A Bedouin woman claimed she could see someone’s future by studying the coffee grounds left at the bottom of their mug. She told her mother not to worry; she would conceive soon, and even better, it would be a boy. A boy would be the one who carried on the family name, who would be doted upon and served. Girls were considered weaker, weaker, not as smart; best we could do was stay at home, support the family, do the doting and the serving. No one told me about honor killings; they were passed down from generation to generation.
A girl could dishonor her family by dressing without modesty or simply looking at a man who wasn’t her husband. Males from the woman’s family were perfectly justified in hurting or killing a girl for dishonoring their family. Even smaller offenses could provoke violent punishment. In Islam, suicide is the greatest sin, but I wasn’t going to go to heaven anyway. There wouldn’t be forty virgins waiting for me. What was the point in hanging around if I knew how this was going to end? That word took up permanent residence in my head. I had been envisioning my own death for months.
The pills tickled my throat but went down surprisingly easy with just a glass of water. I had chosen the smallest room when my parents added the second floor to our house, the room with the most windows. Behind my bed hung posters of Bon Jovi and the Pet Shop Boys, and two books were the only things I kept on my nightstand. My parents rushed home and drove me to the hospital, but I was discharged instead. Most of the details of the hours between when I closed my eyes in my bedroom and when I opened them in the hospital are lost to me.
A few days later, after I had gone back to school, my parents told me there was someone to see me in the living room. The man sat on one of the couches, his legs crossed and a briefcase at his feet, wore white socks and shiny dress shoes. At Taytay’s I could be myself. While my world was constantly changing, everyone else was growing up, dating, getting married, becoming the person they were expected to be. I did it because I didn’t see any other options.
The author’s grandmother, a Muslim woman, encouraged her daughter to take part in Islam’s prayer rituals. She was good at getting her to pray and making it seem like it was her idea, she says. After a few weeks, she asked her parents if she would like to transfer to American Community School for 10th grade. She never asked why she felt different or why she didn’t like her current school, she seemed to just want to pretend like her suicide attempt never happened. The thought felt like a sliver of light shooting through my body.
Almost everything I had loved about my British elementary school I found again in the American Community School. It was full of kids of every race and nationality, where being different made you normal. Most of the students had parents who worked at the US State Department, and understood what it was like to be the new kid. Within a few months, I was popular enough to be on the student council and had a group of friends like the kind I envied Abla for. We hung out after practice at a local fast-food joint, eating hot dogs and spaghetti.