A Woman Is No Man

by Etaf Rum

  “Aren’t you scared?”

  “Of course I am.” Sarah studied an invisible spot on the floor. “But whatever happens . . . It can’t be worse than what’s happening now.”

  Isra knew Sarah was right, but awareness and action, she also knew, were very different things. “I don’t know where you’ve found this courage,” she whispered. “And I envy you for it. But I can’t go with you. I’m sorry.”

  Sarah looked at her with sad eyes. “You’ll regret this, you know. Your daughters will grow up, and they’ll hate you for your weakness.” She walked away, pausing at the doorway. “And don’t think they’ll understand, because they won’t. They’ll never see you as a victim. You’re supposed to be the one who protects them.”

  Deya

  Winter 2009

  A new year began, and nothing changed. In class, Deya found it hard to pay attention. She felt adrift and nauseous. When school let out and she got home, she retreated quietly to her room, where she ate alone, emerging only to wash the dishes after dinner. A thousand thoughts flicked through her mind like cars on a subway train: she should visit Sarah again, she should leave, she should stay and marry Nasser if he would still have her. But nothing felt right. Every time she tried to talk to her sisters, she’d clench up, racked with nerves and anger. To them, nothing had really changed. Nora had even said as much one night while trying to comfort Deya. Their parents might as well have died in a car accident, she’d said; they needed to move on. Deya hadn’t been that kind of person before; she definitely wasn’t now.

  Most of all she thought about Isra, trying to understand the woman she thought she’d known all these years, yet had so grossly misjudged. When Sarah had first started telling her stories of Isra, they had felt like precisely that: fiction. But now Deya clutched at the stories desperately, each one a clue to the woman her mother really was. She tried to stitch together the scattered pieces of Isra’s life, to weave them into a full narrative, a complete story, a truth. But she couldn’t—something was missing. There was more to Isra. After everything she had learned over the past weeks, she knew there had to be.

  She sat in Islamic studies class, staring blankly ahead as Brother Hakeem paced in front of the chalkboard. He was discussing the role of women in Islam. Once or twice she could feel him looking at her, waiting for her to question something in her usual way, but she kept her eyes trained on the window. He recited a verse, in Arabic: “Heaven lies under a mother’s feet.” The words meant nothing to her. She didn’t have a mother.

  “But why is heaven under the mother’s feet?” a girl asked. “Why not under the father’s feet? He’s the head of the household.”

  “Good question,” Brother Hakeem said, clearing his throat. “The father might be the head of the household, but the mother serves an important role. Can anyone tell me what that is?”

  The class said nothing, looking at him with wide eyes. Deya was tempted to say that a woman’s role was to sit tight and wait until a man beat her to death, but she stayed quiet.

  “None of you know the role your mother plays in the family?” Brother Hakeem asked.

  “Well, she bears the children,” said one girl.

  “And she takes care of the family,” said another.

  They were all so dumb, sitting there, smiling with their stupid answers. Deya wondered what lies they’d been told, what secrets their parents kept from them, the things they didn’t know. The things they’d only find out too late.

  “Very good,” Brother Hakeem said. “Mothers carry the entire family—arguably the entire world—on their shoulders. That’s why heaven lies under their feet.”

  Deya listened to his words, unconvinced. Nothing she learned in Islamic studies class ever made sense. If heaven lay under a mother’s feet, then why had her father hit her mother? Why had he killed her? They were Muslims, weren’t they?

  “But I still don’t understand what it means,” said a girl in the back.

  “It’s a metaphor,” Brother Hakeem said, “to remind us of the importance of our women. When we accept that heaven lies underneath the feet of a woman, we are more respectful of women everywhere. That is how we are told to treat women in the Qur’an. It’s a powerful verse.”

  Deya wanted to scream. No one she’d ever met actually lived according to the doctrines of Islam. They were all hypocrites and liars! But she was tired of fighting. Instead she closed her eyes and thought of her parents, replaying memories, trying to think of anything she might have forgotten, anything that could make better sense of things.

