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.

Isra had learned from a very young age that obedience was the single path to love.

“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.” “But that’s not fair.”

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.

she was in a strange room with a strange man, her insides being forced open. She wished Mama had warned her about the powerlessness a woman feels when a man puts himself inside her, about the shame that fills her when she is forced to give herself up, forced to be still. But this must be normal, Isra told herself. It must be.

In fact, I appreciate the quality. There’s nothing worse than coming home to a woman whose voice never stops.”

Piss off

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

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?

“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.”

“What I’m trying to say is that if you believe you have power over your life, then you ultimately will. And if you believe you don’t, then you won’t.”