A Woman Is No Man

Sarah will graduate high school soon, but Fareeda has not found a suitor willing to propose. Still convinced Sarah is cursed, Fareeda takes her to a “jinn sheikh” who recites an incantation and pronounces her free of evil spirits. She is perplexed as to why suitors so reluctant when Sarah “has been trained for wifedom her entire life” (289). Nadine is pregnant with her second child, and Fareeda has given up hope of Isra ever bearing a son. Fareeda sits on the front stoop in the rain, determined to figure out why Sarah has no proposals. She asks Isra if Sarah has confided in her and if she might have any information, but Isra says no.

When Sarah comes home from school, Fareeda angrily confronts her, demanding to know what’s she’s done to sabotage her future. Sarah denies she’s done anything wrong, but Fareeda persists. She slaps Sarah and drags her by her hair into the house. Sarah remains defiant, enraging Fareeda even more. Fareeda beats Sarah with her slipper and tries to strangle her until Isra screams at her to stop. She lets Sarah go but tells her she wants her out of her sight.

Fareeda reports that Hannah, Umm Ahmed’s daughter, has been killed, stabbed by her husband after asking him for a divorce. Sarah is even more upset by Fareeda’s insistence on marrying: “That could have been me” (294), she cries. For the first time, Isra questions whether silence in the face of abuse is the wisest choice.

After her latest visit with Sarah, Deya comes home and asks Khaled why he and Fareeda lied about her parents’ deaths. Khaled says they wanted to protect her and her sisters. Despite his apologies, Deya continues to press him. Why did Adam kill himself? How would lying protect them? Almost two decades later, however, Khaled still has no answers. He can only cite tradition, saying that this is the way it has always been. Then, he recalls his memories of Isra: how she helped him cook sometimes, and how she used to love to read to Deya and her sisters. Deya tries to repair the rift between Sarah and Khaled, but Khaled insists his pride is too great an obstacle; the damage is beyond repair. 

As Sarah and Isra prepare dinner following Sarah’s confrontation with Fareeda, Sarah confesses that she skipped school recently to go to a movie with friends. She fears she will never know true love as long as she is under her mother’s control. Isra finds herself arguing Fareeda’s position that this is how a woman’s life always has been and that they have no choice; secretly, however, Isra is terrified that she will perpetuate the cycle of control and abuse on her own daughters and that they will hate her for it. She can’t admit to Sarah that she resents her daughters for being born girls and that the shame she has been taught to feel about herself she feels for them as well. Sarah confesses that she can’t live under Fareeda’s roof anymore and she’s planning to run away. She urges Isra to join her, but Isra will not uproot her daughters and raise them alone. Sarah fears Isra’s daughters will grow up to hate her because she didn’t protect them.

A year later and still living with Fareeda and Khaled, Deya moves through her life in a daze. Nothing has changed. She has bits of Isra’s story, but that story feels incomplete. She sits in Islamic studies class listening to her instructor lecture about the role of women in Islam, a sacred and honored role, according to the Qur’an, but all of Deya’s experiences contradict her teacher’s words. She’s never met anyone who treats women the way the Qur’an prescribes. She views most of the Muslims she knows as liars and hypocrites. On the bus ride home, Deya remembers her mother’s final words to her: I’m sorry. She despairs of ever learning the full truth of Isra’s life and death. 

Seven days after Sarah has run away, Adam blames Fareeda. He accuses her of being too soft and blames the bad influence of American public schools. Khaled is sullen, blaming himself for Sarah’s disappearance. Fareeda second-guesses her choices: Would Sarah have disobeyed them and run away if they had raised her in Palestine? She thinks about Hannah’s death and how Umm Ahmed blamed herself for allowing Hannah to ask for a divorce. Fareeda knows she would never do that for Sarah. Culture, she muses, is too powerful a force from which to escape.

Isra gazes out the window, angry with Sarah for leaving her alone. She cannot understand that kind of disobedience; she could never muster the courage to defy her parents like that. After she prepares dinner, Isra goes downstairs and writes a letter to her mother that she will never mail. In it, she confesses her feelings of shame and worthlessness; she wonders where her inner darkness comes from and if it will ever leave, or if she is destined to live a life like her own mother—a life of subjugation and abuse. She tucks the letter inside her copy of A Thousand and One Nights and hides it at the back of her closet. When Deya asks for a bedtime story, Isra has no books to read to her; her books all came from Sarah. She wonders if Adam suffers from the same self-loathing as she does and if that is why he beats her.