“Not much,” Deya said. “Teta refuses to talk about them most of the time, but last week she showed me a letter my mother wrote before she died.”
“What letter?”
“It was to her mother. Teta found it in one of her books after she died.”
“What did it say?”
Deya unpinned her hijab, feeling herself getting hot. “She wrote about how sad she was. That she wished she would die. She sounded depressed, maybe even . . .” Her voice trailed.
“Maybe what?”
“Suicidal. She sounded like she wanted to kill herself.”
“Kill herself?” There was a pause, and Deya could see that Sarah appeared to consider the possibility. “Are you sure?”
“That’s how it sounded. But Teta denied it.”
Sarah stared at her. “But why would my mother show you that letter now after all these years?”
“She said it would help me let go of the past and move on.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. How would reading that help you move on?”
Deya bit her lip. What was the point in holding back? She had already defied her grandparents to be here. She had nothing left to lose. Perhaps Sarah could even help her. “It’s because my memories are so bad,” she finally said.
“Your memories? What do you mean?”
“Teta knows I’m afraid to get married because I remember how bad things were with my parents. She thought showing me the letter would help me understand that there was something wrong with my mother. She said Mama was possessed.”
Sarah stared at her. “But there was nothing wrong with Isra.”
“Yes, there was. I remember, okay? And how would you know, anyway? You ran away. You weren’t even there.”
“I knew your mother well. I can promise you, Isra wasn’t possessed.”
“How would you know? Were you there when she died?”
Sarah dropped her gaze to the floor. “No.”
“Then you don’t know for certain.” Deya wiped sweat off her forehead.
“I don’t understand,” Sarah said. “Why do you think she was possessed?”
“It doesn’t matter what I think,” Deya said. “Shouldn’t you be telling me what you think? Isn’t that why I’m here?”
Sarah leaned back into her seat. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything. Tell me everything.”
“Do you know how Isra and I became friends?” Deya shook her head. “It was because of you.”
“Me?”
Sarah smiled. “It happened when she was pregnant with you. My mother wanted a boy, of course. One day she said so to Isra, and we started talking for the first time.”
“What did my mother say?”
“She disagreed, of course. She said she’d never belittle a daughter.”
“She said that?”
“Yes. She loved you and your sisters so much.”
Deya turned to look out the window. There were tears in her eyes, and she tried to keep them from falling.
“You know she loved you,” Sarah said. “Don’t you?”
Deya kept her eyes on the glass. “She didn’t seem like she loved anyone. She was so sad all the time.”
“That doesn’t mean she didn’t love you.”
Deya met her eyes again. “What about my father?”
A pause, then, “What about him?”
“What was he like?”
“He was . . .” Sarah cleared her throat. “He was a hard worker.”
“Most men I know are hard workers. Tell me something else.”
“I honestly didn’t see him much,” Sarah said. “He was always working. He was the eldest son, and there was a lot of pressure on him.”
“Pressure from who?”
“My parents. They expected so much. Sometimes I think they pushed him . . .” Sarah paused. “He was under a lot of pressure.”
Deya was certain she was hiding something. “What about his relationship with my mother? Did he treat her well?”
Sarah shifted in her seat, tucking her long black curls behind her ears. “I didn’t see them together very often.”
“But you said you were friends with my mom. Wouldn’t you know how she felt? She didn’t talk about it?”
“Isra was a very private person. And she was raised in Palestine—she was old-fashioned in certain ways. She never would have talked to me about her relationship with him.”
“So you didn’t know that he hit her?”
Sarah froze, and from the look in her eyes, Deya was sure she had known. “You didn’t think I knew, did you?” Sarah opened her mouth to speak, but Deya cut her off. “I used to hear him screaming at her in the middle of the night. I’d hear him hitting her and her crying and trying to muffle the sound. Growing up, I used to wonder if I’d imagined it. I thought maybe I was just feeding my own sadness. That’s a disease, you know. I