Page 221 - A Woman Is No Man

day and night without end. Not once would she have suspected this from
her son. Not Adam, who had never missed a prayer growing up, who had
wanted to be an imam. Adam, who did everything for them, who always

bent over backward to please, who never denied them. Adam, a murderer?
Perhaps Fareeda should have known from the way he came home every
night, reeking with sharaab. But she had just shrugged her fears aside, told
herself everything was okay. After all, how many times had Khaled gotten
drunk in their youth? How many times had he beaten her senseless? It was
only normal. And she was stronger for it. But murder and suicide—that
wasn’t normal. She was sure Adam had been possessed.

“So Mama and Baba were both possessed? Really? That’s your
explanation for everything?”
Fareeda bit the inside of her lip. “Believe it or not, it’s the truth.”
“No, it’s not! Sarah said there was nothing wrong with Mama.”
Fareeda sighed. If only that were true, if only she had invented all of
Isra’s trouble. But she and Deya both knew there had been something

wrong with her. Quietly, she said, “You don’t remember how she was?”
Deya flushed. “It doesn’t mean she was possessed.”
“But she was.” Fareeda met Deya’s eyes. “And Adam was possessed,
too. He wasn’t in his right mind. Only a majnoon, a crazy person, would kill
his wife like that.”
“That still doesn’t mean he was possessed! He could’ve been—” Deya
searched for the right translation in Arabic. “He could’ve had a mental

illness. He could have been depressed, or suicidal, or just a bad person!”
Fareeda shook her head. It was typical of her granddaughter to revert to
Western concepts to understand everything. Why couldn’t she accept that
Western medicine had no understanding of these things, much less a cure?
The teakettle whistled, puncturing the silence between them. Fareeda
turned off the stove. In moments like this, when the smell of maramiya

filled the kitchen, she had to admit how much she missed Isra, who used to
brew chai just the way she liked it, who, even when she was upset, never
disrespected her. Isra would never have yelled at her the way Nadine had
screamed the morning before she and Omar packed their bags and moved,
just like that, leaving Fareeda alone. And what had she done to deserve it?
Fareeda wondered, pouring herself some tea. She remembered Omar saying
how controlling she was, how he couldn’t even be nice to Nadine in her

presence, how he had to pretend to be tough, manly. How much he hated