I came across another company that claimed to conduct a more sophisticated method of speed dating. The organizer insisted that all prospective attendees should be first cleared through a vetting process. Only if an individual met the criteria for right attitude, realistic expectations, good quality of intellect, personality, and personal success would they be permitted to attend. He said that this avoided time wasters and those who were not looking for “the kind of marital relationship” that we had in mind. It sounded very promising, like an all-encompassing Auntie process where every suitor—male or female—would be of an appropriate caliber.
I was given a time to call the assessor, and rang at the appointed slot for my interview. I was grilled for about thirty minutes on all aspects of my views on marriage, what I was looking for, and what I had to offer. At the end of the session I was congratulated on being admitted to the event. I felt smug and validated in my womanhood. I had been anointed as a catch. It was great marketing by the speed dating company. The organizer offered me a selection of dates and quoted a price to attend. It was high, very high, but not much above the cost of a good night out. And who knew? Perhaps I would walk away with a well-vetted, high-caliber, potential husband. It wasn’t an exorbitant amount of money, but it made the event much more serious than “it’s not too expensive, I’ll give it a go, and if it’s horrible I’ll leave.” He sensed my nervousness and said that if I booked to attend three or more sessions to start with, I would get a discount. I was tempted, but something niggled about the assumption on the part of the organizers that I would want to—that I would need to—attend several sessions. After my previous disheartening speed dating event, I decided I would try one out on its own to start with.
Again I decided to attend with Noreen, to ensure I had moral support. This event was much smarter than the previous one, with formal round tables for six set out. Once the proceedings had begun, each table would be composed of three men and three women. After twenty minutes the men would rotate tables. The group setting was designed to make it easier for conversation to flow and the longer session should allow for deeper discussion. Based on my previous experience it made good sense and I felt hopeful.
There was a delay to the start of the proceedings. Again there were about twenty women, yet at the appointed start time only a handful of men. We were advised that since it was a weekday, some of the men were running late from work and would be joining us imminently. We waited patiently for them to arrive but about forty-five minutes later, as the women were starting to get agitated, we were informed that some of the men had pulled out at the last minute. Apparently they were scared and too nervous to attend.
The organizers disappeared and tempers began to fray. Many of the women had experienced several other events with poor male turnout and demanded a refund. The organizer ran hurriedly hither and thither, scraping his hair back from his worried brow. Another forty-five minutes later and a trail of men trickled into the hall. Despite the rising anger, the women started to look more hopeful. Men! Finally!
The evening slowly changed gears from apprehension to activity. There was something strange about the attitude of the men, they seemed too relaxed and not engaged enough in the process. They didn’t ask many details about the women, instead they talked between themselves. As we met twelve or so men—not the twenty we had been promised—I realized that again I was the only woman in a headscarf and that none of the men present were interested in a hijab-wearing wife. I felt conned by the whole evening: a promise of high-caliber candidates but a delivery of a few mediocre specimens. At least I wished it had been even that—one of the men let slip that in fact they had been paid to attend.
Around and around the speed dating tables, getting giddy, raising hopes, falling harder each time. It felt like ever decreasing circles, with ever-diminishing hope, spinning around, hoping that one day a man would appear and the maniacal haunting music would stop.
The circles of speed dating and the marriage circuit were utterly forgotten as I stood in front of the Kaba in Mecca, ready to perform the hajj, the pilgrimage that each Muslim should undertake at least once in their lifetime. The circulating movement of the ocean of humanity evoked emotions from the very depth of my being. This was the place the Prophet Muhammad had grown up in. It was the place that cradled the footsteps of Abraham, who had built the Kaba; it was the location for the birth of Islam as we knew it today; and it was the place that I faced every day when I carried out my salat, the ritual prayers. Around and around went the enormous swirling crowd.
