Page 263 - A Woman Is No Man

Deya

Winter 2009

For the remainder of the winter, Deya did little but read Isra’s letters over

and over, desperate to understand her mother. She read on the school bus
every morning, her eyes buried in her lap. In class she hid the letters inside
her open textbook pages, unable to focus on the lesson at hand. During
lunch she read in the library, hidden between bookshelves. Some days she
even read Isra’s Arabic edition of A Thousand and One Nights, flipping
page after page, searching for herself and her mother in its stories.
What was Deya looking for exactly? She wasn’t sure. A part of her

hoped Isra had left her a clue to finding her path, even though she knew
such thinking was fruitless—clearly her mother had never even found her
own. Most days she could hear Isra’s words echoing in her head: I’m afraid
of what will happen to my daughters. She could hear the voice of Isra’s
mama, too: A woman will always be a woman. Every time Deya closed her
eyes, she pictured Isra’s face, afraid and confused, wishing she had the

courage to stand up for what she wanted, wishing she had defied Mama and
Yacob, had defied Adam and Fareeda, had done what she wanted for herself
rather than what she was expected to do.
Then one day in early spring, as Deya reread one of Isra’s letters,
something came to her. It was so obvious she couldn’t understand how she
hadn’t realized it before, but reading her mother’s words, Deya finally saw
how much she resembled Isra. She, too, had spent her life trying to please

her family, desperate for their validation and approval. She, too, had let fear
of disappointing them stand in her way. But seeking approval had not
worked for Isra, and Deya could see now that it would not work for her
either.
Alongside this realization, an old voice that had lived in the back of her

head for as long as she could remember—so long she had never before seen
it for the fear that it was, only as the absolute truth—rose up inside of her.
The voice cautioned her to surrender, be quiet, endure. It told her that