name her Nora, “light” once again, desperate for a flicker at the end of the tunnel ahead to push her forward.
When Isra returned home, all she heard from Fareeda’s lips was the word balwa over and over again—in conversations on the phone, to her best friend Umm Ahmed, to Nadine, to the neighbors, to Khaled, and worst of all, to Adam.
Isra hoped Mama wouldn’t call her daughter a balwa. She had mailed a letter back home informing Mama of Nora’s birth. The letter was brief. Isra had not seen her mother in two years. Mama was a stranger now. Isra called her on occasion, like after the month of Ramadan, to wish her Eid Mubarak, their conversations stilted and formal, but Fareeda said phone calls to Ramallah were expensive and encouraged Isra to send letters instead. But she couldn’t bring herself to write to Mama. It was anger at first that stifled her—anger at Mama for abandoning her—but now she simply didn’t have much to say.
After Nora’s birth, Isra again busied herself with routine chores. In the mornings she awoke with the sun, sending Adam off to work with a light breakfast, Tupperwares of rice and meat for lunch, and a steaming of cup of mint chai. Then her daughters would wake, Deya first, followed by Nora’s newborn whimpers, and Isra fed them breakfast. Deya was one year old, Nora only two weeks, both bottle-feeding. A tide of guilt rose in Isra’s chest whenever she mixed their formula, ashamed she wasn’t breastfeeding them. But Adam needs a son, Fareeda insisted, and Isra obeyed, hoping a son would make him happy.
But deep down was a hidden fear: Isra didn’t know if she could handle a third child. With two children now, she was beginning to discover that she was not particularly motherly. She had been too overwhelmed by the newness to realize this when she was first mothering Deya, too optimistic about what motherhood might hold. But as soon as Nora was born, Isra had found her spirit changed. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d cradled her children with joy, not merely out of a sense of obligation. Her emotions seesawed constantly: anger, resentment, shame, despair. She tried to justify her frustrations by telling herself that childbearing was wearisome. That had she known how constricting a second child would feel, she wouldn’t have rushed into another pregnancy (as if she’d had a choice, she thought in the back of her head, then pushed the thought away). In the evenings as she hummed Deya and Nora to sleep, a dark, desperate feeling overwhelmed her. She wanted to scream.
What were her options now? What could she do to change her fate? Nothing. All she could do was try to make the best of her situation. It wasn’t like there was any turning back. She couldn’t return to Palestine, couldn’t flip back a few chapters in the story of her life and change things. And what a foolish thought that was—even if she could go back, she had nothing to go back to. She was in America now. She was married. She was a mother. She just had to do better. She’d done everything the way her parents had wanted, so surely things would turn out for the best. After all, they’d known what life would be like. She just needed to trust them. As the Qur’an said, she needed to have more faith.
Maybe she would become a better mother with time. Maybe motherhood was something that grew on you, an acquired taste. Still, Isra wondered if her daughters could sense her failure, staring up at her with their coffee-colored eyes. She wondered if she had betrayed them.
Deya
Winter 2008
Deya straightened in her seat and stared at her aunt. “You’ve never been married?”
“No.”
“And you haven’t been in Palestine?”
Sarah shook her head.
“But why would Teta lie about that?”
Sarah looked away for the first time since they’d sat down together. “I think she was trying to cover up the shame of what I’d done,” she said.
“What did you do?”
“I ran away from home before my mother could marry me off. That’s why I never visited all these years. That’s why I had to reach out to you in secret.”
Deya stared at her in disbelief. “You ran away from Teta’s house? How?”
“I waited until the last day of senior year, and then I left. I got on the school bus and never came back. I’ve been living on my own ever since.”