about a jinn entering a person’s body, making her do unseemly things—commit violence or murder, or, most often, go mad. Isra had seen it with her own eyes as a child. Their neighbor, Umm Hassan, had collapsed to the floor one afternoon after learning that her son had been killed by an Israeli soldier on his way home from school. Her eyes had rolled back in her head, her hands pounded her own face wildly, her body shook. Later that night, news had reached Isra that Umm Hassan had been found dead in her home, that she had swallowed her tongue and died. But Mama had told Isra the truth: a jinn had entered Umm Hassan’s body and sucked the life from her, killing her. She wondered if the same thing was happening to her now, only more slowly. If it was, she deserved it.
Morning, and Isra stared out the window. Her daughters wanted to build a castle with their blocks, but she was too tired to play. She didn’t like the way they looked at her with their dark eyes and sunken cheeks, as though they were judging her. In the glass reflection she could see three-year-old Deya watching her from the corner, her tiny fingers curled around a worn Barbie doll. It was her eyes that haunted Isra the most. Deya was a solemn child. She did not smile easily, let alone laugh the way other children did. Her mouth sat in a tight line, closely guarded, a dark worry behind her eyes. The sight was intolerable, but Isra didn’t know how to make it go away.
She turned her gaze away from the window, signaling to Deya to come sit in her lap. When she did, Isra clutched her close and whispered, “I don’t mean to be this way.”
Deya squinted at her, holding the Barbie doll tight. “When I was a little girl,” Isra continued, “my mother never spoke to me much. She was always so busy.” Deya was quiet, but Isra could tell she was listening. She pulled her closer. “Sometimes I felt forgotten. Sometimes I even thought she didn’t love me. But she did love me. Of course she loved me. She’s my mother. And I love you, habibti. Always remember that.” Deya smiled, and Isra held her tight.
In the kitchen that evening, Isra and Sarah seasoned a chunk of ground lamb for dinner. The men were craving malfouf, cabbage leaves stuffed with rice and meat, and the women only had a few hours to prepare it before they returned from work. They would’ve had more time if Nadine had been helping, but she was upstairs breastfeeding her son, whom, to Fareeda’s fury, she had named Ameer, and not Khaled. More than once Fareeda had called on her, shouting from the end of the staircase that she should stop breastfeeding so she could get pregnant again, only for Nadine to call back, “But I already gave Omar a son, didn’t I?”
Sarah passed Isra a smirk, but Isra looked away. Deep down she wondered why she couldn’t be like Nadine. Why was speaking up so hard for her? In the four years she had lived in this house, she could not name a single time she had spoken up to Adam or Fareeda, and it felt as though someone had struck her when she realized this. Her pathetic weakness. When Adam came home and asked for dinner, she nodded, eager to please, and when he reached across the bed to touch her, she let him, and when he chose to beat her instead, she said nothing, sucking down her words. And again she said nothing to Fareeda’s constant demands, even when her body ached from all the housework. What did the rest of it matter then—what she thought or felt, whether she was obedient or defiant—if she could not do something as basic as speaking her mind?
Tears came, rushing to her eyes. She shook them away. She thought about Mama. Had she felt as Isra felt now, a fool? Holding her tongue in an attempt to earn love, teaching her daughter to do the same? Did Mama live as she lived now—full of shame and guilt for not speaking up? Had she known this would happen to her daughter?
“She must have done something wrong,” Fareeda said into the phone, both feet propped up on the kitchen table, a small smile on her face. Umm Ahmed’s eldest daughter, Fatima, was getting divorced.