A Woman Is No Man(91)
Nadine hardly spoke to her, either. Isra remembered how much she had minded this at first, feeling a bubble of rage burst in her chest whenever Nadine ignored her. But now their distance was a relief. At least she knew where she stood with Nadine. They were not friends, they never would be. She never had to worry about pleasing her, never had to pretend to like her. Their relationship was so much easier than hers with Adam and Fareeda. And yet in this silence, Sarah’s absence seemed to reverberate within Isra all the more. But Isra blamed herself for this hurt—she should’ve learned many years ago not to hope.
“Why do you always sit by the window?” Deya asked one day after lunch, walking toward Isra, who was indeed in her favorite spot.
Isra wrapped her arms around her knees. She hesitated, her eyes fixed on a spot outside the window, before replying, “I like the view.”
“Do you want to play a game?” Deya asked, touching her arm. Isra tried not to flinch. She looked at her daughter and noticed that she had gotten a little taller, a little thinner over the summer. She felt a pinch of guilt for not being more mentally present during their days together.
“Not today,” Isra said, looking back out the window.
“Why not?”
“I don’t feel like playing. Maybe another time.”
“But you always say that,” Deya said, touching her arm again. Isra shrank back. “You always say tomorrow, and we never play.”
“I don’t have time to play!” Isra snapped, moving Deya’s arm away. “Go play with your sisters.” She returned her gaze to the window.
The view outside was gray, the sun hidden behind a broken cloud. Every now and then, she turned to look back at Deya. Why had she spoken to her daughter like that? Would it have been so hard to play one little game? When had she become so harsh? She didn’t want to be harsh. She wanted to be a good mother.
The next day Isra watched Nadine tossing a ball with Ameer in the driveway. Nadine’s smiling face made Isra sick. Nadine stood straight and tall, her belly round as a basketball in front of her. Her third son was on his way. What had she done in her life to deserve three boys? All while Isra had none. But this failure paled in comparison to Isra’s biggest shame: what she had done to her daughters. What she continued to do to them.
Later that afternoon, while Isra soaked lentils to prepare adas for dinner, Khaled entered the kitchen to make za’atar. But instead of heading straight to the pantry to collect the spices, he stopped in front of Isra and spoke. “I’m sorry, daughter,” he said, “for what I said the night Adam hit you.”
Isra stepped away from the kitchen sink. Khaled had barely spoken a word to anyone since Sarah had left.
“I’ve been thinking of that night for some time now.” His voice was almost a whisper. “I’ve been thinking maybe God took Sarah from us as punishment for what we’ve done to you.”
“No. That’s not true,” Isra managed to say.
“But it is.”
“Don’t say that,” Isra said, trying to meet his gaze. She noticed that his eyes were wet.
“Something like this—it makes you reconsider things.” Khaled walked past Isra to the pantry and returned to the kitchen, spices in hand. He poured the sesame seeds into an iron skillet. “It makes you wonder if any of this would’ve happened if we’d never left home.”
Isra had wondered this, too, only she hadn’t dared admit it. “Do you want to go back?” she asked, remembering what Adam had once said about wishing he could return. “I mean, would you if you could?”
“I don’t know.” He stood, slightly stooped, by the stove, stirring the sesame seeds occasionally and opening spice jars he had gathered from the pantry: sumac, thyme, marjoram, oregano. “Whenever we go home to visit my brothers and sisters, I see how they live. I don’t know how they do it.” He turned off the stove.
Isra watched him pour the roasted sesame seeds into an empty jar. “Why did you come to America?” she asked.
“I was twelve when we relocated to the al-Am’ari camp. My parents had ten children—I was the eldest. We lived in tents for the first few years, thick nylon shelters that kept us dry from the rain, though just barely.” He stopped, reaching for the spice jars. Next he would mix a tablespoon or two of each into the roasted seeds. She handed him a measuring spoon.
“We were very poor,” Khaled continued. “There wasn’t water or electricity. Our toilet was a bucket at the back of our tents, and my father would bury our waste in the woods. The winters were cold, and we chopped wood from the mountains to make a fire. It was hard. We lived that way for a few years before our tents were replaced with cement shelters.”
Isra felt the ache of his words inside her. She had grown up poor, yes, but she could not imagine the kind of poverty Khaled described. As far back as she could remember, her family had always had water, electricity, a toilet. She swallowed a lump in her throat. “How did you survive?”
“It was hard. My father worked as a builder, but his salary wasn’t enough to support our family. The UNRWA gave out food parcels and financial support. We would stand in line every month for thick blankets and bags of rice and sugar. But the tents were overcrowded, and the food was never enough. My brothers and I would go to the mountains to pick our own food.” He stopped to taste the za’atar and then reached for the saltshaker, giving Isra a nod. She returned the remaining spices to the cabinet. “People were different back then, you know,” Khaled said, placing the dirty skillet in the sink. “If you ran out of milk or sugar, then you walked next door and asked your neighbor. We were all a family back home. We had a community. Nothing like here.”