Love, InshAllah

by Nura Maznavi

> became more natural. (How nervous were you? I hope I did not

  > embarrass you, did I?)

  I wasn’t really nervous (I never am—I usually make the other guy nervous! :)) but I was shy, and no, you didn’t embarrass me. And I agree, mechanic-wise, it went well.

  > The big question of course is where does that leave the two of us.

  > but i am really too tired to think.

  Good question. I dunno. I haven’t talked with my mother (or, she hasn’t talked with me) so I am not *quite* sure what they think. And I still have to hear from *you* of course, to see what you think . . .

  > btw, i don’t know if it is “appropriate” to say this, but i will say

  > it anyway: I think you’re very attractive—much more than my

  > expectations :-)

  *blush* Alhamdulillah…

  Your sister,

  Lena

  Adnan called my parents the next day and requested a second visit (so strange, to be typing to someone at a computer screen, in the Other World, and then hear the phone ring). This time, he requested to speak with me alone. Years later, he would tell me that he was jarred by the first visit, that the young woman in front of him was much too quiet and passive to be the one he had come to know online. He had been ready to abandon it, but my email messages to him the night after his first visit reminded him that I was still the woman he knew. So the next day, he reached out to me again in real life, outside of the Internet, in the alien territory of my parents’ guest room.

  We were finally able to speak, stammering. We lunged for topics we had worn out in our email exchanges, as if they were buoys that would hold us up in this foreign sea.

  Then, looking at me, he asked, “Can you see without your glasses?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Neither can I,” he said, and took his off. I did the same, and through the visual fog we caught each other’s eyes for a sliver of a moment that made me tremble.

  I didn’t forget those eyes after he left. Brown and warm. My mother liked him too. “His face is so radiant!” she beamed. I could hope after all.

  But she hadn’t forgotten what had brought him. “Stop writing to him,” she said. “It’s not appropriate.” It was hard, though, to suddenly act the part of the cloistered maiden, and I compromised by forgoing the more intimate and conversational chats (though we still continued to email) while Adnan and my parents maneuvered into formal marriage negotiations.

  I had a painful role in these negotiations, precisely because I had no role at all. My parents, being older in age than all their friends, had no one to learn from; they fell back on the only courtship rituals they knew, those of the Damascene society of their upbringing. Not only was I not to communicate with Adnan outside their presence, but my father would not even speak to me regarding the suitor. Even my mother seemed too embarrassed to broach the subject more than was absolutely necessary. Forces beyond my reach would determine whether I would be able to marry the man I had come to love deeply. I faced the possibility that I might have to flip the switch off on my feelings toward Adnan at any moment. The idea was too painful for me to bear, and so, like a coward, I withdrew emotionally from the battle, leaving Adnan to wonder what he was fighting for.

  I was in this state when he asked me to give him an idea of the dowry my parents would request, based on my sister’s impending engagement. I replied carelessly that I would give him no hints, as it would give him an unfair advantage over other suitors (not that I had any). He was shocked at my cruelty.

  “Sometimes I wonder if you and I know each other,” he wrote.

  I admitted to Adnan that I felt a subconscious guilt for liking him, so conditioned was I against “love marriages” by my parents’ anxiety to distance me from the American dating scene. Though he didn’t understand, Adnan still had faith that my heart was warmer than my words. So the days inched along while my parents inquired about Adnan’s reputation in Damascus. Finally, two months after his initial visit, we—or rather, he—got the verdict.

  From: Lena H.

  To: adnan@eastcoastcollege.edu (Adnan T.)

  Subject: Re: So are we engaged or what?

  Date: Mon, 24 Oct 1994 09:43:52-0700 (PDT)

  Salaam!

  > Lena, my sister, my friend,

  > So your dad and I read the Fatiha. He said you and I can talk on the

  > phone or the computer. I guess we are engaged now, are we not? :-)

  Gee whiz, I wish he had told me. I really had no idea. :) (I’m serious!!) Then again, he was on the phone for most of the evening, so we didn’t get much of a chance to talk—too many things happening . . .

