Salaam, Love

by Ayesha Mattu

  Quiet, loyal Chacha was not so lucky.

  His family had also left their land and livelihood in East Punjab. But unlike Raani’s scholarly, urban ancestors, they were wealthy rural landowners who married others of their own caste. His sister and each of his five older brothers had married Rajputs of the family’s choosing. Chacha did not believe that Islam contained anything like “caste.” As the youngest, perhaps he thought he could get his way, but the discussion was short and uncomplicated.

  “We do not approve and will not attend.”

  Chacha did not attempt to convince them. It was the first time he had disobeyed his mother and elder brothers. In a version later told by Raani, Chacha was locked in a bathroom the morning of his wedding, broke out through the window, and took a bus to the ceremony. Chacha laughs and calls it a total fabrication—except for the bus part.

  His family boycotts the marriage, including his beloved, widowed mother. Representing the groom’s side are three classmates and one of their fathers. All of them will later follow Raani and Chacha to America and become their surrogate family.

  It sounds depressing, but Chacha smiles and laughs in every photo. Raani, unusual for her, looks demure as a bride. She hadn’t had time to find an outfit for the wedding and wears a red lehnga from a recent Eid, adorned with her mother’s finest gold jewelry.

  In Pakistan, a distinction is made between love marriages and arranged ones. Chacha and Raani did not have an arranged marriage but when asked why they married, their answer does not mention love. Instead:

  “We were partners.”

  They met during medical school in Lahore. Chacha’s older brothers were of different professions—engineer, politician, diplomat, army man and businessman. Chacha would be his family’s first doctor. Raani was following in the footsteps of her mother, an obstetrician. Her sisters and a brother would soon join her in the medical profession. For both, cosmopolitan Lahore represents an unparalleled adventure.

  Chacha hangs with a crew of pranksters, the moral compass of the group. There are ten girls in their class of one hundred. Though Raani spends much of her time with those ten, she is the undisputed leader of boys and girls alike. For a long time before their meeting, Raani hears of a person named Chacha, and she is confused by this name. It means, basically, ‘uncle.’ She wonders who this Chacha is who could inspire such respect from the male medical students.

  When she finally meets him, she is underwhelmed. He is a year her junior. She notices his well-pressed clothes, in contrast to his friends, who lounge around, wearing tank tops and lungis and smoking cigarettes. He notices her simple khaddar clothing and asks, “Why are you wearing that clothing?”

  “It’s for workers’ rights. I don’t need anything finer than what they spin and wear,” she replies. “Here’s a better question, bhai. Why are you called Chacha?”

  He laughs. “You’d have to ask the boys.”

  “Surely you should know why you have such a strange nickname, Chacha.”

  “You can just call me Waheed.”

  “I’m Raani.”

  Chacha’s friends become Raani’s friends, and Raani’s become Chacha’s. As a group, they scribble and share notes, hike in the Himalayan foothills, drink chai and eat pakoras at truck stops, mock their professors’ English and discuss the unmatchable poetic genius of Faiz Ahmed Faiz. Soon, the boys send food from their mess hall to the girls’ dormitory—the girls’ rotis were stale and their daal watery—along with flowers and sweets.

  Raani scoffs at the flowers from Chacha, but she is softened by the fact that every time he sends them, he sends a bouquet to her younger sister too. She also finds it strangely endearing that during finals Chacha grows a beard and proceeds to pull hairs from it until a dime-sized hole appears on his chin.

  In Chacha, Raani sees someone with competence and a work ethic that can support her revolutionary, feminist ambitions. The two are enamored with the struggle of communist revolutionaries in Latin America and the Muslim world. They debate among their friends the role of Islam in such struggles. Chacha shares the bonds he made with Muslims in Africa and the Middle East, making a convincing argument for Islam’s capability to unite.

