I opened his car door and shuffled in. He was looking ahead, hardly taking notice of my entrance, not saying much or even moving.
“Tell me what happened, please,” I asked, my voice shrieky. “How do you feel?”
I considered for a moment how fragmented I’d be, misaligned and disorganized, without Bhav’s presence.
“Well,” Bhav said, “I am relieved. It had to be done, asking for his permission for your hand. But I am no better or worse than before.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Bhav’s voice and lips were flat lines on a heart monitor. However, he tapped his foot on the brake pedal, and his arm resting on the ledge of the car window was more tense than usual.
“What did you say and what did he say?” I asked.
“Well, you know,” Bhav started. “I said that I love you and I can’t stop, just like he can’t stop loving your mother, his wife. And that I was committed to overcoming any challenges with you. I’ll do anything.”
Bhav took my hand and put it in his. “I tried to convince him. Kept telling him that I loved you, but he said that love was made up.”
I gripped Bhav’s hand tighter. Abbu had described it as fleeting, based solely on intangible stirrings of the heart and hormones, and nothing grounded. As Bhav told me this, recollections of stories that Ammu had shared arose: Abbu writing poems for Ammu, serenading her, during the first few years of their marriage.
This could have only meant then that true love was limited within the context of dating; in this case, it was just Shayṭān’s meddling. It was through marriage that you’d keep perspective on a higher purpose, and avoid getting caught up in the workings of the nafs — sight short, wavering desire, and a distracted or stubborn mind. Bhav and I , however, didn’t believe then that we were dating. For us, it was destiny.
“Listen,” Bhav said, his whole body turned to me now, “to be honest with you, when I found out you were Muslim, I wasn’t necessarily thrilled. I thought there would be more obstacles.”
I tightened my grip again.
“I’ve heard about honour killings,” he said, his voice a little sombre. “What if something like that happens to you because I am with you?”
I bit my lip. “Why would you say that? Because I’m Muslim?” I asked. “It could happen to those of other religions and other cultures, too.”
I reminded him that men in North America could also kill because they felt honour was at stake. The many murdered women. The incidents of domestic violence across various cultures and religions. His disquietude could have been entirely legitimate, but it periodically stopped my breath, particularly when I wondered, Does he think of all Muslims a certain way?
We didn’t know then that soon a Sikh man who had stabbed his wife would be convicted of second-degree murder. The man would say her behaviour was a defiance to the Sikh community, for she smoked, drank, and talked with men other than him. We both didn’t know then that years later there would be plenty of other cases, and they wouldn’t necessarily involve those who identified as Muslims.
“You know that I am not particularly religious, but I see what role religion plays in your life. It keeps you focused. I love that about you,” Bhav told me.
I loosened my grip and released my shoulders.
“I love and accept this part of you. Is it the whole you? I don’t think so. I don’t believe it would ever take over your entire heart.”
I sat reserved for a moment. My love for Allah was the entirety of my heart. Bhav, to me, was a manifestation of Allah’s blessings. I could never separate the two out, despite feeling the pressure to do so.
“I love Allah, but I love you, too,” I replied.
“Then, we will make it,” Bhav said.
“Yes, we will,” I agreed. “We will figure it out.”
I decided I would get a vestige of some sort for Bhav and I that would remind us of each other and carry within it our essence when we were united. Something that would store the immortality of our commitment in a tangible way. With the limited amount of money that I had in my purse, I scoured the malls like a high school student (which I was) except with the strategy and purpose of a corporate professional — Yorkdale, Lawrence Square Plaza, Dufferin Mall — just to find the right ring. Some were quite plain, a silver band made of steel, and others quite fancy, multiple stones that sparkled from miles away. My fingers resting lightly on the glass counters of the jewellery stores, my eyes squinting, as if I were on a mission to ferret out the right diamond, except it wasn’t an actual diamond I was searching for. I was searching for distinction. What would be simple enough, but also unique, like Bhav and I? After days, perhaps weeks, I found it: a silver band with gold plated lining, one single stone in the middle. I decided to get a pair. The rings were identical, with no signifier of gender, other than maybe size. I had carvings made in its interior wall that read Unbreakable.
I presented the ring to Bhav one day on the bridge at the Getaway. The scattered hues of the sky overhead, both bright and gentle, were like the pastel ribbons of joy on the ring box — acknowledging the happiness Bhav brought into my life.
He was telling me about his latest hockey match, after which I said, “I have something to give you.”
He smiled. “What is it?”
With that, I turned my body toward him then went on one knee, pulled the box with the rings from my pocket and presented it to him. “Will you be my Unbreakable?”
Bhav retreated to his own knees, placed his hands on my arms, then pulled me up. “Of course. Of course I will. But please, never fall before me like that again. Your place is high, and it’s me that should be at your feet.”
I felt prickles on my entire body. It was like the sting of excitement felt touching the thorns of a rose, while anticipating the fragrance to come. I opened the ring box and we then placed the rings on each other’s fingers.
“If we were ever separated, somehow apart, maybe we can talk to it, the ring,” I told Bhav. “The message will be received, I am sure. A portal for telepathic communication.”
