Page 69 - A Woman Is No Man

kahwa from sunrise until sunset. When Fareeda’s sons were around, she
doted on them as though they were porcelain dolls instead of grown men.
She prepared dinner just the way they liked, baked their favorite sweets,

and sent them off to work and school with Tupperware boxes filled with
spiced rice and roasted meats. Like Mama, Fareeda had only one daughter,
Sarah, who was to Fareeda what Isra had been to her mother—a temporary
possession, noticed only when there was cooking or cleaning to be done.
The only difference between Mama and Fareeda was their practice of
the five daily prayers, which Isra had never seen Fareeda complete. Fareeda
awoke each day at sunrise and headed straight to the kitchen to make chai,

muttering a quick prayer as the teakettle whistled: “God, please keep shame
and disgrace from my family.” Isra would stand quietly at the doorway,
listening in awe as Fareeda mumbled at the stove. Once, she had asked
Fareeda why she didn’t kneel before God to pray, but Fareeda only laughed
and said, “What difference does it make how I recite my prayers? This is
what’s wrong with all these religious folks these days. So hung up on the

little things. You would think a prayer is a prayer, no?”
Isra would always agree with Fareeda so as not to upset her. She
completed her five prayers downstairs in her bedroom, where Fareeda
couldn’t see. Sometimes, after Isra was done with her afternoon chores, she
snuck to the basement to combine the zuhr and asr prayers before returning
back to the kitchen unnoticed. Fareeda had never forbidden her from
praying, but Isra wanted to be safe, wanted to win her love. Mama had

never given her much love, only a dash here and there when she’d seasoned
the lentil soup properly or scrubbed the floors so hard the cement almost
sparkled. But Fareeda was so much stronger than Mama. Perhaps alongside
that strength, she had more room for love.
After they had swept the floors, wiped the mirrors, thawed the meat, and
soaked the rice, they would sit at the kitchen table, cups of chai to their

faces, and talk, or at least Fareeda would, the whole world seeming to swirl
between her lips. Fareeda would tell Isra stories about life in America, the
things she did to pass time when she wasn’t cooking and cleaning, like
visiting her friend Umm Ahmed, who lived a few blocks away, or
accompanying Khaled to the market on Sundays, or, when she was in a
particular mood, attending the mosque on Fridays to catch up on the latest
community gossip. Isra leaned forward, wide-eyed, inhaling Fareeda’s

words. In the few weeks since her arrival to America, she had grown to like