Page 191 - A Woman Is No Man

Fareeda

Summer 1995

Ever since Sarah turned sixteen, Fareeda had taken to parading her up and

down Fifth Avenue as though she were a shank of lamb for sale. Her usual
fears of leaving the house alone now paled in comparison to her fear of
Sarah not finding a suitor. Earlier that day, after the mansaf stew simmered,
they had gone to the pharmacy on Seventy-Fifth Street to pick up Fareeda’s
diabetes medicine. Khaled normally picked up her medicine, but Fareeda
wanted people to see Sarah. She had realized one evening, after hearing the
engagement news of Umm Ramy’s daughter, Nadia, that perhaps she had

been doing something wrong. Nadia, for goodness sake, who was always
roaming Fifth Avenue alone, whose parents let her ride the subway to
school. It didn’t make sense! But maybe it was because no one ever saw
Sarah, who took the bus to school and never left the house alone. Perhaps
people didn’t even know what Sarah looked like. So Fareeda began taking
her places nearby, despite her fears of going out alone. The Alsalam meat

market at Seventy-Second Street, the Bay Ridge Bakery at Seventy-Eighth,
sometimes even all the way down Fifth Avenue. But most days they visited
their neighbors. Sarah still needed to learn some culture, and there was no
better place to learn culture, Fareeda knew, than in the company of women.
Now she squatted in front of the oven and pulled out a pan of baked
knafa. The smell of rose syrup filled the house, and she remembered her
father bringing her slices as a child, before they were forced into the camps.

She had always loved the red-colored dough, the sweet and savory cheese
melted inside. She took a deep breath, warmed by memory.
“Brew a kettle of chai,” Fareeda told Sarah when she entered the
kitchen. “Umm Ahmed will be here any minute.”
Sarah groaned. The summer sun had darkened her olive complexion,

and her black curls held a tint of red in them. Fareeda thought she looked
beautiful, a spitting image of what she herself had once looked like. But
Fareeda herself was withering away now, as much as she hated to admit it.