  On the bus ride home, Deya wondered if she would ever learn the full story of Isra’s life and death. She knew that no matter how many times she replayed her memories, how many stories she told herself, she would never know the full truth on her own. But she hoped against hope that she’d remember something new. A repressed memory. A piece that would change everything. She thought back to the last thing she remembered her mother saying.

  “I’m sorry,” Isra had whispered. “I’m sorry.”

  Looking out the window, waiting for the traffic light to change, Deya wished she knew what her mother had been thinking in her final days. But she didn’t know, and she didn’t think she ever would.

  Fareeda

  Summer 1997

  It was Adam who first pointed his finger at Fareeda.

  “It’s all your fault,” he said. Sarah had been gone for seven days, and the entire family was gathered around the sufra.

  Fareeda looked up from her dinner plate. She could feel everyone staring. “What are you talking about?”

  “You’re the reason she ran away.”

  Fareeda raised both eyebrows, opened her mouth to protest—but Adam waved a hand, dismissing her words before she’d had a chance to say them.

  “This was all your doing!” He slurred his words. “I told you sending her to a public school was a bad idea, that you should homeschool her, but you didn’t listen. And for what? So she could learn English and help you with doctor appointments?” He snorted and shook his head. “But that’s what you get for being easy on her, on all of them. Everyone except me.”

  It wasn’t as though Fareeda hadn’t considered this—that perhaps she was to blame. But she kept her face calm and stony. “Is that what you’re upset about? All the pressure we’ve put on you because you’re the eldest?” She pushed herself up from the table. “In that case, why don’t you grab a drink and sulk over it? You’re good at that.”

  Adam rose from the table and stormed downstairs.

  It wasn’t long before Omar and Ali pointed their fingers at Fareeda, too. She made a spitting sound at them. Why, of course it was her fault! Blame it on the woman! But she had only done what was best, raised her children the best she knew how in this foreign place.

  Khaled would’ve blamed her, too, only he was too busy blaming himself. Nightly, he hid his pain behind a cloud of hookah smoke, but it was clear the loss of his daughter had awakened a new feeling within him: regret. Fareeda could see it in his eyes. She knew what he was thinking—he had spent his entire life fighting to stay strong, trying not to collapse like his father had when the soldiers snatched their home, trying to preserve their family honor. And for what? Now he had no honor left.

  What had made them leave their country and come to America, where something like this could happen? Something like this. Fareeda’s mouth dried up as she asked herself this. Would their daughter have disobeyed them, disgraced them, had they raised her back home? So what if they might have starved? So what if they could’ve been shot in the back crossing a checkpoint, or blown up with tear gas on the way to school or the mosque? Maybe they should’ve stayed and let the soldiers kill them. Should’ve stayed and fought for their land, should’ve stayed and died. Any pain other than the pain of guilt and regret.

  In her bedroom, Fareeda couldn’t sleep. Her mind raced the moment her head hit the pillow, thinking about her past, her children. About Sarah. Had she failed as a mother? Some nights, s
he managed to convince herself she hadn’t. After all, hadn’t she raised her children the same way her parents had raised her? Hadn’t she taught them what it meant to be tough, resilient? Hadn’t she taught them what it meant to be Arab, to always put family first? Not to run away, for goodness sake. She couldn’t be blamed for their weaknesses. For this country and its low morals.

  Fareeda knew it did no good to worry about things she couldn’t change. Her mind turned to Umm Ahmed, who had become a shell of her old self, blaming herself for Hannah’s death, thinking she could’ve stopped it somehow and saved her daughter. Privately Fareeda disagreed. If Sarah had come to Fareeda as a married woman and said, “Mama, my husband beats me and I’m unhappy,” would Fareeda have told her to leave him, to get a divorce? Fareeda knew she wouldn’t have. What had Umm Ahmed been thinking?

  Fareeda knew that no matter what any woman said, culture could not be escaped. Even if it meant tragedy. Even if it meant death. At least she was able to recognize her role in their culture, own up to it, instead of sitting around saying “If only I had done things differently.” It took more than one woman to do things differently. It took a world of them. She had comforted herself with these thoughts so many times before, but tonight they only filled her with shame.

