Page 223 - A Woman Is No Man

Isra

Winter 1996

Isra couldn’t sleep. She couldn’t stop thinking. Every time she closed her

eyes, she heard Deya whispering, You always look sad. She wept silently in
her bed. How would her daughters remember their childhood? What would
they think of her? These questions had occupied most of her thinking lately.
Some days she thought she should apologize for all the kisses she’d never
given them, all the times she’d looked over their shoulders while they
spoke, for slapping them when she was angry, for not saying “I love you”
often enough. Other days—days that were becoming increasingly rare—she

would comfort herself with the hope that everything could still be okay, or
—rarer still—that everything had been okay all along, that there was
nothing wrong with her mothering, that she was only doing what was best
for her daughters. What would she do with them when they got older?
Would she force them down her same path?
“I need to talk to you,” Isra told Adam when he returned from work that

night. From the edge of the bed, she watched him slip out of his work
clothes, waiting for him to respond. But he said nothing. “Won’t you say
something?” she asked. “You’ve barely said a word to me since Amal was
born.”
“What do you want me to say?”
She could smell the beer on him every night now. Perhaps that’s why he
beat her more regularly. But sometimes it was her fault. Sometimes she

provoked him. Isra thought back to the previous night, when she had put an
extra spoonful of coriander in the mulukhiya to irritate him. “What’s
wrong?” she had asked innocently as he spat out his food. When he shook
his head angrily, pushing the bowl away, she kept a straight face, but inside
she had been ecstatic at her small revenge. If overseasoning his food was

the only thing within her power, then she would do that for as long as she
could.
“I want to talk to you,” Isra said. “About our daughters.”