She couldn’t remember the precise moment she had stopped reading. Perhaps it had been when she first arrived in America, glancing over her copy of A Thousand and One Nights when she couldn’t sleep and finding it insufficient comfort. Or maybe it was during her pregnancy with Nora, when Fareeda had dangled a necklace over Isra’s belly and predicted a girl, and Isra had read a sura from the Holy Qur’an every night, asking God to change the gender. She had almost forgotten the weight of a book between her hands, the smell of old paper as she turned each page, the way it soothed her someplace deep within. Is this what Adam felt, she wondered, when he drank sharaab and smoked hashish? A surge of happiness. An elation. If this was how he felt—floating as she was now, with a book in her hands—then she couldn’t blame him for drinking and smoking. She understood the need to escape from the ordinary world.
“What makes you happy?” Isra asked Adam one night as she watched him eat his dinner. She didn’t know where the question came from, but by the time it had left her lips, she found herself leaning forward in her seat, both eyes glued on Adam for his answer.
He looked up from his plate, swaying a bit in his seat. She knew he was drunk—Sarah had taught her how to recognize the state. “What makes me happy?” he said. “What kind of question is that?”
Why did she care what made him happy? The man who beat her mercilessly, who had sucked the hope from her? She wasn’t sure, but in that moment it felt important, intensely so. She poured him a cup of water. “I just want to know what makes my husband happy. Surely something must.”
Adam took a gulp of water and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “You know, not once in my entire life has anyone ever asked me that question. What makes Adam happy? No one cares what makes Adam happy. All they care about is what Adam can do for them. Yes, yes,” he said, slurring a little. “How much money can Adam bring home? How many businesses can he run? How much can he help his brothers? How many male heirs can he produce?” He paused, looking at Isra. “But happiness? There’s no such thing as happiness for people like us. Family duty comes first.”
“But I care what makes you happy,” Isra said.
He shook his head. “Why should you care? I haven’t been good to you.”
“Still,” she said, her voice low and soft. “I know what you’re going through. I know you’re under a lot of pressure, too. I can understand how that can make you act—” She stopped, looked away.
“Walking the Brooklyn Bridge at dawn,” Adam said. Isra turned back to him to find his face had softened. “Some early mornings on my way to work, I don’t take the train straight into the city. Instead I stop to walk the bridge in time for sunrise.” His words slipped out as though he had forgotten Isra was in the room. “There’s something magical about watching the sunrise when I’m so high up there. In that moment, when the first light hits my face, I feel like the sun has swallowed me up. Everything goes quiet. The cars rush beneath my feet, but I don’t hear a thing. I can see the whole city, and I think about the millions of people living here, the struggles they face, and then I think about the men back home and their struggles, too, and in an instant my worries vanish. I stare at the sky and remind myself that at least I am here, in this beautiful country, at least I have this view.”
“You never told me that before,” Isra whispered. He nodded but averted his gaze, as though he had said too much. “It sounds lovely,” she said, smiling at him. “It reminds me of when I used to watch the sunset back home, how the sun would sink into the mountains and disappear. It always made me feel better, too, knowing I wasn’t the only person staring up at the mountains, that in those moments I was connected to everyone watching the sunset, all of us held together by this magnificent view.” She tried to catch his eyes, but he stared at his plate and resumed eating. “Maybe we can watch the sunrise together one day,”