  By the time they graduate, the friends have decided to go to America. The opportunities are better, and anyway, they plan to return—someday. After she graduates from medical school, Raani announces to her father that she is going to America and that she and Chacha want to get married. After a year trying to convince her father, she succeeds. They arrive in snowy New York the day after their marriage.

  Initially, there are issues.

  Raani is the epitome of her family’s analytical, emotional, and lighthearted characteristics. Chacha’s family is hardy and upright, leaving painful emotions unspoken. In many senses, Chacha is the exception to his patriarchal family. His home was intergenerational, with his brothers’ families living in the same compound. Chacha respected his brothers’ wives for their quiet forbearance, and his mother for her capabilities as a single mother.

  But still they both have difficulty adjusting to married life. Chacha struggles with his role as man of the house with a wife who was raised in a household where the woman was the breadwinner. Raani always wants to discuss relationship issues; Chacha would rather let them lie. America is demanding and lonely and it takes them time to reestablish their partnership.

  When she finally meets Chacha’s family in Pakistan a few years later, she swallows her anger at their rejection. They treat Chacha normally, but Raani does her best to charm them and fit in, especially by spinning stories for the children. Slowly, Raani grows to become an essential part of Chacha’s family.

  By their middle age, Chacha and Raani have become specialists in surgery and immunology, respectively, and leaders in the Muslim, Pakistani American, and medical communities. They have three overanalytical children—two girls early on, and then, after a period of eight years, a boy. Chacha and Raani do not teach their children to expect arranged marriage. There is an expectation that their children will marry Muslims, though not necessarily Pakistanis.

  Raani’s allergy practice allows her to come home early. She prepares the delicacies of her childhood—rice cooked in lamb broth, delicate kabobs, and eggplant in yogurt—as well as Chacha’s favorite, daal and rice. The children yearn to spend more time with Chacha, who leaves for surgery before they wake up and comes home exhausted, sometimes spending entire Saturdays catching up on sleep. The children pursue careers in service, human rights, and academics. Raani and Chacha are disappointed, but have a hard time arguing against their passions.

  Finally, the children leave for work or school. Chacha and Raani argue a little less and talk a little more. Their time is spent working toward a lifetime goal—building a masjid for their once-small midwestern Muslim community. Things are good.

  They have two years of this.

  Then, Raani is diagnosed with cancer. Her body reacts poorly to her treatment. She battles with illness over two grueling years, and dies in her home in the presence of Chacha, two of his siblings, four of her siblings, all three of her children, and a few cousins. It is the day of their wedding anniversary, and loyal Chacha left work before noon to bring home flowers, as he has done every year for over a quarter-century.

  I, her youngest, was twenty-two years old.

  II. A Set of Photos

  I know Raani and Chacha’s story because Ammi told me herself. As the oldest of six and a voracious reader, she found that telling stories was the best form of entertainment for the young ones. They gathered around her, listening to Api’s grand tales with rapt attention. She later gave my sisters and me a romantic, detailed account of her life.

  I have always struggled to understand what my father was like before he married Ammi. Like many men of his generation, Abu categorically refuses to speak about himself. My mother, ever the storyteller, provided much of the perspective we had on our father. As a child of a diplomat, he lived in Sudan, Saudi Arabia, and Pak
istan. At fifteen, he lost his father. At eighteen, he hitchhiked alone through Kabul, Tehran, and Istanbul. The next year, he was in medical school. By twenty-five, he was married to my mother. When we asked him what his thought process was during these events, he said he couldn’t remember.

  During my teens, I wanted to grow up to be my mother. I found my father difficult. He had a temper and we argued often. I wanted to have the kind of analytical conversations I had with my mother, but he was either too tired from work or would tell me to ask Ammi. I sometimes questioned why someone like my mother would choose someone like my father.

  With my mother gone, I see her choice more clearly. I see a man who is consistent and loyal. A man who is generous, with no sense of ego. A man who simply loves, because he has been showered with it his entire life. I have begun to see myself in him. I spent so much time empathizing with the pain my mother felt at being rejected by my father’s family that I forgot to admire the deep love and courage my father demonstrated in marrying her.

