Page 66 - A Woman Is No Man

Isra

Spring 1990

Isra awoke feeling adrift and nauseated. She wondered why she hadn’t

been awakened at dawn by the distant sound of the adhan. Then she
remembered: she was in Brooklyn, twelve thousand miles away from home,
in her husband’s bed. She sprang to her feet. But the bed was empty, and
Adam was nowhere to be seen. A wave of shame rose in Isra’s chest as she
thought of the night before. She swallowed, forcing the feeling down. There
was no point in dwelling on what had happened. This was just the way it
was.

Isra paced from wall to wall of her new bedroom, running her hands
over the wooden bed frame and dresser that filled the narrow space. Why
was there not a single window? She thought longingly of all the nights she
had spent reading by her open bedroom window back home, looking at the
moon glowing over Birzeit, listening to the whisper of the graveyard, the
stars so bright against the midnight sky she got goose bumps at the sight.

She retreated to the other basement room, the one with the single window.
The window was level with the ground, and from it, she could see past the
front stoop, where a row of houses stood side by side, and beyond them,
only a sliver of sky. America was supposed to be the land of the free, so
why did everything feel tight and constricted?
Before long she was tired again and went back to bed. Fareeda had said
it would take days for her body to adjust to the time change. When she

finally awoke at sunset, Adam still wasn’t home, and Isra wondered if he
didn’t want to be around her. Perhaps she had done something to upset him
the night before when he’d put himself inside her. Perhaps she hadn’t
appeared eager enough. But how was she supposed to know what to do? If
anything, Adam should’ve taken the time to teach her. She knew he must

have slept with other women before marriage. Even though the Qur’an
forbade the act for both genders, Mama said that men committed zina all
the time, that they couldn’t help themselves.