A Woman Is No Man

Fareeda instructs Isra not to breastfeed Deya because it inhibits pregnancy. Isra obeys, and, four months later, she is pregnant again. On the ride home from the hospital, Fareeda ponders the condition of women and the state of her own marriage. Given that she grew up desperately poor with an abusive father, it made sense, psychologically, for her father to marry her to an abusive man. Her father’s shame, she reasons, manifested itself as abuse, and that abuse is passed on. Fareeda feels a small tug of guilt for shaming Isra about having a girl, but “she didn’t make the rules. It was just the way it was” (117).

Some weeks later, Fareeda takes Isra to visit her friend, Umm Ahmed, who has just become a grandmother. Walking to the house, Fareeda realizes that, even after 15 years in America, she has been outside by herself so rarely, she still feels like a stranger in her own country. At Umm Ahmed’s house, the women celebrate the new grandson and lament the difficulties of raising a daughter, especially in America, a land “with no values to anchor them down” (119). The women ask to see the mother and baby, but Umm Ahmed says her daughter-in-law is sleeping.