by Nura Maznavi
Ultimately, when Air Mattress Man and I fell apart, I didn’t regret what I’d chosen. So much for that compartmentalized existence that parents, and many men, would like to impose: that a good Muslim girl doesn’t engage in sex before she’s committed for life. It’s a specter I’m glad to be rid of. Here, finally, was that unambiguous status I’d been refusing to claim. I’m an unmarried, Muslim nonvirgin. I’ve said it aloud; still, I don’t disappear.
Otherwise Engaged
Huda Al-Marashi
My first year in college, I went home every weekend. My parents viewed my staying in the dorms as the unavoidable consequence of living in a small California town without a four-year university. Since I didn’t have my own car, Baba would drive an hour and a half to pick me up in his late-1980s Mercedes. If motor vehicles had rights, that poor car would have had Baba reported to Automobile Protective Services. The backseat and trunk were so covered with papers and books, their original surfaces had become invisible. The cup holders were filled with half-drunk coffee thermoses and Ziploc bags of gummy candies he called sours. Sours, Baba claimed, kept him awake on long drives. Since Baba had been known to fall asleep behind the wheel (and had been in two accidents because of it), sours were as important to his safety as seat belts.
Given Baba’s driving record, I never let him drive me home. I’d throw my duffel bag on the paper mountain behind the driver’s seat and slide in behind the wheel. I spoke little during our rides together. Baba was a storyteller, and he filled our time together with anecdotes—tales from the lives of the prophets and memories from his childhood. But that changed after my engagement to the son of our closest family friends. Then Baba started using our time in the car to ask me a question that was weighing heavily on his mind.
“You know, Huddie,” he’d say, “I never got a chance to ask you if you really like this boy.”
Baba always worded his question the exact same way, his voice never exceeding the volume of a loud whisper. It was as if he felt shy to ask, and he may have been. Baba wasn’t in the habit of questioning our choices. He usually waited until my siblings and I had made our own decisions, and then he invariably voiced his support. Out of respect for him, we only allowed ourselves things we knew he’d approve of. It was a surprisingly effective parenting strategy.
“He’s a nice boy,” I answered. “I like him.”
“Because if you don’t like him, you don’t have to marry him,” Baba offered in an even quieter voice now.
“I know.”
“What about your cousin, Fa—”
“No, Daddy.”
“Why not? He is a sayyid.”
My family belonged to a clan that claimed descent from the Prophet Muhammad, earning us the honorific title of sayyid. A man could marry a non-sayyid woman and still pass the title on to her children, but a woman could not. Mama loved my fiancé, Hadi, too much to bring up his not being sayyid. Baba loved being a sayyid too much not to mention it.
“That’s not so important to me, Baba,” I said. “It’s more important for me to marry someone I know.”
Within our Iraqi community, the only marriages I knew of had been arranged. Most couples spent little to no unsupervised time together before their wedding. When Hadi’s father had asked my father for my hand in November, I had hoped that my engagement would be different. Our families had gone on road trips to national parks together. We’d been to each other’s birthday parties and graduations, and both Hadi and I had been born in America. In my mind, the latter was the best guarantee I’d have some kind of romance before my wedding. Hadi had grown up watching the same television shows and movies. He had to know that in spite of the understanding between both our families, I still expected a private proposal that only the two of us shared.
“Well, it will be a great honor to their family if you marry their son,” Baba said with a pleased smile. “Now their grandchildren will be mirza. This is the name they give people whose mother is an alwiya. You know this is the word they use for the lady that is a sayyid?”
I nodded.
“You know my sister’s husband is not a sayyid, but he always calls his wife alwiya. It is so nice.” Baba dragged the “o” in “so,” and I felt there was a hint there, a tiny suggestion, that it would be equally nice were Hadi to call me alwiya. It was as if Hadi could make up for his lack of sayyid-ness by being overtly appreciative of mine.
I nodded again, because that’s what we did around Baba: We listened and nodded regardless of what we were thinking.
My engagement party had been planned around the Christmas holidays so that my uncles and their families could fly in from their adopted homes in England. My Aunt Zena joined us from New Jersey with her three kids—a boy and two girls who shared her sea-blue eyes.