Bhav laughed. “Or we can just ask God directly. No third-party messenger.”
“Yes, you’re right,” I replied.
∞
Bhav found out that he had an irregular heartbeat. I visited the doctor’s office with him often for his checkups. I sat in the waiting room one day, anxiously clutching a magazine in my hands, and flipped to an article titled “Grave Mistakes Lead to Surprises in Graves.” There was a middle-aged blond woman staring vacantly at the white walls, and a bald, bearded man tapping his right foot while humming under his breath. I closed my eyes, trying to drag in my breath, which was escaping me. After about thirty minutes or so, Bhav came out and I stood up. We left the room, the anxiety of the place still following me. Outside, on the sidewalk, I saw some cars pass, some stop, some blocked, all at the mercy of traffic lights. I was three steps behind Bhav as we walked. I caught up and pulled on his arm.
“Tell me,” I asked. “What happened?”
“The loud beats I have been hearing, the fluttering, well, I have heart palpitations. It’s called a bicuspid aortic valve,” Bhav told me as the car swiping past us honked. “The passageway in the valve is narrow, so it can take longer for blood to travel between the heart and the other parts of the body.”
I moved in close to Bhav and put my ear on his chest and listened carefully for the lagging beat, then I looked up at him.
“I’ll be okay,” he said.
Ever since Bhav had spoken to Abbu, he had been more scattered in his thoughts than usual. Each time I had asked him if he was feeling fine, he said, “Yes.”
I put my fingers on Bhav’s forehead, which often wrinkled up when he was distressed, and then on his furry caterpillar eyebrows. “You’re too young for this.”
Bhav nodded. “I will eventually have to get surgery to get the blood flowing the right way. But you, you don’t have to worry about this. Let’s go.”
This
wouldn’t be the last time I worried about Bhav and his state. For, leading up to this visit and after, Bhav would often be anywhere and everywhere but the present. I would ask how he was and he’d say fine, but then I’d see all the bottles from which he drank scattered on the grass of the same park within which we stared into the grand blue sky. And then there was the indignation that he carried under his sleeves and on the edges of his collar, connected like a circuit, that rested dormant but then blew like a fuse at arbitrary moments.
“Why were you late?” he asked one day.
We were planning to see a performance at Hart House Theatre, and I had had tremendous trouble getting out of bed. It was a curse of rumination I battled almost every morning, remembering how our union wouldn’t be legitimate until we were wed. Then there was also my melancholia that sometimes visited like an unwanted guest.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Bhav hit the steering wheel with his palm and didn’t talk to me for the rest of the day.
On another day, Bhav wrote to say he was upset but then didn’t explain. My thoughts whirled: What could have happened? I ran back to Caledonia Park. I took the 59 Maple Leaf to Weston Road via Benton and Culford and the Gary Drive bus from Lawrence West Station. The entire way I conjectured what I could have done to push him away.
I found him surrounded, once again, by bottles. It seemed that getting drunk was how he metabolized the situation.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, his voice a little hoarser than usual.
“I wanted to see you. To see if you were okay,” I asked, whiffing the rum from two metres away. This was certainly not a scene I would have ever experienced growing up in my own family home, where alcohol was taboo.
Then, Bhav’s friend ran up to me and said, “He isn’t in the right state of mind. He has been stressed. I think you should leave.”
“Why won’t he talk to me? Tell me what is wrong!” I cried, with my soaring voice. I wiped my wet face. “Tell me!” I shouted, now at Bhav, who had his back to me.
In that moment, my knees weakened and my hands shook. I wondered how we could suddenly be so separated while standing on the same ground, without there even being much physical distance between us.
I left the park without wanting to, but having to. On the lonely bus ride back, I was determined not to experience such a rupture again. To never do or say anything to hurt Bhav in any way that would create such distance, even while intellectually aware that his behaviour was his, and not necessarily tied to mine. I also wondered if there really was a distance, even while intuitively sensing it. I still believed in him and wanted to be strong for him, as well. For the next day, Bhav didn’t remember my pain nor his. A sort of amnesia that left me confused.
I would later learn that Bhav didn’t quite know how to put what he felt into words the way I did, or thought I did, and that he wouldn’t to prevent any distress. I didn’t know then that while being straightjacketed in his own shortcomings, Bhav was still trying to be my hero. And I, I still believed in him.
While Bhav’s inner being sometimes sung discordant notes, so did mine, and it started the first time we were intimate. A ruffle of the hair, playful moments packed with joy, notes left in purses and pockets, a spur-of-the-moment peck prolonged. A string of acts that paved the way to alternate realms: half-open eyelids, blinking lights, the gushing in of gasps, sighs like colliding waves, whiffs of cologne, salty sweat sprinkled on the tongue, the tips of my fingers across smooth coarse surfaces, my form fumbling into fissures of places. Magical places, and I thought it could only be a spell that began to compel me this way.
When I looked in the mirror, it was as if the curves on my face altered, reshaping into a woman of smokeless fire that I recognized: the Shayṭān Bride. The crossing of lines on bodies, hearts, and souls bringing pleasure was also the crossing of lines that brought a certain unease.
