never missed a prayer growing up, who had wanted to be an imam. Adam, who did everything for them, who always bent over backward to please, who never denied them. Adam, a murderer? Perhaps Fareeda should have known from the way he came home every night, reeking with sharaab. But she had just shrugged her fears aside, told herself everything was okay. After all, how many times had Khaled gotten drunk in their youth? How many times had he beaten her senseless? It was only normal. And she was stronger for it. But murder and suicide—that wasn’t normal. She was sure Adam had been possessed.
“So Mama and Baba were both possessed? Really? That’s your explanation for everything?”
Fareeda bit the inside of her lip. “Believe it or not, it’s the truth.”
“No, it’s not! Sarah said there was nothing wrong with Mama.”
Fareeda sighed. If only that were true, if only she had invented all of Isra’s trouble. But she and Deya both knew there had been something wrong with her. Quietly, she said, “You don’t remember how she was?”
Deya flushed. “It doesn’t mean she was possessed.”
“But she was.” Fareeda met Deya’s eyes. “And Adam was possessed, too. He wasn’t in his right mind. Only a majnoon, a crazy person, would kill his wife like that.”
“That still doesn’t mean he was possessed! He could’ve been—” Deya searched for the right translation in Arabic. “He could’ve had a mental illness. He could have been depressed, or suicidal, or just a bad person!”
Fareeda shook her head. It was typical of her granddaughter to revert to Western concepts to understand everything. Why couldn’t she accept that Western medicine had no understanding of these things, much less a cure?
The teakettle whistled, puncturing the silence between them. Fareeda turned off the stove. In moments like this, when the smell of maramiya filled the kitchen, she had to admit how much she missed Isra, who used to brew chai just the way she liked it, who, even when she was upset, never disrespected her. Isra would never have yelled at her the way Nadine had screamed the morning before she and Omar packed their bags and moved, just like that, leaving Fareeda alone. And what had she done to deserve it? Fareeda wondered, pouring herself some tea. She remembered Omar saying how controlling she was, how he couldn’t even be nice to Nadine in her presence, how he had to pretend to be tough, manly. How much he hated the word manly, he had said, almost spitting as he did. Well, that’s because he wasn’t a man, Fareeda told herself now, adding two spoonfuls of sugar to her tea. Neither was Ali, who had taken off to live in the city with some girl, leaving her to raise her granddaughters on her own. Leaving her to clean up the family mess once again.
“You know,” Fareeda said after a moment, “Arabs use the term majnoon to mean madness, but if you break the word apart, what do you see?” Deya only looked at her. “The word jinn,” Fareeda said, settling back in her seat. “Madness is derived from the jinn, an evil spirit inside you. Therapy and medicine can’t fix that.”
“Are you serious? That’s your explanation for everything? You think you can just blame this on the jinn? That’s not good enough. This isn’t some story, where you can tie up everything as you please at the end. This isn’t make-believe.”
“If only it were make-believe,” Fareeda said.
“That still doesn’t explain why you tried to cover for him,” Deya said. “How could you? You won’t even forgive your own daughter when all she ever did was run away! You’re such a hypocrite!”
Fareeda tightened her grip around the teacup. Outside, the sky was dark, only the glow of a few lampposts visible through the window. She stared absently at the darkness as she considered Deya’s words. Why had she never really blamed Adam—had forgiven him, even? Sarah hadn’t killed anyone, hadn’t left her with four girls to look after. And yet it was true, she had never been able to forgive her. She and Khaled had erased Sarah from their lives completely, as if they had never had a daughter, as if she had committed the grossest of crimes. She was so afraid of the shame the family would face that she had never even questioned it. Deya was right: she was a hypocrite. An ocean of sadness rushed through her, and she began to weep.