We would be renting a van and driving to my cousin Marwa’s Southern California home for the party, but before we left, Mama wanted to do her share of the cooking. There were grape leaves to be stuffed with rice and layered into a deep pot, and cigar-shaped boorek to be wrapped and frozen in aluminum trays.
After dinner one evening, my mom, Zena, and I sat around the breakfast nook table with a stack of phyllo dough in front of each of us. We dug our spoons into a pan of sautéed spinach and feta cheese and then dropped their contents onto the center of a strip of pastry.
Bringing up the sides of the dough around a dollop of spinach, Zena said, “She’s only eighteen. You should’ve waited. She is beautiful, mashAllah. It’s nice for a girl to see how many suitors she can get.”
“I’m not trying to sell a sheep,” Mama answered. “What does it matter how many people come?”
“You know what I mean. It’s nice for a girl to feel wanted, and then her future in-laws will value her more when they know how many people came for her.”
“They already know what they’re getting. They’ve seen all kinds of girls. They know there is nobody like my Huddie.”
“Of course there’s nobody like her. That’s why I’m saying maybe you could’ve gotten everything: somebody with a good future, a good family, maybe sayyid.”
I didn’t make eye contact with Mama or Zena. I busily wrapped my dough, knowing that soon Mama would come to Hadi’s defense. But as much as I tried to dismiss what I’d heard, something nagged at me. It was as if Zena thought I was marrying down. My thoughts drifted away on a wave of disappointment. In a world where people didn’t necessarily marry for love, whom you married and what he or she was mattered. You married names, reputations. It never occurred to me that by Iraqi standards, Hadi’s “who and what” might not have been that impressive.
“He’s a good boy,” Mama said. “And good boys aren’t easy to come by. Maybe we wait for somebody sayyid and he turns out to be a jerk. You think it’s so easy to find someone sayyid with a good job, and close in age, and whose family you know and trust. Wait until you’re looking for someone for your daughters. Then all you’ll want is someone who really knows the value of your girl, and this boy loves her. You know that.”
“She’s not that hard to love,” Zena said.
My Uncle Mazen walked into the room and caught Zena’s last remark. “Who’s not?” he asked.
“Huddie.”
“Of course not. She’s lovely,” he said, his voice lilting with the British accent that he’d picked up along with the language.
“I was just saying maybe they should’ve waited.”
He shrugged. Uncle Mazen was Mama’s youngest brother, and he wasn’t about to get involved in an issue between his older sisters. In our family, he was the comic relief.
“He looks a bit Indian, no? Makes me feel like speaking Urdu.” Uncle Mazen accompanied his jab with a stereotypically Indian head bob and the hum of what was supposed to be a Hindi song.
I placed another boorek in the tray so I wouldn’t have to react. Uncle Mazen didn’t mean it, I told myself. He said that for a laugh. But weren’t jokes a disguise for what people really felt? Blue-eyed Zena and Mazen were unimpressed
by Hadi’s bronze skin and brown eyes. My family had more than its share of fair skin and light-colored eyes. This, among typically dark-haired, dark-eyed Iraqis, was a source of pride.
Or maybe Zena and Mazen were doing nothing more than what families did. Make fun. Joke. Act like their side was too good for the other. But then again, what if they truly weren’t impressed? Maybe if I had been marrying someone different, someone better, they’d be saying nice things about him now. Maybe they’d be telling my mom we were lucky to have found such a good guy.
I plopped another spoonful of spinach onto a strip of dough, feeling a lot like the boorek I was wrapping. Zena and Mazen had dropped a helping of doubt at the very center of me and were now wrapping me around those thoughts so tightly, I wondered if they’d ever escape.
We had reserved four rooms at a Holiday Inn Express in Anaheim. This was done for the sake of my young cousins, who’d been promised a trip to Disneyland the day before my engagement party. Otherwise, we’d have thought nothing of adding sixteen guests to the five household members living in Cousin Marwa’s four-bedroom home. In Iraqi culture, there is no such thing as not enough room. The only BYOB in our world is “bring your own blanket.”
