Page 107 - A Woman Is No Man

their parents and their parents’ parents and all the generations before them.
Perhaps if Isra realized how important having a son was, she wouldn’t be so
sensitive about it.

Umm Ahmed poured the women another round of chai. “Still,” she said,
her face hidden behind the steam. “What would we have done without our
daughters? Fatima and Hannah do everything for me. I wouldn’t trade them
for a thousand sons.”
“Hmm,” Fareeda said, snatching a piece of chocolate from the purple
Mackintosh’s container and shoving it into her mouth. She was glad Sarah
wasn’t here to hear this.

“So I’m assuming Ahmed named the boy after his father,” Fareeda said.
“Yes,” Umm Ahmed said, placing the teapot on the coffee table and
leaning back in her seat. “Noah.”
“So, where is baby Noah?” one of the women asked, looking around the
sala. “And where is Ahmed’s wife?”
“Oh, yes,” Fareeda said. “Where is your daughter-in-law?”

Umm Ahmed shifted in her seat. “She’s upstairs, sleeping.”
The women stared at her blankly. Fareeda scoffed. She could see Isra
staring at Umm Ahmed, wide-eyed, perhaps wishing that she was her
mother-in-law instead.
“Oh, come on,” Umm Ahmed said. “Don’t you remember how it felt
staying up with a baby all night? The girl is exhausted.”
“Well, I sure don’t remember sleeping,” Fareeda said. The women

chuckled, and Umm Ahmed dug her hands between her thighs.
“All I remember is cooking, cleaning, and picking up after people,”
Fareeda said. “And Khaled waiting for me to serve him as soon as he got
home.”
It was as if Fareeda’s words had ignited a fire in the room. The women
began crackling with conversation, chatting about how exhausted they

were, how there was nothing more to their lives than scurrying around the
house like cockroaches.
“Of course I remember,” Umm Ahmed said. “But things are different
now.”
“Are they?” Fareeda asked.
“If my daughter-in-law needs to sleep, then why not? Why can’t I help
her a little bit?”