Three months after Bassem and Doaa first met, he approached Hanaa. “I saw Doaa coming home from work, and she looked so exhausted. Please get her to stop working,” he pleaded. “I will give you whatever she was earning to make up for it.”
Hanaa had heard about how generous Bassem was with other Syrians, paying their expenses and buying them things that they needed. In the refugee community, people took care of one another, and Hanaa was touched by Bassem’s offer to help the family and Doaa, but when Doaa found out, she was furious. She hated that someone thought she was weak; it was crucial to her that people knew that she could take care of herself and her family and that she didn’t need anyone’s help to do so. When Hanaa told her of Bassem’s offer, Doaa was angry even though she knew that she was more than exhausted. She was having dizzy spells almost daily and fainted regularly. She often found it difficult to eat after a long day of work, but despite all this, she had no intention of accepting handouts. Bassem’s offer made her all the more determined to carry on with her job.
“I feel fine,” she insisted, trying to ignore the fainting episodes, constant dizziness, and the depression that was beginning to creep up on her.
It seemed that everyone in Gamasa knew that Bassem was in love with Doaa, and that she had rejected his proposal. He soon became known around town as Romeo Bassem. Doaa’s sisters liked Bassem and ended up taking his side. They tried to persuade Doaa to change her mind and accept his proposal. Even the owner of the factory where Doaa worked interrupted her ironing one day and asked, “Why don’t you want to marry Bassem?” All this just made Doaa more entrenched in refusing him. She hated being told what to do.
“I cannot love him,” she told her family. “And, anyway, I don’t want to get married outside of Syria.”
Doaa’s outright refusal of Bassem worried Hanaa. She feared that Doaa’s fatigue and depression were making her shut out any possibility of love or happiness. Hanaa’s once ebullient daughter was now always grim and serious. Hanaa knew that she could never force Doaa into anything, but felt a responsibility as Doaa’s mother to push past her stubborn daughter’s barriers on this. Hanaa had gotten to know Bassem well by now from all his phone calls and walks in the neighborhood, and she trusted his sincerity. She began to get annoyed with Doaa’s obstinacy.
“He is Syrian!” Hanaa countered. “And he is a kind person who wants to help you, Doaa. Please open your heart to him.”
Doaa felt that everyone was ganging up on her. She didn’t see why she should accept Bassem’s proposal just because people thought she should. When she found out that he had found a nice ground-floor apartment in his building for her family to consider moving into, she felt as if this were all part of some big plot to make her accept him. She continued to refuse him and to make the best life that she could in Egypt on her own. But that life was about to get much harder.