A Woman Is No Man(49)

“Why not?”

“There was no naseeb, I guess. You know the Arabic proverb, ‘What’s meant for you will reach you even if it’s beneath two mountains, and what’s not meant for you won’t reach you even if it’s between your two lips’?”

Deya’s contempt must have been written across her face. “What?” he asked. “You don’t believe in naseeb?”

“It’s not that I don’t believe in it, but sitting around waiting for destiny to hit feels so passive. I hate the idea that I have no control over my life.”

“But that’s what naseeb means,” Nasser said. “Your life is already written for you, already maktub.”

“Then why do you wake up in the morning? Why do you bother going to work or school or even leaving your room, if the outcome of your life is out of your hands?”

Nasser shook his head. “Just because my fate has already been decided, that doesn’t mean I should stay in bed all day. It just means that God already knows what I’ll do.”

“But don’t you think this mentality stops you from giving things your all? Like, if it’s already written, then what’s the point?”

“Maybe,” Nasser said. “But it also reminds me of my place in the world, helps me cope when things don’t go my way.”

Deya didn’t know whether she found weakness or courage in his answer. “I’d like to think I have more control over my life,” she said. “I want to believe I actually have a choice.”

“We always have a choice. I never said we don’t.” Deya blinked at him. “It’s true. Like this marriage arrangement, for instance.”

“Maybe you can go around proposing to any girl you want,” she said. “But I don’t see any choice here for me.”

“But there is! You can choose to say no until you meet the right person.”

She rolled her eyes. “That’s not a choice.”

“That depends on how you look at it.”

“No matter how I look at it, I’m still being forced to get married. Just because I’m offered options, that doesn’t mean I have a choice. Don’t you see?” She shook her head. “A real choice doesn’t have conditions. A real choice is free.”

“Maybe,” Nasser said. “But sometimes you have to make the best of things. Take life as it comes, accept things as they are.”

Deya exhaled, a wave of self-doubt washing over her. She didn’t want to accept things as they were. She wanted to be in control of her own life, decide her own future for a change.

“So, should I tell them yes?” Fareeda asked Deya after Nasser left. She was standing in the kitchen doorway, a cup of kahwa to her lips.

“I need more time,” Deya said.

“Shouldn’t you at least know if you like him by now?”

“I barely know him, Teta.”

Fareeda sighed. “Have I ever told you the story of how I met your grandfather?” Deya shook her head. “Come, come. Let me tell you.”

Fareeda proceeded to tell her the story of her wedding night, nearly fifty years before, in the al-Am’ari refugee camp. She had just turned fourteen.

“My sister Huda and I were both getting married that day,” Fareeda said. “To brothers. I remember sitting inside our shelter, our palms henna-stained, our eyes smeared with kohl, while Mama wrapped our hair with hairpins she had borrowed from a neighbor. It was only after we’d signed the marriage contracts that we saw our husbands for the first time! Huda and I were so nervous as Mama led us to them. The first brother was tall and thin, with small eyes and a freckled face; the second was tan, with broad shoulders and cinnamon hair. The second brother smiled. He had a beautiful row of white teeth, and I remember secretly hoping he was my husband. But Mama led me by the elbow to the first man and whispered: ‘This man is your home now.’”

“But that was a million years ago,” Deya said. “Just because it happened to you doesn’t mean it should happen to me.”

“It’s not happening to you!” Fareeda said. “You’ve already said no to several men, and you’ve sat with Nasser twice! No one is telling you to marry him tomorrow. Sit with him a few more times and get to know him.”

“So, sitting with him five times will make me know him?”

“No one really knows anyone, daughter. Even after a lifetime.”

“Which is why this is so ridiculous.”

“Well, this ridiculousness is how it’s been done for centuries.”

“Maybe that’s why everyone is so miserable.”

“Miserable?” Fareeda waved her hands in the air. “You think your life is miserable? Unbelievable.” Deya took a step back, knowing what was coming. “You’ve never seen miserable. I was only six years old when my family relocated to the refugee camp, settling in a corner tent with a single room, as far as we could get from the open sewage, the rotting corpses on the dirt road. You wouldn’t believe how dirty I always was—hair uncombed, clothes soiled, feet as black as coal. I used to see young boys kicking a ball around the sewage or riding bikes on the dirt roads and wish I could run along with them. But even as a child, I knew my place. I knew my mother needed help, squatting in front of a bucket, washing clothes in whatever water we could find. Even though I was only a child, I knew I was a woman first.”