Excerpt from A Woman Is No Man by Etaf Rum, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Isra arranged the steaming cups on the serving tray and entered the sala. Mama said the trick to maintaining balance was to never look directly at the steam, so she looked at the ground instead. For a moment, Isra paused. From the corner of her eye, she could see the men and women sitting on opposite sides of the room. She peeked at Mama, who sat in her usual way: head bowed, eyes studying the red Turkish rug in front of her. Isra glanced at the pattern. Spirals and swirls, each curling up in the exact same way, picking up where the last one ended. She looked away. She had the urge to steal a glimpse of the young man, but could feel Yacob eyeing her, could almost hear him in her ear: A proper girl never lays her gaze on a man!

Isra kept her eyes toward the ground but allowed herself a glance across the floor. She noticed the younger man's socks, gray and pink plaid with white stitching across the top. They were unlike anything she had ever seen on the streets of Birzeit. She felt her skin prickle.

Clouds of steam rose from the serving tray, covering Isra's face, and quickly she circled around the room until she had served all the men. She walked over to serve the suitor's mother next. Isra noticed how the woman's navy-blue hijab was tossed around her head as if by accident, barely covering her henna-stained hair. Isra had never seen a Muslim woman wear her hijab this way in real life. Maybe on television, in the black-and-white Egyptian movies Isra and Mama watched together, or in Lebanese music videos, where women danced around in revealing clothing, or even in one of the illustrations of Isra's favorite book, A Thousand and One Nights, a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales set in medieval times. But never in Birzeit.

As Isra leaned in, she could see the suitor's mother studying her. She was a plump, stooping woman with a crooked smile and dark almond eyes that squinted at the corners. From her expression, Isra decided the woman must be displeased with her appearance. After all, Mama had often said that Isra was a plain girl—her face as dull as wheat, her eyes as black as charcoal. Isra's most striking feature was her hair, long and dark like the Nile. Only no one could see it now beneath her hijab. Not that it would've made a difference, Isra thought. She was nothing special.

It was this last thought that stung Isra. As she stood before the suitor's mother, she could feel her upper lip trembling. She walked closer to the woman, clutching the serving tray in her hands. She could feel Yacob glaring at her, could hear him clear his throat, could see Mama dig her fingers into her thighs, but Isra leaned toward the woman anyway, the porcelain cup trembling, and asked: "Would you like some Turkish coffee?"

But it hadn't worked. The Americans hadn't even seemed to notice that she'd served the coffee first. In fact, the suitor had proposed soon after, and Yacob had agreed at once, smiling wider than Isra had ever seen.

"What were you thinking, serving them coffee first?" Mama yelled when the guests had left and she and Isra returned to the kitchen to finish cooking. "You're not young anymore—almost eighteen! Do you want to sit in my house forever?"

"I was nervous," Isra muttered, hoping Yacob wouldn't punish her. "It was an accident."

"Sure it was." Mama unwrapped the thobe from around her thin frame. "Like the time you put salt in Umm Ali's chai because she said you were as thin as a lamppost."

"That was an accident, too."

"You should be thankful their family isn't as traditional as we are," Mama said, "or you might've blown your chance of going to America."

Isra looked at her mother with wet eyes. "What will happen to me in America?"

Mama didn't look up. She stood hunched over the cutting board dicing onions, garlic, and tomatoes, the main components of all their meals. As Isra inhaled the familiar scents, she wished Mama would hold her, whisper in her ear that everything would be okay, maybe even offer to sew her a few hijabs in case they didn't make them in America. But Mama was silent.

Excerpted from A Woman Is No Man by Etaf Rum. Copyright © 2019 by Etaf Rum. Excerpted by permission of Harper. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.