A Woman Is No Man

It’s the loneliest people who love books the most.

A real choice doesn't have conditions. A real choice is free.

Too often being happy means being passive or playing it safe. There's no skill required in happiness, no strength of character, nothing extraordinary. Its discontent that drives creation the most--passion, desire, defiance. Revolutions don't come from a place of happiness. If anything, I think it's sadness, or discontent at least, that's at the root of everything beautiful.

What’s meant for you will reach you even if it’s beneath two mountains, and what’s not meant for you won’t reach you even if it’s between your two lips

Perhaps that was why she had spent her childhood with a book in front of her face, trying to make sense of her life through stories. Books were her only reliable source of comfort, her only hope.

I was born without a voice, one cold, overcast day in Brooklyn, New York. No one ever spoke of my condition. I did not know I was mute until years later, when I opened my mouth to ask for what I wanted and realized no one could hear me.

It took more than one woman to do things differently. It took a world of them.

That was the real reason abuse was so common, Isra thought for the first time. Not only because there was no government protection, but because women were raised to believe they were worthless, shameful creatures who deserved to get beaten, who were made to depend on the men who beat them.

But maybe that’s the way of life, Fareeda thought. To understand things only after they had passed, only once it was too late.

She knew that the suffering of women started in the suffering of men, that the bondages of one became the bondages of the other.

It's the loneliest people who love books the most...it was the opposite of loneliness, too, like there were too many people around me, forced connections, that I needed a little isolation to think on my own, to be my own person.

It’s hard to belong anywhere, truly belong, if we don’t belong to ourselves first.

She knew she had to teach them how to love themselves, that this was the only way they had a chance at happiness. Only she didn't see how she could when the world pressed shame into women like pillows into their faces. She wanted to save her daughters from her fate, but she couldn't seem to find a way out.

Everything we draw into our life is a mirror of our thought patterns and beliefs. In a way, we can control the outcome of our future just by thinking more positively and visualizing only the things we want for ourselves.

I can tell my own story now, she thinks. And then she does.

She often wondered how many people felt this way, spellbound by words, wishing to be tucked inside a book and forgotten there. How many people were hoping to find their story inside, desperate to understand. And yet Deya still felt alone in the end, no matter how many books she read, no matter how many tales she told herself.

But now, reading her books, she was beginning to find a different kind of love. A love that came from inside her, one she felt when she was all alone, reading by the window. And through this love, she was beginning to believe, for the first time in her life, that maybe she was worthy after all.

Words could do extraordinary things, but sometimes they were not enough.

Where I come from, voicelessness is the condition of my gender, as normal as the bosoms on a woman’s chest, as necessary as the next generation growing inside her belly.

Fareeda knew that no matter what any woman said, culture could not be escaped. Even if it meant tragedy. Even if it meant death. At least she was able to recognize her role in their culture, own up to it, instead of sitting around saying “If only I had done things differently.” It took more than one woman to do things differently. It took a world of them. She had comforted herself with these thoughts so many times before, but tonight they only filled her with shame.

Sadness was like a cancer, she thought, a presence that staked it's claim so quietly you might not even notice it until it was too late. She hoped her other daughters didn't see.

And yet even as she heard this old voice in her head, she could still feel the shift that had just occurred inside her. The old voice was no longer strong enough to hold her back—Deya knew this now. She knew this voice that she had always taken as the absolute truth was actually the very thing preventing her from achieving everything she wanted. The voice was the lie, and all the things she wanted for herself were the truth, perhaps the most important truth in the world. And because of this she had to stand up for herself. She had to fight. She had to. The fight was worth everything if it meant finally having a voice.

Books were my armor. Everything I'd ever learned growing up, all my thoughts, dreams, goals, experiences, it all came from the books I read. It was like I went around collecting knowledge, plucking it from pages and storing it up, waiting for a chance to use it.

If every woman refused to get married after a woman died at the hands of her husband, then no one would ever get married.

Why did she have to be so afraid, so sensitive, so affected by the world?

That to understand someone, you had to listen to the words they didn’t say, had to watch them closely.

Learn this now, dear. If you live your life waiting for a man’s love, you’ll be disappointed.

But don't you think stories should be used to tell the truth?" "No, I think we need stories to protect us from the truth.

Sarah paused for a moment then said, "I don't care about being happy." Deya's surprise must have been written across her face because Sarah continued, "Too often being happy means being passive or playing it safe. There's no skill required in happiness, no strength of character, nothing extraordinary. It's discontent that drives creation the most—passion, desire, defiance. Revolutions don't come from a place of happiness. If anything, I think it's sadness, or discontent at least, that's at the root of everything beautiful.