The Kaba towers above all its surroundings, at fifteen meters high, twelve meters in depth, and ten meters wide. This large, cube-shaped construction is usually covered in black cloth, which is what gives it its iconic look. It is known as the House of God, but since God has no physical location, it is more a concept for Muslims to focus on than an actual abode for the Divine. In one corner is the Black Stone, a meteor believed to be a piece of rock from heaven itself. Around the Kaba is a vast courtyard with white marble flooring, which is the setting for the hundreds of thousands of people that walk around the Kaba in counterclockwise direction. When they have walked around it seven times, they have completed the tawaf, which is the first component of the hajj.
Around the edge of the courtyard is a vast mosque built in a circle around the Kaba. It ushers in the pilgrims and offers shade and rest from the extreme heat of the Arabian desert during the daytime. As I stood on the steps of the great mosque looking at the point that is the focus of all Muslims around the world, I saw wave upon wave of thousands and thousands of men and women dressed in white, walking slowly around the black cube. They had come here—just like me—to perform the pilgrimage of the hajj. Were it not for the requirement to perform hajj, they might never have traveled outside their villages or countries. For many Muslims from less affluent backgrounds it would be a dream to be here. For those of us who had grown up in comfort in the West but outside the traditional old Muslim heartland, it created a new view of Islam, one that was holistic, ever present, and in the majority.
The hajj was a physical as well as a spiritual journey. Almost three million people were all trying to focus their spiritual energies toward the Divine. They found themselves also having to be physically part of the world’s most global and diverse community. Everyone was instructed to wear white, in as simple a fashion as possible. Men wore two white unstitched cloths to cover themselves; women wore simple, long white dresses. Whether it was a queen or a commoner next to you, you would never know. And that was the idea: the inequalities of the material and physical world were erased and replaced by spiritual status. What you knew of the person next to you was not their wealth or job title, but whether they smiled in greeting, whether they pushed or shoved, how nicely they treated you. With everybody wearing white clothes, with no decoration, styling, or accessories, they were no longer judged by fashion, style, or wealth. Everyone was just a soul.
Across the Muslim world, although Muslims were loath to admit it, racial prejudice was rife, and yet here, at the height of religious devotion, people of all ethnicities imaginable mixed on a par. The interconnections were immediate and proximate. You might find yourself next to someone from the game parks of Africa one moment, the next from the Uyghurs in China, a second later circulating with someone who had grown up in the foothills of the Incas, or being given a helping hand by a Bedouin Arab, blond-haired Bosnian, or a bright-smiled Nigerian. All the confusions I had faced growing up living a life divided into tangled and disconnected identities all suddenly became clear. I saw the reality of how it could work in front of my eyes: so many different identities occupying the same place, flowing into each other. You could pick each of them out separately, bold and proud of what they were.
That’s how we need to live in Britain, I thought to myself as I watched all these different people from around the world walk on the same journey, side by side, working, studying, living, communicating, respecting, whatever our ethnicity, religion, or belief. Seeing
the people around us as “other” is not an option.
On my search for a husband, and for my faith, I had learned to be comfortable in myself and to see the connections to other people as human beings, no matter what their faith or belief. We were all on the same search to find meaning and truth. Looking in front of me at the crowd swirling past, I knew that I was different because I was me, but I was also the same as everyone, because I was a human being. Each of us occupied so many spaces and identities, and that made us multiversal, not identical.
I had been searching to find a partner to love and had been trying to learn about Divine love. In front of me now I realized that there was one more kind of love that was essential: the love for other human beings. Each of the men I had encountered was just as much part of that human diversity as the crowds I saw before me. I had to love, accept, and learn from each of them, whether I liked them or not. The saying that I had heard before that “Islam is to serve the Creator and to serve Creation” rang true, because love for other human beings was a fundamental part of Love for the Divine.