  With this in mind, I scramble through old albums at home to find the one photo we have of Ammi and Abu before they married. When I find it, I lie belly-down across my parents’ bed and place the grayscale Polaroid in front of me.

  The photo feels new to me. Chacha wears a crisp white shirt, black trousers, and thick, black frames. He appears the broad-shouldered son of Punjabi mustard fields that he is. Raani sits in the seat adjacent to Chacha in a sari, laughing. Her features bear the imprints of hilly Central Asia.

  I turn to another photo. My father, in suit and tie, and my mother, in lenhga, both draped in garlands on their wedding. Chacha is smiling, eyes pinched. As a boy, I was told I was a replica of my mother. As a man, I do not see how my father’s smile could be anything but mine.

  My sisters and I always had a disconnect from Abu and struggled to understand him. He is by-the-rules. He avoids conflict. He honors the traditional relationship between younger and older siblings. Yet, he did this radically new thing: he married a working woman from a different caste. He had a love marriage. Is he not also, then, an extraordinary man?

  The two Polaroids in front of me, I wonder what my father was thinking. I’ve never looked at these photos and thought of anyone but my mother. I notice something new: Abu is smiling ear to ear. My sisters and I used to laugh that he never learned how to fake a smile for pictures. But on his wedding day, he must have been incredibly happy. His radiant grin is a sign of their premarital love.

  I look in his face, and I see mine. I look at Ammi and her face is a cipher. I can no longer know what this moment meant for her, the way I think about what it meant for Abu. I stare into Abu’s face with a greater understanding of what came afterward.

  III. A Question

  I am twenty-five now, the age at which my parents married. Ammi has been gone for three years and I have done much to deal with the loss. Writing has been one manner of coping. Traveling, another. Relearning Urdu, the language my mother loved, a third. But my main way has been getting to know my father. In these three years, he has become my friend and my model for what it means to be a good human being. Still, I struggle to understand his choices.

  One day, Abu speaks on the phone with one of his brothers. He offers advice on the school his brothers are building in Pakistan, giving his perspective in respectful tones. It’s hard to imagine him as the rebel in his family. Later, I say:

  “I’ve only seen you be a loving, supportive younger brother and son. So why did you disobey them on the most important thing—marriage?”

  He says he does not know. Except that no one could point to the Qur’an and sunnah, and say, “Here. This is why you cannot marry a fellow Muslim woman.”

  I cannot get much more out of him. For most of his life, he relied on his wife to narrate, make meaning, and tell stories. He has come a long way in expressing himself since Ammi died, but much has been lost. I want to know about him. About Ammi.

  IV. An Experiment

  In my teenage and college years, I tried dating. I did my best to impart Islamic ethics onto my relationships, but, still, I felt guilty. I debated whether dating was inherently wrong and if it was my only option. I felt terrible about having to lie to my parents. Despite their history, they didn’t have the language to speak about young love. When I finally told Ammi, the conversation was stilted and difficult. My mother teased me. Despite her insistence to the contrary, she told my father about what I had said. He acted like he never heard anything from her.

  I knew that when it came time to marry, I would talk to Ammi, who would explain everything to Abu. With her gone, I do not know how this process works.

  Initially, I didn’t pursue Muslims. This was not because, as Ammi told me, “Muslims don’t date.” I never thought Muslim women would like me, with my long hair, ratty punk-rock T-shirts, and anti capitalist rants. I went through my teens without one Muslim love interest.

  As I grew older, I realized there were plenty of Muslims who did date. All those Muslims who didn’t have arranged marriages met one another somehow. My parents never suggested that they would find someone for my sisters or me, so we searched in the only way that was available to us. I dated because I had no idea what other options I had.

