“That’s not a reason to get married. You know that.”
“Tell me then, what am I supposed to do? Tell me! I came here thinking you would help me leave them. But all you’ve done is scare me more.” She turned to go. “I thought you wanted to help me.”
“I do!” Sarah grabbed her hand. “I’m only telling you what I wish someone had told me—that running away is not the answer.”
“Then what is?”
“Only you know that. You have to shove your fears and worries aside and listen to that clear voice in your head.”
“But there are conflicting voices in my head. How am I supposed to know which one to listen to?”
“You’ll know,” Sarah said. “Find something you love, something that calms you, and do that for a while. Your answer will come. You will just know. As for Fareeda, at least try. What have you got to lose?”
Deya gave her a hard look and then stood, turned, and walked out the door. Couldn’t Sarah see by now that Deya knew nothing? Even after learning the truth about her parents, she still knew nothing. She couldn’t be trusted to figure things out on her own. All the thinking she had ever done was for nothing, or she would’ve realized that her mother hadn’t just died, that she had been murdered. She felt a jolt of shame inside. A violent stab of foolishness. All these years she had thought Isra abandoned them. She had been so sure, and she had been wrong, terribly wrong. How could she trust herself now?
Fareeda
Spring 1997
By March of 1997, the London planes lining Seventy-Second Street were starting to bud, yellow dandelions scattered along the sidewalk beside them. In a couple of months Sarah would graduate from high school. The passing of time brought a panic to Fareeda that no amount of food was able to bury. She spent her mornings propped on the kitchen table, phone in hand, mumbling to Umm Ahmed about her daughter’s misfortune, that no suitors had proposed to marry her. But at least the idea that Sarah was cursed no longer gripped her. Over the winter she had taken Sarah to visit a jinn sheikh on Eighty-Sixth Street. Fareeda, who had once been afraid to walk to Umm Ahmed’s house, crossing entire blocks for her daughter’s sake. This is what motherhood is all about, she thought. Not sitting around smiling, but doing everything you can for your child. Inside a darkened room, the jinn sheikh had recited an incantation over Sarah to see if she was cursed. He had turned to Fareeda and pronounced that there were no traces of evil spirits on the girl.
In the kitchen, Fareeda sat across from Isra and Nadine, who were stuffing grape leaves. “I just don’t understand it,” she said into the receiver as she cracked the shell of a pistachio nut open with one hand. “Sarah is slim, with fair skin and soft hair. She knows how to cook, clean, iron, sew. I mean, for goodness sake, she’s the only girl in a family of men. She’s practically been trained for wifedom her entire life!”
She shook her head, stuffing the pistachio into her mouth. She wished Isra and Nadine would stop staring at her. She couldn’t stand to be around either of them. Isra, who had made a fool of them by running out in the middle of the night, and Nadine, who was only now pregnant with her second child. It was about damn time. Ameer needed a brother. She wondered when Isra would get pregnant again, but quickly dismissed the thought. Fareeda couldn’t bear the heartache of another girl right now, staying up all night wondering if God was punishing her through Isra.
In fact, Fareeda was doubly glad Isra wasn’t pregnant; she could barely handle the four children she had. Fareeda noticed how Isra looked at her girls, a flatness in her eyes, as though they were sucking the life from her. The last thing Fareeda needed was to worry about her running away again, as though she hadn’t heard anything Fareeda had said about covering her shame.
Something came to Fareeda then, a puzzle piece snapping into place. Her eyes shot to the door. She cut off Umm Ahmed, slammed the phone down, and rushed outside. She lowered herself onto the front stoop, pulling her nightgown over her knees as she did so. A hint of sunlight flickered on her legs, making them yellower than usual. She