marriage one day. She had wanted to save their reputations, save them the shame.

  “Not this again,” Fareeda said, keeping her face steady. “Is that why you woke me up? To talk about this?”

  “I know my father killed my mother! I know he killed himself, too!”

  Fareeda swallowed hard. She felt as though a rock was stuck in her throat. Where was all this coming from? Had she heard something at school? It was possible, though unlikely. For years Fareeda had asked her friends never to mention the subject in front of her granddaughters, asking them to tell their children to do the same. And in a community as tightly knit as theirs, it had worked. Over a decade, and not one slipup. Sometimes she wondered if the girls at her granddaughters’ school even knew what had happened. Perhaps their parents hadn’t told them, afraid it would give them the wrong idea about marriage. Sometimes Fareeda wondered the same thing herself. She knew she shouldn’t have told Sarah what had happened to Hannah. Perhaps that’s why she’d run away, Fareeda often told herself. But she brushed these thoughts aside. She couldn’t be sure what Deya knew, so she decided to feign ignorance. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Your parents died in a car accident.”

  “Did you hear me? I know what he did!”

  Fareeda remained silent. What would she look like, admitting the truth after all these years? A complete fool. She couldn’t do it. Why dwell on the past? People should always move on, no matter what. They should never look back.

  “Fine.” Deya reached into her pocket and pulled out a crumpled newspaper clipping. She held it up so Fareeda could see it. “It doesn’t matter if you say nothing. Sarah already told me everything.”

  Fareeda began to shiver as though all the heating units in the house had let out at once. She pulled her nightgown over her knees, tugging on the fabric forcefully, as if by doing so she could will the words away. She stared at the window for a moment, then leaped out of bed and wrapped herself in a thick robe. She turned on her bedroom lamps, the sconces in the hall, all the lights in the kitchen. There she retrieved a tea packet from the pantry, set a kettle on the stove. She felt strange, as though she was there and not there at the same time. What was happening? It took her a moment to find her mental footing. Finally she said, “Sarah?”

  Deya stood in the kitchen doorway, still holding up the newspaper clipping. “I saw her. She told me everything.”

  “It must be a mistake,” Fareeda said, refusing to look at the clipping. “Sarah is in Palestine. Someone must be playing a trick on you.”

  “Why do you keep lying? The truth is right here!” Deya waved the clipping in front of her. “You can’t hide it anymore.”

  Fareeda knew Deya was right. Nothing she said could cover up the truth this time. Yet still, she found herself searching for a way to dispel it. She reached out and took the newspaper clipping, her fingers trembling as she scanned it. It seemed like only yesterday that Sarah had run away, leaving Fareeda in a panic. If anyone found out that Sarah had left, disappeared into the streets of America, their family’s honor would have been ruined. And so Fareeda had done what she’d always done: she’d fixed it. It hadn’t taken her long to convince her friends that Sarah had married a man in Palestine. She’d been so pleased with herself. But murder, suicide—these public shames had been impossible to hide. And for that, her granddaughters would forever pay a price.

  “Why did you lie to us all these years?” Deya said. “Why didn’t you tell us the truth about our parents?”

  Fareeda began to sweat. There was no escape. As with everything else she had done in her life, she didn’t have much choice.

  She drew a slow, long breath, feeling a weight about to come undone. Then she told Deya everything—that Adam had been drunk, that he hadn’t realized how hard he was hitting Isra, that he hadn’t meant to kill her. This last part she said again and again. He didn’t mean to kill her.

  “I was only trying to protect you,” Fareeda said. “I had to tell you something that wouldn’t traumatize you for the rest of your life.”

  “But why did you make up the car accident? Why didn’t you tell us—at least later?”

  “Should I have gone around advertising it? Tell me, what good would it have done? The news had already disgraced our family name, but I tried to shelter you! I didn’t stand by and do nothing. I tried to stop it from ruining your lives! Don’t you understand?”

  “No, I don’t!” Deya shouted. “How can
you expect me to understand something like this? None of it makes any sense. Why would he kill her—murder the mother of his children, his wife?”

  “He just—he just . . . he lost control.”

  “Oh, so you thought it was okay that he beat her? Why didn’t you do something?”

  “What was I supposed to do? It’s not like I could’ve stopped him!”

  “You could’ve stopped him if you wanted to!” Fareeda opened her mouth, but Deya cut her off. “Why did he kill her? Tell me what happened!”

  “Nothing happened,” Fareeda lied. “He was drunk, completely out of his mind. That night, I heard him screaming from upstairs. I found him on the floor, shaking beside your mother’s body. I was terrified. I begged him to leave before the police came. I told him to pack his bags and run, that I would take care of you all. But he just looked at me. I don’t even know that he could hear me. And the next thing I knew, the police were at my door, saying they’d found my son’s body in the river.”

  “You tried to cover for him?” Deya said in disbelief. “How could you cover for him? What’s wrong with you?”

  Fareeda chided herself—she had said too much. Deya was staring at her in horror. She could see pain in her granddaughter’s eyes.

  “How could you cover for him after he killed our mother?” Deya said. “How could you take his side?”

  “I did what any mother would’ve done.”

  Deya shook her head in disgust.

  “Your father was possessed,” Fareeda said. “He had to be. No man in his right mind would kill the mother of his children and then kill himself.”

  Adam was out of his mind. She had no doubt about this. After the police had come and told her what Adam had done, Fareeda had sat on the porch, dumbfounded, staring out into the sky, feeling as though it had collapsed on her. She thought back on all her years with Adam, from his birth one hot summer day as she squatted in the back of their shelter to years later, when they’d made it to America and Adam had helped them run the deli, working day and night without end. Not once would she have suspected this from her son. Not Adam, who had never missed a prayer growing up, who had wanted to be an imam. Adam, who did everything for them, who always bent over backward to please, who never denied them. Adam, a murderer? Perhaps Fareeda should have known from the way he came home every night, reeking with sharaab. But she had just shrugged her fears aside, told herself everything was okay. After all, how many times had Khaled gotten drunk in their youth? How many times had he beaten her senseless? It was only normal. And she was stronger for it. But murder and suicide—that wasn’t normal. She was sure Adam had been possessed.