A Woman Is No Man(70)
“Who are you expecting to call?” Nadine asked, smoothing her hair.
“Just a potential marriage suitor.”
“Oh.”
Fareeda knew what she must be thinking. Somehow the summer had passed, and not one suitor had asked for Sarah’s hand in marriage. Perhaps the other Arab mothers thought Sarah wasn’t good enough, Arab enough. Perhaps, like her, they preferred a girl from back home. All of this was possible, but deep down Fareeda couldn’t help but fear it was the jinn, still haunting their family after all those years, as if Isra’s girls were a payback for what she had done.
Nadine cleared her throat and Fareeda straightened. She hoped the girl couldn’t sense her fear.
“You’ll miss her, you know,” Nadine said, looking at her with her stupid blue eyes. “She’ll be married soon, and you’ll miss her.”
“Miss her?” Fareeda tucked her yellow nightgown over her knees. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“I just mean you shouldn’t worry about marrying her off so quickly. You should enjoy the time you have left.”
Fareeda didn’t like the look on Nadine’s face. There was a time when she had enjoyed Nadine’s company, a break from Isra’s dullness and Sarah’s rebellions. But now it was Nadine who irritated her the most, with her constant sense of entitlement. The girl did whatever she pleased, regardless of what Fareeda asked of her. As annoying as Isra was, at least she did what she was told. At least she knew her place. But one damn child, and Nadine walked around as though the world owed her something. As though she wasn’t a woman like the rest of them. You have to earn the right to bend the rules, Fareeda thought, and Nadine hadn’t earned a thing.
“But I guess you’re lucky,” Nadine said. “She’ll get married right here, and you’ll see her all the time.”
“See her all the time? Do you think you’d see your mother all the time if you were living back home?”
“Of course.”
Fareeda laughed, her eyes squinting into tiny slits. “When a girl gets married, she puts a big X on her parents’ door.” Fareeda drew the letter with her index finger as large as she could in front of her. “A very big X.” Nadine stared at her, fingering the tips of her hair. “No man wants a wife still stuck up her family’s back end when she should be home cooking and cleaning.” Fareeda spit out her gum, squashed it into a tissue. “Believe me, I’ll kick Sarah right back into her husband’s lap if she starts coming around here after she’s married.”
Deya
Winter 2008
What are you hiding from me?” Deya asked Sarah the next day, as soon as she walked into the bookstore. There were customers, but Deya didn’t bother to keep her voice low. “Nasser—Nasser, of all people—said there was a reason Baba beat Mama. What was he talking about?”
“I don’t know—”
“Stop! I thought we said we wouldn’t lie to each other.” Deya lowered her voice, trying not to cry. “Please. Just tell me the truth already. What happened to my parents?”
Sarah took a step back. She rubbed both hands over her face. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. She walked to her desk, opened the bottom drawer, and reached inside. When she returned, she was holding a piece of paper. She handed it to Deya.
“I’m so sorry,” she said again. “When I left the note for you, I had no idea you didn’t know. And then when I found out, I was afraid to tell you. I thought if I told you too soon, you’d run away and I’d never see you again. I’m so sorry, Deya.”
Deya said nothing, inspecting the paper in her hand. It was a newspaper clipping. She brought it close to her face until she could make out the ant-size print, and then, all at once, the room went dark. Her tears came in a rush. What a terrible daughter she must have been to not have known it all along.
“Please,” Sarah said, reaching out to hold her. “Let me explain.”
But Deya took one step back, and then another, and the next she knew she was running.
Fareeda
1970
One of the memories that came unbidden when Fareeda was alone: she was at a gathering while she and Khaled still lived in the camps, a few years before they moved to America. The women sat on the veranda of Fareeda’s cement shelter, sipping on mint chai and eating from a fresh platter of za’atar rolls Fareeda had baked over the soba oven. Their kids were riding bikes on the unpaved road. A soccer ball flew from one end of the street to the other. They were surrounded by noise, laughter.
“Did you hear about Ramsy’s wife?” Hala, Fareeda’s next-door neighbor, asked between mouthfuls of bread. “The girl who lives on the other side of the camp? What’s her name? Suhayla, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Awatif, who lived eight doors down, in a shelter by the open sewers. “The one who went crazy after her newborn daughter died.”
“But did you hear the rumor”—Hala leaned in, her voice a whisper—“about what really happened to her daughter? They’re saying she drowned her in the bathtub. Ramsy and his family tried to pass it off as an accident, said she’s still a young bride and didn’t know how to bathe the girl properly. But I heard she did it on purpose. She didn’t want a daughter.”