A Woman Is No Man

by Etaf Rum

“Soon you’ll learn that there’s no room for love in a woman’s life. There’s only one thing you’ll need, and that’s sabr, patience.”

“There is nothing out there for a woman but her bayt wa dar, her house and home. Marriage, motherhood—that is a woman’s only worth.”

Mama had been right all along when she’d said the world would be disappointing regardless of where she stood.

America was supposed to be the land of the free, so why did everything feel tight and constricted?

“Sometimes I wish I could’ve been born a man, just to see how it feels. It would’ve spared me a lot of grief in life.”

A man is the only way up in this world, even though he’ll climb a woman’s back to get there.

She wondered how it felt to be an American, to know exactly where you were heading each time you left your front door, and exactly what you would do when you got there. She had spent her entire life being pushed and pulled, from kitchen to kitchen, child to child.

“You need to make sure our culture survives, and that means teaching a woman her place.”

There’s no skill required in happiness, no strength of character, nothing extraordinary. Its discontent that drives creation the most—passion, desire, defiance. Revolutions don’t come

“No matter how you may feel now, this is a fact: your life is in your hands. If I had known that when I was your age, I would’ve done many things differently. I would’ve been less afraid of the future. I would’ve had more faith in myself.

And even if she somehow found the strength to stand up for herself, what good would it do when she had no money, no education, no job to fall back on? That was the real reason abuse was so common, Isra thought for the first time. Not only because there was no government protection, but because women were raised to believe they were worthless, shameful creatures who deserved to get beaten,

Isra resented her books in these moments when she thought about the limits of her life and how easy courage seemed when you boiled it down to a few words on paper.

Sadness was like a cancer, she thought, a presence that staked its claim so quietly you might not even notice it until it was too late.

But maybe that’s the way of life, Fareeda thought. To understand things only after they had passed, only once it was too late.

Instead of screaming at this girl, why don’t you go punish your damn son for beating her senseless? What are we going to tell her parents, huh? That our son beat her so hard she needed stitches? And what if someone at the doctor calls the cops? What if your son goes to jail? Tell me, have you thought about that? Have you?”

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.

Fareeda knew that no matter what any woman said, culture could not be escaped. Even if it meant tragedy. Even if it meant death. At least she was able to recognize her role in their culture, own up to it, instead of sitting around saying “If only I had done things differently.” It took more than one woman to do things differently. It took a world of them.

this what Adam felt, Isra wondered, when he came into the room at night, ripping off his belt and whipping her? Did he feel powerless, too? Like he needed to stop but couldn’t, like he was the worst person on earth? Only he wasn’t the worst person on earth. She was, and she deserved to get beaten for all of it.