  > I really feel blessed that you and I will share the journey

  > of life together.

  :) :) :) You are sweet!

  One other thing: I was in my room when you and Baba were on the phone, and my sister came in and said, “So, Lena, quick! Yes or no?” I said “yes,” then had an unconscious jab from my standards of modesty, and followed up with, “I guess so.” “No ‘I guess so’s’!” she commanded, to which I complained, “Hey, I thought my silence was my consent!” So she laughed and accepted.

  Ok, now I *really* should go!

  Talk to you soon, bro! :)

  Your sister (still),

  Lena

  The Arab ladies at the mosque used to wink and say that there was nothing that brought more happiness than being engaged. I couldn’t understand why. Being engaged was a relief of sorts, but I still endured painful bumps on the way to married life.

  Adnan called me on the phone every week. While we talked, my sisters sniggered right outside the door. Afterward, they would accuse me of turning my back on my family, of committing treason for the sake of a man. “Wait till it’s your turn,” my mother told them.

  Meanwhile, my father was having a hard time letting go of his daughter. He haggled with Adnan’s family over contract details and wedding logistics, and grumbled, “Nobody is good enough for my daughters. Nobody!”

  I felt like a small blanket being yanked here and there by a crowd of passionate children. Though driven by love, the experience was still painful. I tried to have faith that it would be over soon—that in the end the pain would be worth it.

  The last days before my wedding passed in a blur. While I packed my suitcase in between exams, my mother scrambled to prepare the wedding feast, hollowing out kibbeh and stuffing grape leaves. After visiting at least a dozen stores, we finally managed to buy my bridal gown the day before the wedding. On the wedding day, my sister summoned all she had learned about hairstyling from her friends to do my hair, and I arrived at the wedding hall in the middle of a storm, with the electricity out and the tables lit with emergency candles. But the Arabs of our mosque had not had a wedding in a long time, and the men intoned khutbas and joyous greetings in their hall, while in ours the women sang and danced and had the best evening they’d had in years.

  The next morning, Adnan and I said good-bye to my family and drove off to the airport. He held out his hand, open, balanced on top of the gearshift, and I put mine in his and pulled it to my heart. In that moment, I finally felt at rest; we belonged at last to each other.

  As my aunt would say, I had finally married the man of my destiny.

  Kala Love

  Suzanne Syeda Shah

  Bismillah, Al-Rahman, Al-Rahim. O, Allah, please don’t let Ammu or Abbu catch me tonight. Allah, I promise to finish this surah—just please give me Your blessings to sneak out.

  For months I repeated the same ritual: Make a dua to Allah––more like a bargain—and read a different surah to hold up my end. Then I would crawl on my bedroom floor, reach up, and stick one leg after the other out of my narrow window and into the world. I was fourteen years old, and nothing seemed more important to me than getting to my boyfriend’s house.

  As soon as I became a teenager, Ammu had begun bottling my freedom, just as she did her pickled mangoes. She said, in Bengali
, “If you want to go anywhere, you go with me! No more going out with friends.”

  At the time, I didn’t understand why. Maybe they didn’t want me to run away like my apu, my older sister. My apu started high school wearing a hijab, but one day she came home from school with a large, oval locket of the Virgin Mary around her neck. Soon after, she reported my parents to child services for abuse and was placed in a foster home. After months of trying to question me, the social worker finally gave up. The judge let me stay with Ammu and Abbu, but that was the last time I saw my apu, until a decade later.

  I would never run away. But that didn’t mean I didn’t long to break free every once in a while.

  I made a plan. Since Abbu usually went through my room to get to his, I had to time my escape just right. One time I sat in the closet for an hour just to see if he would notice that the long body pillow stuffed under my comforter was not his sweet but stubborn daughter. He walked through the room without pause. After that, my doppelgänger slept in my bed every Friday night, while I slept in my boyfriend’s.

