A Woman Is No Man(26)
She flipped the card over. There was a note handwritten on the back in pen: ASK FOR MANAGER.
She ran her fingers over the card and imagined the strange woman doing the same. Who could she be? Deya closed her eyes and pictured the woman’s face, hoping to see something she missed before, but instead, in that instant, all she could see was her mother. Suddenly a thought came to her—absurd, fantastical, but her mind clung to it, bewitched. Could it be? Could the woman be Isra? It was possible. After all, Deya had not seen the car accident, had not been to the funeral, which Fareeda had said was held in Palestine. But what if Fareeda had made the whole thing up? What if Isra was still alive?
Deya sat up in bed. Surely it was impossible. Both of her parents were dead—not just Isra. Fareeda couldn’t possibly fake the death of two people. And to what end? Her mother had to be dead. If not in a car accident, then suicide. And even if she were alive, why would she come back after all these years? She wouldn’t. She had barely wanted Deya ten years ago. Why would she want her now?
Deya shook her head, tried to will her mother out of her mind. Only she couldn’t. The memories rushed to her in the usual, suffocating way: Isra, sitting in the kitchen with her back turned to Deya, rolling grape leaves on the table. Mesmerized, Deya had watched her stuff each leaf with rice and then roll it into a fingerlike shape before placing it in a large metal pot.
“You’re really good at this, Mama,” she’d whispered.
Isra didn’t respond. She just pinched a bit of rice between her fingers and tasted it to make sure it was seasoned well. Then she stuffed another grape leaf.
“Can I try to roll one?” Deya asked. Still no response. “Mama, will you show me how?”
Without looking up, Isra passed her a grape leaf. Deya waited for directions, but Isra said nothing. So Deya imitated her. She cut the stem off a grape leaf, arranged a thin log of rice at the bottom, tucked both sides of the leaf across the top until the rice was completely covered. When she was done, she placed the stuffed leaf in the pot and looked to her mother’s face for approval. Isra had said nothing.
Deya was pressing hard against the card now, bending it between her fingers. She hated that memory, hated all her memories. Trembling, she clenched the bookstore card in her fist. Who was this woman, and what did she want? Could she be her mother? Deya breathed in and out, trying to calm herself. She knew what she had to do. She would call the number the next day and find out.
The next day came slowly. In school, Deya walked around in a daze, wondering when she would have the opportunity to call the number. During Islamic studies, the last class before lunch, she waited impatiently for Brother Hakeem to finish his lecture. She stared at him absently as he rotated around the room, watched his mouth as it opened and closed. He had been her Islamic studies teacher ever since she was a child, had taught her everything she knew about Islam.
“The word Islam means tawwakul,” Brother Hakeem said to the class. “Submission to God. Islam is about peace, purity, and kindness. Standing up to injustice and oppression. That’s the heart of it.”
Deya rolled her eyes. They couldn’t possibly be Muslims, if that’s what it meant. But then again, what did she know? Religion wasn’t something she had learned at home—they weren’t a devout Muslim family, not really. Once, Deya had contemplated wearing the hijab permanently, not just for her school uniform, but Fareeda had forbidden it, saying, “No one will marry you with that thing on your head!” Deya had been confused. She had expected Fareeda to be proud of her for trying to be a better Muslim. But after thinking about it more, she had realized that most of the rules Fareeda held highest weren’t based on religion at all, only Arab propriety.
Lunch now, and Deya’s only chance to call the number. She decided to ask quiet, pale-faced Meriem to use her cell phone. She was one of the few girls in class whose parents let her have a phone. Deya thought it was because Meriem was so innocent. Her parents didn’t have to worry about her talking to boys or getting into trouble. In fact, not once in their years of school together had Meriem done anything wrong. Most of the girls in her class had found a way to break the rules at one time or another, even Deya. For her, it had been one Friday afternoon after jumaa prayer when she had thrown a metal chair from the fire escape. To this day, Deya didn’t know why she had done it. All she could remember was her classmates staring at her with impish smiles, telling her that she didn’t have the nerve, and then standing at the edge of the fire escape and plunging the chair down five stories with relish. The principal had called Fareeda to tell her that Deya had been suspended. But when she went home, head bowed, Fareeda had only laughed and said, “It doesn’t matter. There are more important things to worry about than school.”
It wasn’t the only time Deya had broken the rules. She had once asked one of her classmates, Yusra, to buy her an Eminem CD because she knew Fareeda would never allow it. Yusra’s family wasn’t as strict as Deya’s grandparents, who only allowed her to listen to Arabic music. Yusra smuggled the Eminem CD to her in school, and Deya listened to it obsessively. She identified with the rapper’s tension, admired his defiant attitude and courageous voice. If only Deya had that voice. Some nights, whenever she had a bad day at school or Fareeda had upset her, Deya would slip her headphones on and fall asleep listening to Eminem’s words, knowing that somewhere out there was another person who felt trapped by the confines of his world—comforted by the fact that you didn’t have to be a woman or even an immigrant to understand what it felt like to not belong.