Page 62 - A Woman Is No Man

us. They don’t have cell phones or computers, they don’t talk to boys, they
barely even have friends. They’re good girls, Fareeda, and they’ll all be
married soon enough. You need to relax.”

“Relax?” She placed her hands on her hips. “That’s easy for you to say.
I’m the one who has to keep them out of trouble, who has to make sure they
maintain a good reputation until we marry them off. Tell me, who will be
blamed if something goes wrong? Huh? Who will you point to when these
books start putting ideas in their head?”
The atmosphere shifted. Khaled shook his head. “That’s the price of
coming to this country,” he said. “Abandoning our land and running away.

Not a moment goes by when I don’t think of what we’ve done. Maybe we
should’ve stayed and fought for our home. So what if the soldiers had killed
us? So what if we had starved? Better than coming here and losing
ourselves, our culture . . .” His words faded out.
“Hush,” Fareeda said. “You know there’s no use in that kind of thinking.
The past is the past, and no good will come from regret. All we can do now

is move forward the best we can, and that means keeping our
granddaughters safe.”
Khaled did not reply. He sighed and excused himself to shower.

Deya and her sisters were straightening the sala when Fareeda appeared at
the doorway. “Come with me,” she said to Deya.
Deya followed her grandmother down the hall into her bedroom. Inside,
Fareeda opened her closet and reached for something from the very back.
She pulled out an old book and handed it to Deya. A wave of familiarity

washed over Deya as she dusted off the hardcover spine. It was an Arabic
edition of A Thousand and One Nights. She recognized it: it had been her
mother’s.
“Open it,” Fareeda said.
Deya did as she was told, and an envelope slipped out. Slowly she lifted
the top. Inside was a letter, in Arabic. In the darkness of the bedroom, she

squinted to read:

August 12, 1997
Dear Mama,
I feel very depressed today. I don’t know what’s happening to me. Every morning I wake up
with a strange sensation. I lie beneath the sheets and I don’t want to get up. I don’t want to
see anyone. All I think of is dying. I know God doesn’t approve of taking a life, be it mine or