  Isra

  Summer 1997

  Isra sat by the window, nose pressed up against the glass, feeling a turbulence rise within her. It will be okay, she told herself. But she was not okay. At first when Sarah had left she had wept so violently that it seemed as though the tears were rising from a deep spring inside her and would never stop. But now she sat in a heavy silence. She was furious. How could Sarah run away? Leave her alone like this? Give up on everything they knew, on the life they’d shared together? Growing up, Isra had never once considered running away, not even when her parents sent her to America. What was Sarah thinking?

  But worse than her anger was the other thought that kept returning to her: What if Sarah had been right? Isra thought about Khaled and Fareeda, how they had carried their children out of the refugee camp, leaving their country behind and coming to America. Did they see what Isra saw now? They had run away to survive, and now their daughter had done the same. Maybe that’s the only way, she thought. The only way to survive.

  A day passed, then another, then another. Every morning Isra would wake up to the sound of her daughters calling her name, jumping into bed, and a sickness would fill her. She wondered if it was the jinn. Just leave me alone! she wanted to scream. Just let me breathe! Eventually she would force herself to get up, gather her daughters, dress them, comb their hair—all that hair, how they moaned as she untangled it!—sucking on her teeth as she yanked a brush through their curls. Then she’d walk Deya and Nora to the corner, waiting for the yellow school bus to take them away, and she’d think, filled with shame and disgust at her weakness, If only the bus would take the rest of her daughters, too.

  In the kitchen now, Isra could hear Fareeda’s voice in the sala. Lately Fareeda spent her days weaving a story of Sarah’s marriage to tell the world, only to cry silently into her hands when she was done. Sometimes, like now, Isra felt a duty to comfort her. She brewed a kettle of chai, adding an extra twig of maramiya, hoping the smell would soothe her. But Fareeda would never drink it. All she did was pound her palms against her face, like Isra’s mama had often done after Yacob hit her. The sight made Isra sick with guilt. She had known that Sarah was leaving and had done nothing to stop her. She should’ve told Fareeda, should’ve told Khaled. Only she hadn’t, and now Sarah was gone, and it felt as though she had slipped into a pocket of sadness and would never emerge from it.

  When she’d finished preparing dinner that night, Isra crept downstairs. Deya, Nora, and Layla were watching cartoons; Amal slept in her crib. Isra tiptoed across the basement quietly so as not to wake her. From the back of their closet, she pulled out A Thousand and One Nights, her heart quickening at the touch of the brown spine. Then she turned to the last page, where she kept a stash of paper. She grabbed a blank sheet and began to write another letter she would never send.

  “Dear Mama,” Isra wrote,

  I don’t understand what’s happening to me. I don’t know why I feel this way. Do you know, Mama? What have I done to deserve this? I must have done something. Haven’t you always said that God gives everyone what they deserve in life? That we must endure our naseeb because it’s written in the stars just for us? But I don’t understand, Mama. Is this punishment for the days I rebelled as a young girl? The days I read those books behind your back? The days I questioned your judgment? Is that why God is taunting me now, giving me a life that is the opposite of everything I wanted? A life without love, a life of loneliness. I’ve stopped praying, Mama. I know it’s kofr, sacrilege, to say this, but I’m so angry. And the worst part is, I don’t know who I am angry with—God, or Adam, or the woman I’ve become.

  No. Not God. Not Adam. I am to blame. I am the one who can’t pull myself together, who can’t smile at my children, who can’t be happy. It’s me. There’s something wrong with me, Mama. Something dark lurking in me. I feel it from the moment I wake up until the moment I sleep, something sluggish dragging me under, suffocating me. Why do I feel this way? Do you think I am possessed? A jinn inside me. It must be.

  Tell me, Mama. Did you know this would happen to me? Did you know? Is this why you never looked at me as a child? Is this why I always felt like you were drifting far, far away? Is this what I saw when you finally met my eyes? Anger? Resentment? Shame? Am I becoming like you, Mama? I’m so scared, and nobody understands me. Do you even understand me? I don’t think so.

