Etaf Rum

It had been her idea, after all, to teach Sarah some compliance, but more than once Fareeda had found them huddled at the kitchen table, whispering to each other, sometimes even reading together—reading, of all things!

The last thing she needed was for either of them to read that sort of Americanized smut.

Instead of putting his foot down, as she’d told him, he let his wife run the show

Have you ever heard of a self-fulfilling prophecy?”
Deya sighed irritably. “I’ve read about it.”
“It says we attract what we think. Whatever belief a person has about the future comes true because the person believes it.”

and the girl who read American novels voraciously, who wanted to go to college, whose eyes, she saw now, sparked rebellion.

But this was the way of life, she told herself. There was nothing she could do about it. Her powerlessness even comforted her somehow. Knowing that she couldn’t change things—that she didn’t have a choice—made living it more bearable.

Every time she tried to talk to her sisters, she’d clench up, racked with nerves and anger.

Sarah stared, concern etched on her face.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

—Maya Angelou

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.