A Woman Is No Man(93)

Deya spent the night thinking things over and devising a plan. The next morning, she decided to visit Sarah. She’d visited her aunt less frequently in the weeks since Sarah had given her the newspaper clipping. They were still working to repair the damage Sarah had done by concealing the truth about her parents. But now Deya needed her aunt the most. She told Sarah her decision as soon as she walked into the bookstore.

“Really?” Sarah said. “I’m so proud of you! Has my mother agreed?”

“I haven’t told her yet. But I’m going to. I promise.”

Sarah smiled. “What about your marriage suitors?”

“I’m going to tell Teta that marriage can wait,” Deya said. “And if she doesn’t listen, then I’ll just scare them away.”

Sarah laughed, but Deya saw fear in her eyes. “Promise me you’ll go to college. No matter what Fareeda says.”

“I promise.”

Sarah’s smile widened.

“I wanted to thank you,” Deya said.

“There’s no need to thank me.”

“There is,” Deya said. “I know I’ve been angry at you a lot over the past few months, but that doesn’t mean I’m not grateful for everything you’ve done. I should say it more. You reached out to me when I was all alone. You told me the truth when no one else would. Even when I was mad, you stood by me. You’ve been an incredible friend. If my mother was here, she’d thank you, too.”

Sarah met her eyes, on the verge of tears. “I hope so.”

Deya stood and hugged her aunt tight. As Sarah walked her out, Deya said, “By the way, I’ve been thinking about what you told me, about courage. Do you think maybe you’ll feel better if you have courage, too?”

“Courage to do what?”

“To come back home.”

Sarah blinked at her.

“I know you want to. All you have to do is come knock on the door.”

“I . . . I don’t know,”

“You can do it,” Deya said, turning to leave. “I’ll be waiting for you.”





Isra


Fall 1997

By the time the school year started again, so many weeks had passed since Sarah had left that Isra was surprised when Adam told her: he was taking the girls out of public school.

“These American schools will corrupt our daughters,” Adam said, swaying in the bedroom doorway.

Isra was in bed. She pulled the blanket closer, feeling a sudden chill. “But the school year just started,” she whispered. “Where will they go?”

“An Islamic school has just opened on Fourth Avenue. Madrast al-Noor. School of Light. They start next month.”

Isra opened her mouth to respond, but thought better of it. Instead she sank into bed and disappeared beneath the sheets.

Over the next few weeks, Isra considered Adam’s plan. As much as she hated admitting it, he was right. She had also come to fear the public schools, afraid that one day her daughters might follow in Sarah’s footsteps. Just the other day she had witnessed Deya waving goodbye to the boys on her school bus! It had made her rigid with terror, and she had yelled at Deya, called her a sharmouta. Deya’s face had crumpled, and Isra had been overcome with shame ever since. How could she call her daughter—a seven-year-old child—such a dirty word? What had she been thinking? Her head ached, and she tapped her forehead against the window to relieve the pain.

It was shame that made her do it, Isra thought now, shame at being a woman. Shame that made her abort her most recent pregnancy. She hadn’t told anyone that she had gotten pregnant last month, not even Fareeda, who, in the midst of grieving Sarah, still found energy to remind her that Adam needed a son. But there had been no need to tell: Isra had not planned to keep the baby. As soon as the white strip turned red, she had stood at the top of the staircase and jumped off, over and over again, pounding on her belly with clenched fists. Fareeda hadn’t known what Isra was doing, only that she was jumping off the stairs. It had clearly scared her. Fareeda had demanded she stop, had called her a majnoona, screaming that she was crazy, possessed, going so far as to call Adam to come home and control his wife. But Isra hadn’t stopped. She’d needed to bleed. So she’d kept jumping until the blood gushed down her thighs.

Who had she intended to save, Isra wondered now, herself or the child? She wasn’t sure. All she knew was that she had failed as a mother. She could still see the horrible look in Deya’s eyes when she’d found her jumping. The pain of that moment had been so great that for a second Isra had considered killing herself, too, sticking her head in the oven like her favorite author had done. But Isra was too much of a coward even for that.

On the nights since, she had lain awake in bed and tried to push the thoughts away, telling herself stories, like the ones from A Thousand and One Nights. Sometimes she pulled out a sheet of paper from the stack she stashed in the back of their closet and wrote letters to Mama, pages and pages she would never send.

“I’m afraid for our daughters,” Isra told Adam late one night when he returned from the deli. She had practiced the words in front of the mirror, making sure her eyebrows didn’t flinch when she spoke, that she kept her gaze direct. “I’m afraid for our daughters,” she repeated when Adam said nothing. She could tell that he was startled to hear her speak so boldly. She was startled, too—even with all her practice—but enough was enough. How long was she going to let him silence her? No matter what, he was going to beat her—whether she defied him or submitted, whether she spoke up or said nothing. The least she could do was stand up for her daughters. She owed them that.