A Woman Is No Man(81)
Isra faced the window the rest of the ride home. Every now and then, she looked up to find Fareeda staring absently out the passenger window. Isra wondered what she was thinking. Fareeda had never once in the past seven years defended her. What did it mean? Did Fareeda understand her after all? Did she love her, even? Her own mother had never stood up for her despite the many times Yacob had beaten Isra in her presence.
Isra felt a tide of helplessness spread through her as she thought of her life. She hadn’t asked for much. Why couldn’t she get it? She must have done something to deserve her miserable fate, only she didn’t know what, so she didn’t know how to fix it. She wished God would tell her what to do. But in the silence of the car she asked God, and He said nothing.
Fareeda
Winter 2008
I’ll stand here all night if I have to,” Deya told Fareeda in the kitchen. “I won’t leave until you tell me what happened.” She moved closer. “If you refuse, I’ll never speak to you again. I’ll take my sisters and leave, and you’ll never see us again.”
“No.” Fareeda reached out to touch her, but Deya stepped away. “Please.”
“Then tell me the truth. All of it.”
“It’s the jinn,” she croaked. “It’s the jinn from my daughters.”
Whatever answer Deya had been expecting, it was clearly not this. She stared at Fareeda with confusion in her eyes. “What are you talking about?”
“That’s what possessed Adam and Isra. That’s what’s been haunting this family all these years. The jinn from my daughters.”
“What daughters?”
She told Deya all of it: how her belly had swelled soon after her marriage to Khaled, how hopeful he had been at the gift of new life, the possibility of a new beginning in such a desperate time. Only Fareeda hadn’t given him the son he had dreamed of, the young man who would help him find food and water, who would help him cope with the burden of their family’s loss, who would carry on the family’s name. She had given him balwas instead—not one but two. She had known, even before seeing the mournful look on his face, that he would be disappointed. She hadn’t blamed him. The shame of her gender was engraved on her bones.
Deya sat down. “What happened to them?”
“They died.” The words felt heavy on Fareeda’s tongue. They had remained unspoken for so long.
“How?” It was clear she was still angry, but her tone had softened slightly.
“Khaled’s mother made me feed them formula. She said breastfeeding would stop me from getting pregnant, and we needed a son. But there were shortages of food and medicine. One day I ran out of formula, so I stole a cup of goat’s milk from our neighbor’s tent and fed them and . . .”
“I don’t see how this has anything to do with my parents being possessed,” Deya said.
How could she make her see? Fareeda sucked back tears. It had everything to do with Adam and Isra. Her daughters had been punishing her all these years for what she had done. When Isra gave birth to daughter after daughter, when Adam came home, eyes glazed, Fareeda could feel her firstborn daughters in the air, could almost hear their cries.
“Say something!” Deya said. “What do your daughters have to do with my parents?”
“Because I killed them. I didn’t know! I promise you, I didn’t know! I was so young—I had no idea—but it doesn’t matter. It was my fault. I killed them, and they’ve been haunting me ever since.”
Deya stared at her, her face twisted, unreadable. Fareeda knew her granddaughter could never understand how shame could grow and morph and swallow someone until she had no choice but to pass it along so that she wasn’t forced to bear it alone. She searched for the right words now, but there were none that could explain it. Deep down she knew what she had done—that she had pushed everyone away, that all she could do now was wait for the day when God would snatch her off this earth. She hoped it would be quick. What was the point of living, really, when you were like her—a fist of loneliness clenched around an empty heart?
Fareeda closed her eyes and breathed. Something inside her shifted, as if her whole life she had been looking in the wrong direction, not seeing the precise moment that turned everything upside down. She saw the chain of shame passed from one woman to the next so clearly now, saw her place in the cycle so vividly. She sighed. It was cruel, this life. But a woman could only do so much.
Deya
Winter 2008
The next morning Deya left her sisters at the corner of Seventy-Second Street and walked past them to the subway station, head bowed to avoid meeting their eyes. Her hands were sweating, and she wiped them on her jilbab. She pictured fleetingly how composed she had been the night before, when she’d told her sisters that they should run away, that she had a plan. She had smiled as she painted the future for them, a forced hope in her eyes.
But then they had done the unexpected. They had refused to leave. Nora said running away was a bad idea, that it wouldn’t bring back their parents, that it would only isolate them more. Layla had agreed, adding that they’d been sheltered their entire lives, and would never be able to survive on their own. They had no money. They had nowhere to go. Amal only nodded as the other two spoke, her eyes large and teary. They were sorry, they told her. But they were too afraid. Deya had said she was afraid, too. The difference was, she was also afraid of staying.