Evil Eye: A Novel

Fadi returns from work on Yara’s first full day at home and, as usual, just wants to watch television until he goes to sleep. Yara asks if the two could take a vacation for their upcoming 10-year wedding anniversary. At first, he says no, but she begs him to just think about it, and finally he acquiesces.

Yara recalls the last time she saw her grandmother, which was when Teta told her about the Nakba, the displacement of thousands of Palestinians from their homes by the Israeli army in 1948. At the time, Yara was perplexed by Teta’s need to tell the story over and over again, though she now realizes that refusing to acknowledge pain makes things worse. Yara remembers how she was overcome by sorrow hearing about how Teta’s family was forced from their home and into the refugee camp. She was stunned to realize that the location of her grandparents’ home was the same as the site of their tent—the city itself grew from the refugee camp. Teta’s father had worried that, if they left, they would not be able to return. Teta still had the key to the home they had in 1948, passed down from her father. She promised to give the key to Yara someday; in the meantime, they still had their history.

Yara enjoys spending her children’s winter break with them and fills their days with enjoyable activities. One day, Yara receives a lunch invitation from Silas. The two share a Southern meal, and he talks about the impending court date in a custody battle with his ex-wife. He tells Yara about coming out to his family and assures her that she is strong enough to face her fears and memories. She resolves to finally confront the demons of her childhood, and when she returns home, she gets out her journal and begins to write.

This particular journal entry begins as a letter to Yara’s mother. Yara’s stated goal is to make sense of her childhood and how it has shaped—or stained—everything that followed. She recalls being nine years old, hearing her parents arguing, and wishing that she were dead.

Yara takes her daughters to the library after school. On the way home, recalling her own childhood, she begins to cry. She notices her girls watching her and dries her eyes. She does not want them to feel the kind of emotional distress she did as a result of her mother’s volatility. At home, she realizes that Fadi has stacked boxes in an extra room that used to be hers. She begins to move them out of her space and into the living room.

In her journal, Yara recalls being a young girl listening to her parents fighting at night. She alludes to something that she did to make her parents fight more without providing any detail. Even as a child, Yara had a sense that her horizons would be limited and that her life would look a lot like her mother’s. As she heard the fight turn to physical violence, the young Yara attempted to dissociate herself from the entire scene.

Yara continues to record her memories in her journal. Although it is painful at times, she is gradually beginning to feel as though confronting her past is giving her more control over the present.

The night after they visited the fortune teller, Yara recalls, her father threw a bowl of okra stew across the room because he didn’t like it. Her mother’s reaction was to spit on him. He nearly hit her but instead left the house until the next morning. Yara asked her mother if it was true that she was cursed. Her mother responded that leaving Palestine had cursed her and that she had never been happy in the US. Yara tried to empathize with her mother, but she wouldn’t reciprocate, telling her that she knew Yara thought that she was a bad mother. When Yara asked her mother why she didn’t just leave, her mother blamed the curse.

Silas asks Yara to teach him to prepare some traditional Palestinian foods. As the two cook together, they talk about Yara’s journals. She shares how helpful the process of journaling has been. Silas asks her questions about her journal entries, and she tries to open up to him. He has shared very personal details from his own life, in particular about his family’s acceptance of his being gay and about his own journey of self-discovery. He asks about her marriage, and she explains that in her culture, marriages are quasi-arranged and people don’t really date. She’d gotten to know Fadi only after she accepted his proposal. She admits that she struggles to have open, honest communication with her husband.

Yara tries to talk to Fadi on a deeper level than their typical conversations. She asks him what he wants out of life and if he is happy. He responds that he wants to provide for her and the children, to be successful in his business, and to retire early. She observes that his answer does not speak to what he wants for himself. He asks why she is always complaining and making trouble. He compares her to her mother, and she bristles at his statement. She asks if they might take the girls to Palestine for their anniversary so that they can better understand their culture and spend time together as a family. He says that he is too busy at work.

Yara recalls a conversation with her father during which he said many terrible things about her mother. She was young, and Teta had just died. Since the death of her mother, Yara’s mother had become even more emotionally volatile and her behavior more erratic. Her father speculated that his wife had been possessed by a jinn, a shape-shifting spirit—a common way of talking about mental illness in their culture but also a sign of deep shame. Nothing else, he claimed, could explain her selfishness, defiance, and rage.

Yara and Silas have a picnic on the college campus. He has won joint custody of his daughter, and he and his ex-wife have begun to work out the details of the arrangement. He asks if Yara would ever consider a divorce. She tells him that although this is a possibility for her in a way that it hadn’t been in her mother’s generation, she would not leave her husband. That night, she contemplates telling Fadi about her friendship with Silas but decides against it. He might be upset that she’s been seeing a man, even a gay man, in secret.

Yara recalls the “cursed summer” when her father left the country for two weeks; her mother took Yara and her brothers to the beach with a man she had been meeting in secret. Yara’s mother swore her children to secrecy. The beach was disappointing, and Yara’s mother wanted her to go play with her brothers so that she could be alone with the man. Angry at being sent away, Yara kicked over her brothers’ sandcastle and provoked her mother’s anger.

When not caring for her girls, Yara divides her time between painting and journaling. She realizes that her mother had a difficult life and feels bad for judging her behavior so harshly.

It is Fadi and Yara’s 10th wedding anniversary. Yara uploads a photo to Instagram and writes a tender message to Fadi, even though she knows that he will not read it. He texts her to tell her that he has a surprise planned and that his mother will pick up the girls. He takes her to dinner and gives her a small bracelet with a hamsa pendant that matches the one she wears on her necklace. She is disappointed that he has not planned a trip and is unable to hide it. He explains again that he is too busy to travel and gets angry. No matter what he does, he says, she will still always be unhappy with him.

When Fadi leaves for a business trip in Las Vegas, Yara loses interest in cooking and housework, becoming distant from her daughters. She doesn’t cook dinner for him the night he comes home or the next night. He gets angry at her and is incredulous that she expects him to prepare his own meals, but Yara does not care. She realizes that she will never be happy in her marriage. She begins to make a list of everything she would do if she had the freedom to make her own choices.

Yara’s father calls. Fadi has once again complained to him about her behavior. He tells Yara that she is acting like her mother. Yara fires back with an accusation about his abuse. It was not her mother that was the problem in their family; the problem was the fact that he regularly beat her. Her father is enraged and asserts that her mother deserved it. Yara tells him that her mother did not deserve the abuse and hangs up.

Yara and Fadi argue again. She says that she does not feel connected to him and that she thinks that he does not love her. He treats her the way he thinks that a wife and mother should be treated, but their relationship is not love. She asks if they can spend more time together, perhaps meeting for lunch during the workday. He explains that he eats lunch while driving and does not have time to see her during work hours. She tells him again that she wants to feel more connection. Exasperated, he tells her that he has put up with years of her “bullshit” but that she needs serious help. Yara goes to sleep feeling unworthy and unloved.

Yara asks to get together with Silas. She tells him that she and Fadi have been fighting. She confides that she does not feel worthy of love and that she blames herself for her marital issues and the loss of her job. Silas gently counters that she is, of course, worthy of love. She then admits that her father used to beat her mother and that her mother behaved erratically as a result and had an affair. She tells Silas that all of this is still very difficult to talk about. He suggests speaking with her mother, and she has to tell him that her mother is dead.