Page 234 - A Woman Is No Man

Fareeda

Spring 1997

By March of 1997, the London planes lining Seventy-Second Street were

starting to bud, yellow dandelions scattered along the sidewalk beside them.
In a couple of months Sarah would graduate from high school. The passing
of time brought a panic to Fareeda that no amount of food was able to bury.
She spent her mornings propped on the kitchen table, phone in hand,
mumbling to Umm Ahmed about her daughter’s misfortune, that no suitors
had proposed to marry her. But at least the idea that Sarah was cursed no
longer gripped her. Over the winter she had taken Sarah to visit a jinn

sheikh on Eighty-Sixth Street. Fareeda, who had once been afraid to walk to
Umm Ahmed’s house, crossing entire blocks for her daughter’s sake. This
is what motherhood is all about, she thought. Not sitting around smiling, but
doing everything you can for your child. Inside a darkened room, the jinn
sheikh had recited an incantation over Sarah to see if she was cursed. He
had turned to Fareeda and pronounced that there were no traces of evil

spirits on the girl.
In the kitchen, Fareeda sat across from Isra and Nadine, who were
stuffing grape leaves. “I just don’t understand it,” she said into the receiver
as she cracked the shell of a pistachio nut open with one hand. “Sarah is
slim, with fair skin and soft hair. She knows how to cook, clean, iron, sew. I
mean, for goodness sake, she’s the only girl in a family of men. She’s
practically been trained for wifedom her entire life!”

She shook her head, stuffing the pistachio into her mouth. She wished
Isra and Nadine would stop staring at her. She couldn’t stand to be around
either of them. Isra, who had made a fool of them by running out in the
middle of the night, and Nadine, who was only now pregnant with her
second child. It was about damn time. Ameer needed a brother. She

wondered when Isra would get pregnant again, but quickly dismissed the
thought. Fareeda couldn’t bear the heartache of another girl right now,
staying up all night wondering if God was punishing her through Isra.