  As much as I thought I was fooling Abbu, I began to wonder if he saw the back door creak open after he locked it at night. Or if he heard my flip-flops snap a twig outside his window every Saturday morning before Fajr. Did he feel my breath missing at night, even though my bed appeared filled? Did he make dua for my safe return?

  This was my first relationship with a boy. It was based purely on attraction. My boyfriend was a senior football player from a different high school; I was a freshman. I bragged about his dark muscles and high cheekbones to my friends at school. Every night I talked to him on the phone under my comforter to hide the sound from Ammu’s bionic ears. I snuck out to his house and spent the night in his bed, not understanding that he wanted more from me than I was giving him. One night, six months after we started going out, my scrawny legs weren’t strong enough to kick his six-foot-one weight off me. I lay on his cold-tiled bathroom floor, wet and torn open.

  The next morning I didn’t make it back to my house in time, and I faced Ammu’s wrath and Abbu’s disappointment. I heard Abbu saying quietly that he knew I’d been sneaking out but had no idea I was staying out all night. After that, he didn’t speak to me for six months.

  For the first time in my life, I saw my father cry. But I was numb from the night before. The numbness slowly gave way to spurts of tears. I was just fourteen, without an understanding of sex, much less rape. I blamed myself for everything, for sneaking out and being in my boyfriend’s house. I talked to Allah and made dua to ask Him to mend me by transforming me back into the girl I had been before that night. I promised Him that the next man I would be with would be my husband. I clasped my face in my brown hands, asking Him repeatedly to return me to the comfort of Ammu and Abbu––especially Abbu.

  Abbu’s silence lasted until one night I put my head on his feet and begged for his forgiveness.

  Before I left for college at UC Berkeley, I made a new rule for myself: no talking to boys until I was married.

  This vow confused my best friends. Kelly asked me in almost a whisper, “So, are you going to wear that thing around your head now?”

  I responded with a smile. “Eventually, yes, I’ll wear the hijab.”

  Tyra snapped back, “How the heck are you going to find a husband if you don’t even talk to men?”

  I told her, “God will bring me my husband.” I wasn’t worried. I didn’t expect to get married until I was forty, especially not with Abbu in my life.

  I’m nineteen years old, and it’s a sunny April day toward the end of my second year at Berkeley. The cool breeze sweeps through the people on the streets, like wisps of hair escaping from a ponytail just to caress the face. I go to Naan ‘N’ Curry, a Pakistani restaurant that makes tandoori chicken like Ammu’s. I am excited to go home soon, to squeeze Abbu and stuff my face all summer with Ammu’s curries and rice.

  Back in Los Angeles, Abbu pours water over his feet for Asr, just as here in Berkeley, the waiter brings my tandoori chicken cushioned on top of naan. Abbu climbs into his pickup truck. Steam escapes from the naan as I tear off a piece. Abbu walks into the modest two-room masjid. I devour the chicken tikka. “Allahu akbar.” Abbu’s right hand folds over his left across his stomach. The curry’s spices tickle my nose. Abbu’s long white thobe glistens. The red-orange meat falls off easily as I bite down to the bone. Abbu bows down to prostrate in sajdah and never comes up again. Hours later, my phone rings with the news.

  Allah took Abbu, my first love. Two months later, He brought me Mika’il.

  Mika’il was a search result. Literally. When I came home from college the summer after Abbu died, Ammu still wouldn’t let me out of the house. I wasn’t ready to talk to men, but out of boredom I browsed MySpace all day, searching for black or Latino college-age Muslim men within a three-hundred-mile radius. I never looked for Bengalis, or any other desi. Ammu called me kali, which means “darkie,” and made me feel I had the wrong skin, the ugly skin. I didn’t want to marry into another family that looked down on my “kali-ness.”