  Why am I even writing this now? Even if I mailed this off to you, what good would it do? Would you help me, Mama? Tell me, what would you do? Only I know what you would do. You’d tell me, Be patient, endure. You’d tell me that women everywhere are suffering, and that no pain is worse than being divorced, a world of shame on my shoulders. You’d tell me to make it work for my kids. My girls. To be patient so I don’t bring them shame. So I don’t ruin their lives. But don’t you see, Mama? Don’t you see? I’m ruining their lives anyway. I’m ruining them.

  Isra paused after finishing the letter. She folded it twice before tucking it between the pages of A Thousand and One Nights. Then she returned the book to the back of the closet, where she knew no one would find it.

  I’m crazy, she thought. If anyone finds this, they’ll think I’ve gone mad. They’ll know there’s something dark inside me. But writing was the only thing that helped. With Sarah gone, she didn’t have anyone to talk to anymore. And the loss of this thing, this connection she hadn’t even realized she needed until she’d had it, made her want to cry all the time. She knew she would always be alone now.

  Bedtime, and her daughters wanted a story.

  “But we don’t have any books,” Isra said. With Sarah gone, they were limited to the books Deya brought home from school, and now they were on summer break. Thinking of Sarah’s absence, of all the books she would no longer read, Isra felt a wave of darkness wash over her. Sharing her favorite thing with her daughters had once been the best part of her day.

  “But I want a story,” Deya cried. Isra looked away. How much she hated the sight of Deya’s troubled eyes. How much they reminded her of her failure.

  “I’ll read to you tomorrow,” she said. “It’s time for bed.”

  She sat by the window and watched them fall asleep, telling herself everything was okay. That it was normal for her to feel frustrated, that her daughters wouldn’t even remember her sadness. She told herself she would feel better tomorrow. But she knew she was lying to herself—tomorrow her anger would only multiply. Because it wasn’t okay. Because she knew she was getting worse, that this deep, dark thing inside her was not going anywhere. Was it a jinn, or was it herself? How was she to know? All she knew was that she was afraid of what would become of her, of how much her daughters would come to resent her, of how, even though she knew she was wrong
, she couldn’t stop hurting them. Is this what Adam felt, Isra wondered, when he came into the room at night, ripping off his belt and whipping her? Did he feel powerless, too? Like he needed to stop but couldn’t, like he was the worst person on earth? Only he wasn’t the worst person on earth. She was, and she deserved to get beaten for all of it.

  Deya

  Winter 2009

  As the weeks passed, Deya realized a change had come over Fareeda. She did not arrange for any marriage suitors to visit. She said nothing when she saw Deya reading. She even smiled timidly whenever their eyes met in the kitchen. But Deya looked away.

  “I’m sorry,” Fareeda said one night as Deya cleared the sufra after dinner. Fareeda stood slumped against the kitchen doorway. “I know you’re still angry with me. But I hope you know I was only trying to protect you.”

  Deya said nothing, busying herself with a stack of dirty plates in the sink. What good were apologies now, after everything Fareeda had done?

  “Please, Deya,” she whispered. “How long are you going to stay angry? You have to know I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’m your grandmother. I would never hurt you on purpose. You have to know that. You have to forgive me. Please, I’m sorry.”

  “What good is your apology if nothing has changed?”

  For a long time Fareeda stared at her with wet eyes from the doorway. Then she sighed heavily. “I have something for you.”

  Deya followed Fareeda to her bedroom, where she reached for something inside her closet. It was a stack of paper. She handed it to Deya. “I never thought I’d give this to you.”

  “What is it?” Deya asked, even as she caught sight of the familiar Arabic handwriting.

  “Letters your mother wrote. These are the rest of them. They are all I found.”

  Deya held the letters tight. “Why are you giving them to me now?”

  “Because I want you to know I understand. Because I should’ve never kept her from you. I’m sorry, daughter. I’m so sorry.”