by Etaf Rum
“What are you saying, woman?”
“I know you don’t want to hear this,” Isra said, trying to keep her voice steady. “But I’m worried about our daughters. I’m afraid of what kind of life we’re going to give them. I’m scared of losing them, too. But I don’t think it’s wise to take them out of public school.”
Adam stared at her. Isra wasn’t sure what he was thinking, but from the bulge in his eyes, she was sure he was drunk. He crossed the room in three long strides and grabbed her.
“Adam, stop! Please. I’m only thinking of our daughters.”
But he didn’t stop. In one smooth movement, he shoved her against the wall and slammed his fists against her body over and over, her stomach, sides, arms, head. Isra shut her eyes, and then, when she thought it was over, Adam grabbed her by the hair and slapped her, the force of his palm knocking her to the floor.
“How dare you question me?” Adam said, his jaw quivering. “Never speak of this again.” Then he left, disappearing into the bathroom.
On her knees on the floor, she could barely breathe. Blood leaked from her nose and down her chin. But she wiped her face and told herself she would take a beating every night if it meant standing up for her girls.
Deya
Fall 2009
Deya stands on the corner of Seventy-Third Street, in front of the Brooklyn Public Library. Her hair dances in the fall breeze, and she scans the stash of syllabi in her hands. Required reading: The Yellow Wallpaper. The Bell Jar. Beloved. She thinks of Fareeda, the look on her face when Deya received her acceptance letter and scholarship from New York University. She had put off telling her in case she hadn’t gotten in, despite Sarah’s insistence. There was no point in bringing up the matter if she didn’t even get an offer. But then she’d had no more excuses. She’d found Fareeda seated at the kitchen table, a cup of chai in hand.
“I got accepted into a college in Manhattan,” Deya had told her, keeping her voice steady. “I’m going.”
“Manhattan?” She could see fear in Fareeda’s eyes.
“I know you’re worried about me out there, but I’ve navigated the city on my own every time I’ve visited Sarah. I promise to come home straight after class. You can trust me. You need to trust me.”
Fareeda eyed her. “What about marriage?”
“Marriage can wait. After everything I know now, do you think I’m just going to sit here and let you marry me off? Nothing you say will change my mind.” Fareeda started to object, but Deya cut her off. “If you don’t let me go, then I’ll leave. I’ll take my sisters and go.”
“No!”
“Then don’t stand in my way,” Deya said. “Let me go.” When Fareeda said nothing, she added, “Do you know what Sarah told me the last time I saw her?”
“What?” Fareeda whispered. She still had not seen her grown daughter.
“She told me to learn. She said this was the only way to make my own naseeb.”
“But, daughter, we don’t control our naseeb. Our destiny comes for us. That’s what naseeb means.”
“That’s not true. My destiny is in my hands. Men make these sorts of choices all the time. Now I’m going to as well.”
Fareeda shook her head, blinking back tears. Deya had expected her to protest, to wail and argue and beg and refuse. But to her surprise, Fareeda did nothing of the sort.
“She wants to see you, you know,” Deya whispered. “She’s sorry, and she wants to come back home. But she’s afraid . . . she’s afraid you haven’t changed.”
Fareeda looked away, wiping tears from her eyes. “Tell her I’ve changed, daughter. Tell her I’m sorry.”
Deya walks between the library bookshelves now. They are thick and tall, each one twice as wide as her. She thinks about the stories stacked across the shelves, leaning against one another like burdened bodies, supporting the worlds within each other. There must be hundreds of them, thousands even. Maybe her story is in here somewhere. Maybe she will finally find it. She runs her fingers along the hardcover spines, inhales the smell of old paper, searching. But then it hits her, like falling into water.
I can tell my own story now, she thinks. And then she does.
Isra
Fall 1997
Isra didn’t know the precise moment the fear overcame her so completely, but once it did it had hit her with a force so strong she couldn’t eat or sleep for days. Since Adam had beaten her to a pulp over the girls’ schooling, she had become increasingly afraid for her daughters and their futures. She wished she had listened to Sarah and found the courage to go with her. But she had no time to waste on such thinking now. She had to save her daughters. They had to leave.
Isra looked at her silver wristwatch—3:29 p.m. She didn’t have much time. Fareeda was visiting Umm Ahmed, and Nadine was in the shower. They had to hurry. She gathered her daughters’ birth documents, as well as all the money from Adam’s drawer, and then went upstairs to take the money and gold hidden beneath Fareeda’s mattress. She had practiced these motions in her head for days, and they went more smoothly than she had anticipated. I should’ve left with Sarah, she thought for the hundredth time as she secured Layla and Amal in the stroller. She took a deep breath and opened the front door.
Isra arrived at the bus stop early. She had grown accustomed to her daily walk to meet Deya and Nora after school, had even come to look forward to it. But today the blocks felt longer than usual, the pavement wide and foreign under her feet. She told herself to be brave for her daughters. She saw the long yellow bus from a distance and eyed it anxiously until it halted to a complete stop in front of her. Her watch read 3:43 p.m. Two minutes early. Maybe God is helping me, she thought as the bus opened its double doors and her daughters emerged.
