A Woman Is No Man

by Etaf Rum

when I opened my mouth to ask for what I wanted and realized no one could hear me. Where I come from, voicelessness is the condition of my gender, as normal as the bosoms on a woman’s chest, as necessary as the next generation growing inside her belly.

We’ve been taught to silence ourselves, that our silence will save us.

Where I come from, we keep these stories to ourselves. To tell them to the outside world is unheard of, dangerous, the ultimate shame.

And Mama’s voice in her ear, reminding her: A woman belongs at home.

A daughter was only a temporary guest, quietly awaiting another man to scoop her away, along with all her financial burden.

She wished she could open her mouth and tell her parents, No! This isn’t the life I want. But Isra had learned from a very young age that obedience was the single path to love.

Reading was one of the many things Mama had forbidden, but Isra had never listened.

Mama sighed. “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.”

“Listen to me, daughter. No matter how far away from Palestine you go, a woman will always be a woman. Here or there. Location will not change her naseeb, her destiny.”

Deya was eighteen, not yet finished with high school, but her grandparents said there was no point prolonging her duty: marriage, children, family.

“But what if I don’t want to get married?” Deya had asked. “Why does my entire life have to revolve around a man?” Fareeda had barely looked up from her coffee cup. “Because that’s how you’ll become a mother and have children of your own. Complain all you want, but what will you do with your life without marriage? Without a family?”

“Nonsense.” Fareeda had squinted at the Turkish coffee grounds staining the bottom of her cup. “It doesn’t matter where we live. Preserving our culture is what’s most important. All you need to worry about is finding a good man to provide for you.”

“But there are other ways here, Teta. Besides, I wouldn’t need a man to provide for me if you let me go to college. I could take care of myself.”

She had learned that there was a certain way she had to live, certain rules she had to follow, and that, as a woman, she would never have a legitimate claim over her own life.

That to understand someone, you had to listen to the words they didn’t say, had to watch them closely.

If it were up to her, she’d postpone marriage for another decade. She’d enroll in a study-abroad program, pick up and move to Europe, perhaps Oxford, spending her days in cafés and libraries with a book in one hand and a pen in the other.

What makes one person happy doesn’t always work for someone else. Take my mother—she values family over everything. As long as she has my father and her children, she’s happy. But not everyone needs family, of course. Some people need money, others need companionship. Everyone is different.”

She often wondered how many people felt this way, spellbound by words, wishing to be tucked inside a book and forgotten there.

“I have no idea where they went,” Fareeda said. “Boys are a handful, going and coming as they please. They’re not like girls. You can’t control them.”