We arrived at our hotel in a sixteen-passenger van, overloaded with adults, children, luggage, and trays of food stacked in a cooler. Being within walking distance of Disneyland had filled the children with an anticipatory glee I shared. Hadi would be joining us the next morning, and it would be his last chance to give me the special proposal I’d been hinting at for weeks.
Since we’d been promised, Hadi and I had spoken on the phone every night. So far, all my hints had been the cause of more trouble than good. I didn’t want to tell Hadi exactly what I expected, because that would’ve ruined the surprise. So instead I’d suggested, “You haven’t really asked me.” This had prompted the completely undesired response, “Will you marry me?”
I’d answered, “You can’t ask me over the phone,” and he’d followed with proposals over email, fax, and greeting card. Not wanting Hadi to think these amateur attempts had satisfied me, I’d picked up the phone after each effort to inform him that, although cute and flattering, these proposals still did not count. In fact, they were only making the real, official moment less special.
I called Hadi from the hotel room that night to confirm our plans for the following day. He told me he wouldn’t be coming, that his parents thought it was too much for him to make the two-hour drive to Anaheim only to make the same drive the next day for the engagement party.
I responded with the one thing I knew worked—tears. If I cried, Hadi would ask me what was wrong, and I could reluctantly say what I wanted without feeling like I had asked for anything.
After a round of unconvincing “nothings,” I sniffed about wanting to spend the day together before our engagement party. About how we’d gotten engaged and hadn’t had an outing together since. I did such a good job presenting my case that I began to feel sorry for myself. My one chance to experience something like a date with the boy I was going to marry had been ruined.
I hung up the phone, grateful that only Mama had been in the room to overhear my conversation. She put down the dress she had been hemming and entered the narrow space between the room’s two full-size beds. Her hands on my shoulders, she comforted me with “It’s okay, hababa. Maybe they want some time together as a family.”
“I just wanted us to have one fun day together before our party.”
Mama picked up the phone, frowning as if I’d pleaded with her to call Hadi’s mother. My tears stopped instantly. Mama would fix things. She always did. I stayed seated at the edge of the bed and listened as she worked her conversational magic. First, an exchange of the many ways people say, “How are you?” in the Iraqi dialect: “What is your color?” “What is your news?” “How is your health?” And again, “What is your news?” A little catch-up talk. Another round of “how are yous,” this time in reference to other members of the family. And then to the point: “So, what’s the story with tomorrow? I got this one in tears over here.”
Mama listened to Hadi’s mother’s response, nodding and laughing. “What is this talk? He’s our son. Of course we want him with us.”
Their conversation moved into a discussion of the party, but I knew all I needed to know. Hadi was coming tomorrow. I stretched out on the polyester bedspread, my thoughts bouncing. Maybe he would ask for my ring early. Maybe he’d ask me to go with him alone on a ride. We’d be waiting in line, and he’d get down on one knee and say, “I’ve loved you for as long as I’ve known you. Will you marry me?” I’d cover my face with my hands in surprise. Then I’d cry and say, “Yes.” We’d hug for the first time. Maybe even kiss.
The next day, I put on my planned outfit. I wanted to be wearing something comfortable but cute, so I’d packed khaki pants, loafers, a cap-sleeve denim shirt, and a cropped navy blue peacoat with small buttons. I styled my hair, put on my makeup, and hoped Hadi was as ready to propose to me as I was ready to be proposed to.
Hadi was waiting for us in the parking lot of our hotel by the time all sixteen of us trickled down the concrete stairs. I was happy to see him but unhappy that he’d chosen to wear his puffy Lakers jacket. He loved that jacket, and I wondered when in our relationship it would be appropriate to tell him I hated it. All Hadi needed was a pair of oversize tennis shoes and a couple of gold chains, and he’d look like a hip-hop star. If he did propose to me today, we were going to look like such a mismatched couple.
