ETAF RUM, ‘A WOMAN IS NO MAN’
Why would anyone want to be a woman when she could be a bird?
Books were her only reliable source of comfort, her only hope. They told the truth in a way the world would not never seemed to.
Telling a story wasn’t as simple as recalling memories. It was building on them deciding which parts were best left unsaid.
“The word Islam means tawwakul,” Brother Hakeem said to the class. “Submission to God. Islam is about peace, purity, and kindness. Standing up to injustice and oppression. That’s the heart of it.”
It is about real life. It is about the strength and resilience of women.
She was a soul torn down the middle, broken in two. Straddled and limited. Here or there, it didn’t matter.
How fear could force you to change who you were.
“A man leaves the house a man and comes back a man. No one can take that away from him.” But a woman was a fragile thing.
A real choice doesn’t have conditions. A real choice is free.
She felt empty; she felt full. She needed people; she needed to be alone.
To understand things only after they had passed, only once it was too late.
To want what you can’t have in this life is the greatest pain of all.
When we accept that heaven lies underneath the feet of a woman, we are more respectful of women everywhere.