Step by step, they walked away from the bus stop. When they made it around the corner, Isra’s legs started to go numb, but she didn’t stop. Be strong, she told herself. This isn’t for you, it’s for them.
They reached the subway on Bay Ridge Avenue at 4:15 p.m. As they descended the steps, Deya and Nora helping with the stroller, Isra exhaled a deep breath. At the bottom, the station was dark and hot and claustrophobic. She looked around, trying to figure out where to go next. There was a line of metal poles blocking the entrance, and Isra didn’t know how to get through them. She watched men and women slide through the pole, dropping coins into metal slots, and she realized they would need tokens to pass.
There was a glass booth to her right, with a woman standing inside it. Isra pushed the stroller toward her. “Where can I get coins?” she asked, feeling the English words heavy on her tongue.
“Here,” the woman said, not meeting Isra’s gaze. “How much do you want?” Isra was confused. “How many tokens do you want?” the woman said again, more slowly, shooting her an irritated look.
Isra pointed to the metal poles. “I need to go on the train.”
The woman explained the cost of each single ride. Overwhelmed by all the information, Isra pulled out a ten-dollar bill and pushed it through the glass.
“Th—thank you,” she stuttered when the woman handed her a fist of tokens in return.
Isra’s hands were shaking. Inside the subway were two short staircases leading farther down. Isra didn’t know which to take. She looked around, but people rushed past her as though they were competing in a race. She decided to take the staircase on the left.
“Are we lost, Mama?” Deya asked when they had reached the bottom of the stairs.
“No, habibti. Not at all.”
Isra scanned the space around them. They stood in the middle of a dim platform crowded with people. On both sides of the platform the concrete floor dropped off like the edge of a cliff to the track. Isra traced the rail lines with her eyes, curious to see where they led, but they disappeared into the darkness beyond the platform’s end.
A black rectangular sign hung above the track, the letter R stamped in a yellow circle on it. Isra didn’t know what the letter R stood for or where the train wou
ld take her. But it didn’t matter. The best thing was to get on a train, any train, and stay on it until the very last stop, until they were as far from Bay Ridge as possible. There was no turning back now. If Adam knew she was running away, if he found her now, he would beat her to death. She was sure of it. But it didn’t matter. She had made her choice.
Isra stood on the platform, surrounded by her daughters, and waited for the train. The world seemed to slip away from her bit by bit, and she felt as though she were floating in a mist high above their bodies. Then there was a light shining at her, and a dull whistling. Slowly, very slowly, the light moved closer and the whistle blew louder until Isra could see the train emerging from the darkness, sweeping her hair as it neared. When it stopped in front of them and its metal doors opened wide, a pulse of victory swooned through her chest. They would finally be free.
Acknowledgments
To Julia Kardon, the agent who believed in me even when I didn’t believe in myself. Thank you for your patience, your friendship, and the many hours you’ve spent working with me on this novel. You’ve stood by me not only as an agent, but as a sister too. Finding you was one of the best moments of my life, and I will be forever grateful for everything you’ve done for me.
To Erin Wicks, my wise and passionate editor. Thank you for your brilliant insight, your innate understanding of everything I’ve wanted to accomplish, the many hours we spent on the phone, and the connection I’ve found in you. You’ve taken this story where no one could and helped me grow as both a writer and a person. I’m immensely grateful to call you my friend.
I would like to thank my HarperCollins family—Mary Gaule, Christine Choe, Jane Beirn, and countless others—for being advocates of this story and making this a wonderful experience for me. I’d like to thank my former colleagues and students at Nash Community College, who supported me while I wrote the early pages of this book. I also want to thank my very first reader, Jennifer Azantian, for believing in this story from the start. Finally, I would like to thank my family and friends—especially my beautiful sisters, particularly Saja—for encouraging me while I wrote this story and for talking with me about it for hours upon hours, whenever I needed it.
This book was inspired by my two children, Reyann and Isah, and by the women of Palestine.
About the Author
ETAF RUM was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, by Palestinian immigrants. She teaches college English literature in North Carolina, where she lives with her two children. Etaf also runs the Instagram account @booksandbeans. A Woman Is No Man is her first novel.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A WOMAN IS NO MAN. Copyright © 2019 by Etaf Rum. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
Cover design by Milan Bozic
Cover photograph © Philip Curtis/EyeEm/Getty Images
Digital Edition MARCH 2019 ISBN: 978-0-06-269978-7
Version 01312019
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-269976-3
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers Australia Pty. Ltd.
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
www.harpercollins.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
Bay Adelaide Centre, East Tower
22 Adelaide Street West, 41st Floor
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
M5H 4E3
www.harpercollins.ca
India
HarperCollins India
A 75, Sector 57
Noida
Uttar Pradesh 201 301
www.harpercollins.co.in
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers New Zealand
Unit D1, 63 Apollo Drive
Rosedale 0632
Auckland, New Zealand
www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF, UK
www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
195 Broadway
New York, NY 10007
www.harpercollins.com