  When Ammi heard about my first relationship, I was told in calm tones that I would have to break up and that “good Muslim boys don’t kiss girls.” She was wearing her navy polka-dotted shalwar kameez, her mehndi-dyed hair not yet lost to chemotherapy. I had expected an argument, but discussions about relationships between us were calm. I think she was happy that I was interested in women. We had often butted heads over my long hair; she insisted it meant that I was gay, and I told her that was ridiculous and offensive.

  In college, I grew a beard, cut my hair short and took punk rock off my T-shirts and left it in my headphones. Freshman year, I pursued medicine. My parents’ community organizing stemmed in part from the status and security the medical profession affords. But my own mother had wanted to be a journalist or activist, involved in the worlds of public thought and justice, but had acquiesced to her father’s wishes.

  By sophomore year, I had dropped medicine for Islamic studies. As I learned about my cultural and religious inheritance, I realized I needed someone who shared the same values of feminism, justice, and diversity that my sisters, mother, and father raised me with. In my mother’s view, Islam was something that endorsed all of these ideals.

  That year, she became sick.

  I transferred universities to help care for her. I had always made friends easily, but now, every time I met a new person, I suffered anxiety over what I could not share: the most important person in my life is dying and I am a prisoner to that fact. Often, I didn’t talk about myself.

  With Noor, it was easy.

  The first time we spoke, we stood in the center of campus talking for two hours, paying no heed to the biting Michigan winter. She was close with someone I went to high school with, and we had just realized we had taken an entire semester of Urdu together. She was the first person I met after Ammi’s diagnosis whom I felt comfortable with. Her own story involved parents of different backgrounds, but rather than coming from different castes, they came from different nations. Like Ammi with Abu, she regarded me with skepticism at first, thinking me underwhelming. Still, I noticed that, despite being a busy campus leader, she always took my phone calls.

  One night a semester later, I decided to go on a bike ride. It was midnight and I was upset and lonely. I had mentioned the idea offhand to Noor earlier, so despite wanting to be alone, I messaged her. She joined me.

  We biked to the edge of Ann Arbor and discussed our childhoods. I realized her value system was deeply similar to mine. I thought, This is a strong, driven woman who wants to make a change in the world. She could be family. I had just gotten out of a bad relationship, so there was no need to rush anything. I would be happy to have her in my life. Over the next two years, she became my best friend.

  I don’t know how, bu
t eventually, she became something more. In the two of us I see a mixture of my father and mother. I have my mother’s analytical mind and my father’s straightforwardness; she has my mother’s fearlessness in public spaces and my father’s work ethic.

  While my father accepted her immediately, I long for my mother’s finicky protectiveness. I think my mother would have approved of her, but not before making her go through the most strenuous of tests. I know Abu will treat her with the same steadfastness and unequivocal love that he gives everyone in his life. Yet, something will always be missing. I struggle with the idea that my life partner will never have met my mother.

  I spent all of this time trying to imagine my parents’ early relationship so that it might inform my future. But subconsciously, I gained more than I realized from my parents’ example. If you ask me why I chose who I did, my answer would be the same one Ammi gave me about why she married Abu.

  She is my partner.

  Sirat: The Journey

  The Other Iran–Iraq War

  By Ibrahim Al-Marashi

  It was the Sunday before the start of my final year at UCLA. My parents had just driven me and a minivan loaded with my stuff from my hometown, Monterey, California, to the apartment I was sharing with friends. My parents were never the type to drop me off at school with a hug by the car and a wave from the window. My parents had to settle me in, a process that consisted of meeting my roommates, seeing my place, using the bathroom, saying their afternoon prayers, and making themselves a cup of tea.

  The tea would usually lead to a trip to the grocery store. My father would rummage around in my cupboards looking for tea and sugar. Finding them bare, he would call out to my mother, who would declare my living arrangements unacceptable. No fruit. No bread. No sugar. No tea. No, son.