Later that afternoon, Mama gave Hadi and me permission to slip away from the group to go on a few rides together. We went on four rides alone, each one offering us an hour of wait time in line. And yet, despite ample opportunities, Hadi still did not propose. The only thing that surprised me about our time together was that this did not upset me. I was too happy to be bothered. I finally felt like the girls I’d watched in line, summer after summer, with their denim shorts and Minnie Mouse ears, their hands and lips locked with their boyfriends’ .
I had a boyfriend now. When we were alone, we held hands and said nothing of it. We carried on talking as if our hands had accidentally bumped into one another and latched of their own accord. All this to avoid acknowledging we’d touched before we were Islamically married, something we’d been taught since childhood was haram.
“Sorry about the crying yesterday,” I said.
“Don’t be sorry. I wanted to come.”
“I know it’s a drive, but I thought it would be nice to be together.”
“I’d drive anywhere if it meant I got to spend more time with you.”
I thought to affectionately squeeze Hadi’s hand, but that would’ve drawn attention to the fact that our hands were still linked. Instead I smiled and said, “I hope your parents aren’t upset. I feel like I made you come.”
“Naw. I think my mom didn’t want me imposing on your family time.”
At the end of the day, we rejoined my family on the Disneyland asphalt to watch the evening’s last presentation of Fantasmic, a light show projected over the park’s man-made lake. The ground was still warm from the afternoon sun, and with my hands on my waist, I arched my sore back. From behind me, Hadi offered, “You can lean on my legs.”
This warranted a quick scan of the adults. My aunt and uncles were each busy with their own children. My mom and dad had run off to buy everyone popcorn, so I allowed my back to rest against Hadi’s propped-up knees. By the time my parents returned, the show had started. They squeezed in next to my sister, Lina, glanced at me, but said nothing. And so I stayed right where I was, watching lit-up boats filled with dancing characters move through the water, feeling a rush of conflicting emotions. The day was over, and Hadi hadn’t proposed. I hated the jacket he had draped on my shoulders, and I hated that he was the kind of guy who not only liked sports but liked them enough to buy a team jacket. And yet still, my heart and everything next to it was pounding. Hadi’s shins felt warm against my back. I’d
never been so close to a boy.
The next day at my engagement party, I studied my hair and makeup in the magnifying mirror attached to the hotel room’s bathroom wall and asked my mother, “Since I’m pretty much engaged now, do you think I could pluck my eyebrows?”
In my family, hair removal required permission. Plucking, waxing, shaving—these were the pursuits of married women with an audience for their smooth skin. I’d won the battle to wax my legs in junior high by crying that my girlfriends were calling me a gorilla, but shaped eyebrows were another symbol entirely.
I stepped out of the bathroom to hear Mama’s response. She walked over to me and took my chin in her hand.
“If you really want,” she said, her voice heavy with reluctance. “Just don’t pluck too much. Your eyebrows are beautiful already.”
“You do it. I don’t know how.”
I wiggled myself onto the bed in my sheath dress as if I were a mermaid with a lace-and-sequins tail. Mama sat down on the bed and leaned over me. As she tugged away at the stray hairs along my brow bone with angled tweezers, I squealed in pain and surprise. I’d assumed that tweezing couldn’t hurt any more than hot waxing, but it had an entirely different kind of pinch.
“How come it doesn’t hurt you when you pluck?” I asked Mama.
“I’ve been doing it forever. My eyebrows are dead.”
Mama was already dressed in a beaded blue dress suit. I thought of all the times I had watched her getting ready for a wedding, and I couldn’t believe that I was the bride-to-be now.
As soon as Mama was done helping me get ready, she gathered up the family and left in the van. Hadi came to pick me up from the hotel shortly afterward. Lina and Baba had stayed behind as chaperones. They slid into the small bucket seats in the back of Hadi’s two-door sports car, and then Hadi held out his hand for me as I stepped into the front seat. Unlike the day before, I was pleased by Hadi’s appearance. He wore a pin-stripe suit, a cream-colored shirt, a tie I’d bought him, and a new pair of dress oxfords. I liked Hadi in a suit, and I wondered if there was a way to arrange for him to wear one daily. It was much easier to think positive thoughts about us as a couple when Hadi was dressed nicely.