Page 11 - A Woman Is No Man

Isra

BIRZEIT, PALESTINE
Spring 1990

For most of her seventeen years Isra Hadid cooked dinner with her mother
daily, rolling grape leaves on warm afternoons, or stuffing spaghetti squash,
or simmering pots of lentil soup when the air became crisp and the
vineyards outside their home went empty. In the kitchen she and Mama
would huddle against the stove as if sharing a secret, steam swirling around
them, until the sunset cast a sliver of orange through the window. Looking

out, the Hadids had a mountaintop view of the countryside—hillsides
covered with red-tiled rooftops and olive trees, bright and thick and wild.
Isra always cracked the window open because she loved the smell of figs
and almonds in the morning, and at night, the rustling sounds of the
cemeteries down the hill.
It was late, and the call for maghrib prayer would soon come, bringing

an end to the cooking. Isra and Mama would withdraw to the bathroom,
rolling up the sleeves of their house gowns, washing the dull red sauce off
their fingertips. Isra had been praying since she was seven years old,
kneeling beside Mama five times a day between sunrise and sunset. Lately
she had begun to look forward to prayer, standing together with Mama,
shoulders joined, feet slightly grazing, the only time Isra ever felt human
touch. She heard the thick sound of the adhan calling them for prayer.

“Maghrib prayer will have to wait today,” Mama said in Arabic, looking
out the kitchen window. “Our guests are here.”
There was a knock at the front door and Mama hurried to the sink,
where she gave her hands a quick rinse and dried them with a clean rag.
Leaving the kitchen, she wrapped a black thobe around her small frame and
a matching hijab over her long, dark hair. Though Mama was only thirty-

five years old, Isra thought she looked much older, the lines of labor dug
deeply into her face.