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I was mute until years later, 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.
Though Mama was only thirty-five years old, Isra thought she looked much older, the lines of labor dug deeply into her face.
A daughter was only a temporary guest, quietly awaiting another man to scoop her away, along with all her financial burden.
At night, after she had finished reading and tucked her book beneath her mattress, Isra would lay in bed and wonder what it would be like to fall in love, to be loved in return.
“But Mama, what about love?” Mama glared at her through the steam. “What about it?” “I’ve always wanted to fall in love.”
“Love each other? What does love have to do with marriage? You think your father and I love each other?”
“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.”
“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.”
Just because she had failed to find happiness with Yacob, that didn’t mean Isra would fail, too.
she would strive to understand him, to please him—and surely in this way she would earn his love.
He was a man. What could he possibly be nervous of?
Why would anyone want to be a woman when she could be a bird?
That to understand someone, you had to listen to the words they didn’t say, had to watch them closely.
“Push people away so they won’t hurt you.” She looked away. “It’s okay. You don’t have to admit it.”
Deya clearly remembered the day she had learned of Adam’s and Isra’s deaths.
They died in a car accident last night.”
which pieces could she really remember, and which ones had she made up?
What was wrong with her that her own mother couldn’t love her?
“Boys are a handful, going and coming as they please. They’re not like girls. You can’t control them.”
“That’s the life of a woman, you know. Running around taking orders.”
“They have no idea what it means to be a woman in this world.”
A man is the only way up in this world, even though he’ll climb a woman’s back to get there. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”
It’s time you grew up and learned this now: A woman is not a man.”
MOTHER OF FOUR MURDERED IN BROOKLYN BASEMENT
I was imagining everything but not this. I'm shook. And at this point, i shouldn't be.
That she had been burdened with duty ever since she was a child. That she had never really lived.
She couldn’t get the equation right. Who was to blame? She thought it was herself. She thought it was her mother, and her mother’s mother, and the mothers of all their mothers, all the way back in time.
She realized she was a coward, but she also knew a person could only do so much. She couldn’t change centuries of culture on her own, and neither could Sarah.
“The cruelest thing on this earth is a man’s heart.”
No one she’d ever met actually lived according to the doctrines of Islam. They were all hypocrites and liars!
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.
Could she ever achieve her dreams if she remained dependent on pleasing her family?
