Page 10 - A Woman Is No Man

Cross east two blocks to Fifth Avenue. There you will find Bay Ridge. Our
three-square-mile neighborhood is the melting pot of Brooklyn. On our
streets you’ll find Latinos, Middle Easterners, Italians, Russians, Greeks,

and Asians, all speaking their native tongues, keeping their traditions and
cultures alive. Murals and graffiti cover the buildings. Colorful flags hang
from windows and balconies. The sweet smell of churros, shish kebabs, and
potpourri fills the air—a stew of humanity converging. Get out at the corner
of Seventy-Second and Fifth Avenue, where you’ll find yourself surrounded
by bakeries, hookah bars, and halal meat markets. Walk down the tree-lined
sidewalk of Seventy-Second Street until you reach an old row house no

different from the others—faded red brick, a dusty brown door, number
545. This is where our family lives.
But our story does not begin in Bay Ridge, not really. To get there, first
we must turn back the pages to before I found my voice, before I was even
born. We are not yet in the house on Seventy-Second Street, not yet in
Brooklyn, not yet in America. We have yet to board the plane that will carry

us from the Middle East to this new world, have yet to soar over the
Atlantic, have yet to even know that one day we will. The year is 1990, and
we are in Palestine. This is the beginning.