A Woman is No Man

by Etaf Rum

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

“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.”

she knew people only told you what you wanted to hear. That to understand someone, you had to listen to the words they didn’t say, had to watch them closely.

She knew that the suffering of women started in the suffering of men, that the bondages of one became the bondages of the other. Would the men in her life have battered her had they not been battered themselves?

“A man leaves the house a man and comes back a man. No one can take that away from him.” But a woman was a fragile thing.

Fear has a way of putting things in perspective.”

You had to finish a story to know all the answers, and life was no different. Nothing was ever handed to you from the start.

‘What’s meant for you will reach you even if it’s beneath two mountains, and what’s not meant for you won’t reach you even if it’s between your two lips’?”

“It’s not strange at all,” Sarah said. “It’s the loneliest people who love books the most.”

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 from a place of happiness. If anything, I think it’s sadness, or discontent at least, that’s at the root of everything beautiful.”

The only thing I know for sure is that you alone are in control of your destiny. No one else. You have the power to make your life whatever you want it to be, and in order to do that, you have to find the courage to stand up for yourself, even if you’re standing alone.”

“It says we attract what we think. Whatever belief a person has about the future comes true because the person believes it.”

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, who were made to depend on the men who beat them.

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.

love was not something a man could give you, and she didn’t want her daughters thinking it was? That she couldn’t let her daughters grow up hoping a man would save them? She knew she had to teach them how to love themselves, that this was the only way they had a chance at happiness.

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. She

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

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.

To want what you can’t have in this life is the greatest pain of all.”

Just like Mama, she believed silence was the only way. That it was safer to submit than speak up.

“I don’t think Fareeda wants to hurt you. Of course she wants you to be happy. But she doesn’t know better. She’s never seen better.”

Had she failed as a mother? Some nights, she managed to convince herself she hadn’t. After all, hadn’t she raised her children the same way her parents had raised her? Hadn’t she taught them what it meant to be tough, resilient? Hadn’t she taught them what it meant to be Arab, to always put family first? Not to run away, for goodness sake. She couldn’t be blamed for their weaknesses. For this country and its low morals.

She, too, had let fear of disappointing them stand in her way. But seeking approval had not worked for Isra,

It was more important to honor her own values in life, to live her own dreams and her own vision, than to allow others to choose that path for her, even if standing up for herself was terrifying. That was what she must do.

“She told me to learn. She said this was the only way to make my own naseeb.” “But, daughter, we don’t control our naseeb. Our destiny comes for us. That’s what naseeb means.” “That’s not true. My destiny is in my hands. Men make these sorts of choices all the time. Now I’m going to as well.”