  When Mika’il turned up in my search, we started exchanging messages. For a month, we wrote about Islam, school, and our futures. Mika’il was shy, and I was forward. I gave him my number. As soon as I heard his voice on the phone, I called my friend Issa and said, “Yeah, he is definitely not my future husband.” He had a “friend” voice, like my guy friends in class.

  One morning soon after that, Ammu had one of her usual mood shifts. At five in the morning, right after Fajr, she couldn’t find her car keys. She became frustrated and began venting in Bengali, “It’s all your fault that he’s dead. You’re the one who killed him. You’re Shaytan—you did this.”

  Then she found her keys, slammed the door, and drove off in her red Miata to the local gas station that she managed. Her words broke me. Abbu had always been the one to console me when Ammu acted crazy, but now I had no one. The first person I thought to call was Mika’il, who was attending New Mexico State at the time. Even though it was 6:00 AM there, he picked up on the first ring.

  “Hello?” His voice was calm even when waking from sleep.

  I couldn’t say hello; the snot and tears muffled my voice.

  “Are you okay?” he asked. He was really awake now.

  After fifteen minutes of uncontrollable tears, I started talking, not holding back anything. I told him everything that was wrong with me. How much I missed Abbu, and how much Ammu hurt me. He listened. After I had talked for two hours without a break, he said, “You know, if I was there in L.A., I would come over and do the running man for you.”

  I started laughing, and he continued, “See, I haven’t even done it for you yet, and you’re already laughing.”

  Mika’il and I talked every day that whole summer, for three months straight. He had converted to Islam two months before we met, so I relearned the religion through his newly awakened eyes. I tried to teach him as much about Islam as Ammu and Abbu had taught me when I was growing up, and I set my alarm to call and wake him up for the predawn prayer. Actively worshipping Allah with him brought us closer. I still hadn’t met him in person, yet it felt as if our souls were already entwined.

  That fall, Mika’il came to visit me at Berkeley. When he stepped out of the car, all I saw were his eyes. Their muddy gentleness, like the earth after a summer rain, reminded me of Abbu. He was wearing old college football sweats and Air Jordans that were practically split in two. I thought, Wow, you would think the guy would at least put on some shoes without holes before meeting his future wife. Yet his candid and nonmaterialistic nature reminded me of Abbu, too.

  We went out to eat at Naan ‘N’ Curry. Mika’il was sitting next to me, trying to calm his stomach postcurry, when I began my usual practice of gnawing and grinding the chicken bones between my teeth down to mere powder. He tried to mask his horror, but I kept at it. In spite of his shock, he didn’t leave my side.

  From then on, he visited me every weekend. I lived in
a cheap apartment in a complex known as “Roachdale” with three other girls. Mika’il knew I was a germophobe but that I couldn’t afford a nicer place to live, so, while visiting, he washed everybody’s dishes and cleaned the bathroom and my room. He even did my laundry and folded my underwear into mini-triangles. The more Mika’il cleaned, the more I fell in love with him.

  Mika’il was ready to marry me the first time we met, but I hesitated. He knew about my past, but I still questioned whether he could accept me. Rape was my only experience with sex, and now I was scared of it. I couldn’t talk to Ammu or anyone for guidance. So I made dua to Allah.

  A year later, during my senior year, I sat in the car outside the Fairfield Masjid, melting in my faded sweats from the summer heat. Mikai’il ran out of the masjid to say, “Right now is the only time the imam can marry us, because he’s leaving town tonight for a week.”

  How could I get married right then? I didn’t even have a hijab to enter the masjid. But after borrowing a wali and two witnesses from the masjid, and taking the last $20 bill in Mika’il’s wallet as my dowry, I married him in the sweltering heat, adorned only with my shimmering sweat. It was impulsive, but it felt right. It was perfect, our secret.

  Our first night, I undressed nervously in front of the man I loved. Mika’il saw everything—my shyness, my stretch marks, my past—but he just rested his head gently on my stomach as if he had found his home.