These forbidden moments — they split me into different parts. The books I read, the shows I watched, what I learned from friends or understood as the fiqh of marriage, in Islamic jurisprudence, and the experience of simply loving a person: all of these sometimes clashed. Was it possible to be so many people within one body, or one person with mismatched beliefs and actions? It resulted in a kind of discomfiture that ate away my peace. I thirsted for consistency, an integrity, while navigating girlhood and womanhood when it came to courtship, love, marriage, sex. Who could I talk to — parents, teachers, counselors, imams, or friends? There was no one place to understand all these worlds in a way that was integrated.
So, whenever shame eclipsed pleasure, it left me betrothed to my sin and not my love. Could Bhav have grasped the discomfort from within my spirit or from my consciousness? When his watch got caught in my hair or when the chain around his neck hit my face, and I would shout, “Leave me alone!” Later, I would shudder on the prayer mat, remembering that I was consciously not solving the problem I faced, and I would ask, Can I even consider myself a Muslim at all?
I was playing with fire in a slow burning in hell, yet it brought me closer to my faith in ways I had never been before. I became more aware of my nafs and this led me to ask questions, perhaps the way Iblis had: Did sinning mean you didn’t belong within particular lines of religions or communities, that you should simply leave? Or did it mean the sins you faced were your test? Did good things come more easily to those who obeyed or those who failed, then tried again? For God would never give a person a burden that was more than they could bear. What made a good person? A good woman? Within the dark light, I looked for clarity.
In all this, one thing was clear: what women do with their bodies or what feelings they have cannot be imposed on them, nor can they be taken. Not through a look, nor rational, scientific explanation. Nothing that is done to can tamper with. As a human, her dignity is an innate right, and what she does with her body is for her to define.
Bhav and I at the time were fighting the fight of our lives: aqls, qalbs, ruhs, and nafs behind smoke screens, or feigning retreats in the middle of night combat or some ambush. We only heard the rumbles of passing thoughts with no clear direction and the sound of each other’s breathing.
“Please, please can we solve this problem? I can’t stay like this,” I cried to Bhav one day. “I can’t live with myself.” Yet, I didn’t go on, because he was a non-Muslim after all, and might think I was too anxious. And if he was white, maybe I would have thought he would have said, Oh, that crazy chick. But then again, I probably wouldn’t have fallen for a man like that at all, irrespective of whatever background he had.
Years later, when I would finally have the ability to articulate such nuanced experiences to Bhav, he would say, “When I met you, I fell for you. When I got to know you, I fell for your heart and mind. I knew for me that you were all I wanted. So, loving you was extremely sacred, I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“It was sacred for me, too,” I replied. “I would have just preferred Allah’s blessing.”
“I don’t think I fully appreciated that you were going to have these conflicting emotions between me and your family and religion. I was only thinking about me and how it was special for me, and that it would be for you, and we would both feel the same together. But it wasn’t like that. It was difficult for you. As it always is for a woman, for the first time, for maybe a Muslim woman generally, for a woman like yourself.”
Ammu confronted me about the ring on my wedding finger. I was in my bedroom, straightening my hair.
“Why are you always wearing this ring, as if you’re married,” she asked, but it wasn’t a real question. “Is this from that man? You know he is much older than you, and you’re not in a place to be getting involved. Why do you keep forgetting who you are?”
I turned my face away from Ammu and remained focused on the device, which was now almost burning my hair.
“Talk to me!” she shrieked.
“Okay, fine, yes, but it means it’s serious. We will be married one day, Inshallah,” I
replied.
Ammu pulled the plug of the straightener out of the outlet. She pulled up a chair and sat across from me. I was sitting on the bed. I looked at my reflection in the big mirror in front of me, where I saw Ammu’s frigid back and what I thought were flames running through the veins in my face.
“You’re out of control. First that boy who called our house telling us things about you, the way you’re dressing, and now this man. You’ve become unrecognizable, as if there’s something in you,” Ammu cried. “Don’t you know, life is not easy for women. People will always say things behind your back. We’re trying to help you.” She grabbed my hand, preparing to take the ring off my finger.
I couldn’t deny that; it was true people always said things, did things, even though they were flawed themselves. Like I was, like we all were. For example, girls at school who continued Priya’s rumours when I turned down the Turkish boy who followed me home, brought me chocolate and flowers — then broke his arm hitting a locker and ended up in the hospital because his advances weren’t working. It happened a lot. I continued to learn that my desirability, sexuality, was something I had to hide because without having done anything, it made those around me rather uncomfortable. Perhaps others would have thought the attention was a blessing, but I just wanted to become invisible. It was as if young girls, women, had to make themselves smaller than they were. All I wanted then was peace of mind and no further damage to my relationship with my parents. It would only be years later that I’d own these parts of myself and feel joy revelling in my femininity and sensuality. So yes, people always said things, did things. Ammu didn’t know I’d already begun experiencing this first hand.
“No, stop.” I pulled my hand away. “Please don’t take this.” I thought about how Ammu herself had agreed to an arranged marriage without knowing Abbu, and that he was about ten years older than her.
The Shaytan Bride Page 10