"A woman is no man" by Etaf Rum: Review:

“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”

“A women is no man”, a title that attracted me at first sight, which aroused in me a great curiosity to discover the book. And WHAT A BOOK! One of my favourite reads of 2020 so far.

Palestine, 1990: Israe, a 17 years old Palestinian girl, prefers to dive into her books and to explore her imagination rather than trying to seduce suitors her parents chose for her. But, before being eighteen, she found herself forced to marry a Palestinian immigrant man in USA, and go live with him and his family in Brooklyn. Hoping to finally live like an American girl, her dreams will be shattered when she realizes that she is going to have to stay at home all the time, try to please her husband and his family, take care of the children, but most of all give birth to a son under the stifling pressure from her entourage, especially from her stepmother Farida. Israe will find herself a mother in a young age, and will give birth just to girls.

Brooklyn, 2008: Deya, an 18 years old girl, is expected to marry someone, since she is old enough to get married according to her grand-parents. We follow the battle of Deya to not get married in a young age, to finish school, go to college and graduate, especially since she remembered how sad her mother was. One day, she will receive a mysterious message from a woman, claiming that she knows what really happened to her parents.

Finally, we have Farida, Isra’s stepmother, and Deya’s grandmother. We have just some glimpses about her, but it was enough to know about her story, how she became what she actually was. She was the person that I hated the most at the beginning, but after knowing what she endured, we get to understand why she became so awful, why she believes in all that customs.

What can I say about this book? It made me feel angry, feel sorry for all the women, not only Arab ones, who suffers from inequality, but most of all made me cry! The story of this three muslim arab women is just so powerful, that you can’t finish this book without feeling empathy for them. This book discusses a lot of problems: being forced to marry someone in a young age, living in a house where all you have to do is obey to your husband and his family, where you do not have the right to go outside, justifying those horrible thoughts with the fact that married women in general shouldn’t go out, that she must do everything possible to make her husband happy, that she must suffer any form of injustice, that she does not have the right to say no to a sexual act, and since she is married this is not considered as rape (which it is !), and that she must hide any bruises resulting from the abuse of her husband. But most of all, seeing Israe blame herself for not giving birth to a boy was the most heart-breaking part of the story. Since when a girl is a source of shame?

It’s definitely not an easy read, but I highly recommend it. Israe, Deya and Farida are just the representation of thousands of women, all around the world, who suffer in silence. The end of the story gives us hope, that someday we will live in a world where women are respected, where we’re not going to see any form of injustice towards them.

This is the first novel that Etaf Rum has written. I heard that she will release a new work in 2021. Can’t wait for it!