Page 48 - A Woman Is No Man

through the window, seeing the graffiti scrawled on the walls and across the
buildings, she wondered if her books had gotten it wrong, whether Mama
had been right all along when she’d said the world would be disappointing

regardless of where she stood.
“We live in Bay Ridge,” Adam said as the cabdriver stopped beside a
row of old brick houses. Isra, Fareeda, and Sarah stood on the sidewalk
while the men unloaded the suitcases. Adam held Isra’s suitcase in one hand
and gestured around the block with the other. “Many of the Arabs in New
York live in this neighborhood,” he said. “You’ll feel right at home.”
Isra surveyed the block. Adam’s family lived on a long, tree-lined street

with row houses stacked against one another like books on a shelf. Most of
the homes were made of red brick and curved in the front. They had two
stories and a basement, with a short, narrow staircase leading to the front
door on the first floor. Iron gates separated the houses from the sidewalk. It
was a well-kept neighborhood—there were no open gutters or garbage
littering the street, and the roads were paved, not dirt. But there was hardly

any greenery—only a row of London planes lining the walk. No fruit to
pick, no balcony, no front yard. She hoped there was at least a backyard.
“This is it,” Adam said when they reached the front gate of a house
numbered 545.
Adam opened the front door and led her inside. “The houses here are
quite cramped,” he said as they walked down the hall. Isra silently agreed.
She could see the entire first floor from the hall. There was a sala to her

left, and farther down, a kitchen. To her right was a stairway leading to the
second floor, and behind it, almost hidden, a bedroom.
Isra looked around the living room. Though it was much smaller than
her parents’ sala back home, it was decorated as though it were a mansion.
The floor was covered with a Turkish rug, crimson with a gold pattern in
the center. The same pattern was on the burgundy couches, the red throw

pillows, and the long, thick curtains lining the windows. A worn leather
sofa sat in the corner of the room, as though forgotten, with a shiny gold
vase nestled beside it.
“Do you like it?” Adam asked.
“It’s beautiful.”
“I know it’s not bright and airy like the houses back home.” His eyes
settled on the windows, which were hidden behind the curtains. “But this is

how things are here, what can we do?”