A Woman Is No Man(51)
She reached under the mattress, grazed her fingers against A Thousand and One Nights. It had been years since she had looked at its beautiful pages. She pulled it out and opened it wide. It was full of pictures: glimmering lights, flying carpets, grand architecture, jewels, magic lamps. She felt sick. How foolish she had been to believe that such a life was real. How foolish she had been to think she would find love. She slammed the book shut and threw it across the room. Then she folded up her prayer rug and put it away. She knew she should pray, but she had nothing to say to God.
That night, after putting her daughters to bed, Isra retreated to the basement window. She cracked it open, cold air slapping her in the face for a few moments, before she slammed it shut again. She wrapped her arms around her knees and began to weep.
The next thing she knew, she was on her feet, darting to the bedroom. She pulled open Adam’s drawer, grabbed the composition notebook and pen, and returned to the windowsill, where she ripped out a few empty pages from the back and began to write.
Dear Mama,
Life here isn’t so different from life back home, with all the cooking, cleaning, folding, and ironing. And the women here—they live no better. They still scrub floors and raise children and wait on men to order them around. A part of me hoped that women would be liberated in this country. But you were right, Mama. A woman will always be a woman.
She was gritting her teeth in anger and despair. She crumpled the letter, started again, then crumpled the next as well, then the next and the one after it, until she had rewritten her letter a dozen times, and all of them lay balled at her feet. She could picture Mama’s disapproval now, could hear her voice: But aren’t you fed, clothed, and sheltered? Tell me, don’t you have a home? Be grateful, Isra! At least you have a home. No one will ever come and take it from you. Living in Brooklyn is a hundred times better than living in Palestine.
“But it’s not better, Mama,” Isra wrote on a new sheet of paper.
Do you think about me? Do you wonder if I’m treated well? Do I ever cross your mind? Or am I not even part of your family anymore? Isn’t that what you always said to me, that a girl belongs to her husband after marriage? I can see you now, coddling my brothers, your pride and joy, the men who will carry on the family name, who will always belong to you.
I know what you’d say to me: once a woman becomes a mother, her children come first. That she belongs to them now. Isn’t that right? But I’m a terrible mother. It’s true. Every time I look at my daughters, I’m filled with sorrow. Sometimes they are so needy, I think they’ll drive me mad. And then I’m ashamed I can’t give them more. I thought having daughters in this country would be a blessing. I thought they’d have a better life. But I was wrong, Mama, and I’m reminded of how much I failed them every time I look in their eyes.
I am alone here, Mama. I wake up every morning in this foreign country, where I don’t have a mother or a sister or a brother. Did you know this would happen to me? Did you? No. You couldn’t have known. You wouldn’t have let this happen to me if you had. Or did you know and let it happen anyway? But that can’t be. No, it can’t.
Two weeks later, on a cool September day, Nadine went into labor. Khaled and Omar drove her to the hospital, leaving Fareeda to pace from room to room, a phone in hand, waiting for the news. Fareeda had wanted to accompany them, but Omar had refused. He hadn’t wanted to put pressure on Nadine, he’d said, without meeting Isra’s eyes, especially if she had a girl. Fareeda had said nothing, storming into the kitchen to brew a kettle of chai. Now she paced around the sala, muttering to herself, while Adam sat on the sofa, looking at Isra in his absent way, eyes half hidden behind a cloud of hookah smoke. When she couldn’t take it any longer, she stood to go brew some coffee.
In the kitchen, Isra let out a silent prayer that Nadine would have a girl. No sooner had she thought it than she felt disgusted with herself. What ugliness inside her had made her think such a wicked prayer? It was just that she didn’t want to be the only woman in the house who couldn’t bear a son. If Nadine had a son, Isra might as well flatten herself on the floor like a kitchen mat, because that’s all she’d be.
The phone rang, and Isra clenched her teeth. She heard Fareeda squeal, then Adam choking on the hookah smoke.
“Oh, Omar!” Fareeda said into the phone. “A baby boy? Alf mabrouk.”
The next thing Isra knew, she was standing in front of Fareeda and Adam, though she couldn’t remember walking down the hall and into the sala. Trembling, she set a tray of Turkish coffee on the table.
“Alf mabrouk,” Isra said, remembering to smile. “Congratulations.” The voice she heard was not her own. It belonged to a stronger woman.
Fareeda’s gold tooth sparkled as she held the receiver to her ear. Beside her, Adam sat perfectly still. He inhaled a long puff of smoke and released it into the air. Isra moved closer to him, hoping he would say something to her, but he just sucked in the smoke and exhaled. She had become accustomed to the silence between them, had learned to shrink herself in his presence so as not to upset him the same way she had with Yacob growing up. It was better that way. But Isra worried no amount of shrinking would prevent Adam’s anger now. He was the eldest; he was expected to have the first grandson. But now he hadn’t, and it was all her fault.
He turned to Fareeda. “Alf mabrouk, Mother.”