Page 267 - A Woman Is No Man

belly with clenched fists. Fareeda hadn’t known what Isra was doing, only
that she was jumping off the stairs. It had clearly scared her. Fareeda had
demanded she stop, had called her a majnoona, screaming that she was

crazy, possessed, going so far as to call Adam to come home and control his
wife. But Isra hadn’t stopped. She’d needed to bleed. So she’d kept jumping
until the blood gushed down her thighs.
Who had she intended to save, Isra wondered now, herself or the child?
She wasn’t sure. All she knew was that she had failed as a mother. She
could still see the horrible look in Deya’s eyes when she’d found her
jumping. The pain of that moment had been so great that for a second Isra

had considered killing herself, too, sticking her head in the oven like her
favorite author had done. But Isra was too much of a coward even for that.
On the nights since, she had lain awake in bed and tried to push the
thoughts away, telling herself stories, like the ones from A Thousand and
One Nights. Sometimes she pulled out a sheet of paper from the stack she
stashed in the back of their closet and wrote letters to Mama, pages and

pages she would never send.

“I’m afraid for our daughters,” Isra told Adam late one night when he
returned from the deli. She had practiced the words in front of the mirror,
making sure her eyebrows didn’t flinch when she spoke, that she kept her
gaze direct. “I’m afraid for our daughters,” she repeated when Adam said
nothing. She could tell that he was startled to hear her speak so boldly. She
was startled, too—even with all her practice—but enough was enough.
How long was she going to let him silence her? No matter what, he was

going to beat her—whether she defied him or submitted, whether she spoke
up or said nothing. The least she could do was stand up for her daughters.
She owed them that.
She stood up, moving closer to him. “I know Sarah running away has
been terrible, but I don’t want our daughters to suffer because of it.”
“What are you saying, woman?”

“I know you don’t want to hear this,” Isra said, trying to keep her voice
steady. “But I’m worried about our daughters. I’m afraid of what kind of
life we’re going to give them. I’m scared of losing them, too. But I don’t
think it’s wise to take them out of public school.”
Adam stared at her. Isra wasn’t sure what he was thinking, but from the
bulge in his eyes, she was sure he was drunk. He crossed the room in three