Right next to the Kaba is the grave of Hagar, the wife of Abraham and the mother of Ishmael. As the pilgrims circle the Kaba to complete their pilgrimage, they must walk around the area designated as the place where Hagar is buried. Hagar was a slave before she married Abraham, which in the eyes of chauvinists the world over would relegate her to the lowest of low positions. And yet those same chauvinists would have to include her as part of their worship, as a symbol of high status in the eyes of God. I smiled at the deliciousness of the irony. In fact I laughed. There was no man included in this way in the rites of hajj.
After circling the Kaba, the pilgrims proceeded to a nearby plain about half a kilometer long between two small hills, called Safa and Marwa. On the command of God, Abraham left Hagar in this place with their young child Ishmael, asking them to wait until he returned. Hagar, needing to find water for the boy, ran backward and forward between the two hills to see if she could see a spring or river. As part of the hajj, the pilgrims walk between the same two hills to emphasize that looking after your worldly needs is just as much a part of getting close to the Creator as acts such as prayer. The whole event of the hajj, including this part of emulating Hagar’s run between the two hills, is one of the pinnacles of spiritual devotion for a Muslim.
How had the fact that it was in a woman’s footsteps that Muslims had to follow been overlooked in giving Muslim women their rightful elevated status? The cultures of many Muslims chose to ignore the obvious facts and pretend that Muslim women should be weak, subservient, and oppressed. Here, right in front of our eyes, around the Kaba and walking between Safa and Marwa, it was most obvious that women were of the highest ranking. What had gone wrong?
As well as the clear message that women had an extraordinarily high spiritual status, Hagar inspired something specific in me that I had found hard to balance: an understanding that looking for food and shelter were just as much a part of worship as prayer. Circulating around the Kaba established that the Divine was the focus of being a Muslim, around and around each day as the sun rose and the sun set. The universe was a repetition of cycles, each one following its set orbit and finding its place in the Divine order. But Hagar’s run, backward and forward, was the day-to-day rat race, to work, from work, to work, from work, literally mapping out my life. The two parts balanced each other perfectly and I realized that both the sublime and the mundane fit together.
Despite the fact that the pilgrims came from far and near for a spiritual journey, it was, of course, a wonderful opportunity to meet other potential suitors. Wasn’t that the case in every situation where new people might be present? Pilgrims usually undertook the hajj in a group, arranged by organizers who had experience in the journey and the rituals to be undertaken. The groups were made up of people from all sorts of backgrounds, having only one shared purpose—the fulfillment of their religious duty. Composed of fifty people, my group was its own society, with its own Aunties, single men, and women as well as families. Even after a long day among the crowds around the Kaba, the wise Aunties still had enough energy to point out that marriage was a spiritual act, and that finding a suitable partner was even more apt if he was presented to you at the footsteps of the House of God. It was a compelling argument. And with everyone dressed down, makeup stripped to the minimum, and the swagger of daily life removed, it was an opportunity to meet and get to know someone for who they really were. Some couples came after getting engaged, trying to maintain a respectful distance so that no one could accuse them of too much smiling! Others came with the hope that they would go home having completed their hajj with the additional gift of a fiancé.
Fatima and Abdu were one such couple who found each other during the hajj. The Aunties on the trip were always prepared for any opportunity. I did not know when this meeting between them, or the proposal, had happened. I had been too busy spiritualizing to plug myself into the hurly-burly of marriage matches at this special time. I simply wanted to enjoy finding my place and experiencing this amazing whirlwind of global togetherness.
I also wanted to fall to my knees and into prostration and weep. For the joy of being at the focus of Muslim life, and at a place where the Creator had said we are as pure and innocent as young children, I wanted to demand that the pain of loneliness and desperation be put to an end. I refused to relinquish hope, but I had run out of places to look for Mr. Right. John Travolta had not come to my door. Clark Kent was still otherwise occupied saving innocents from danger. Even the most mediocre of men I had met seemed to have got married. Humbled at how small a speck I was in this huge sea of human beings, I hoped that my pride had been crushed, leaving only a lonely soul waiting to connect to another. I added another emotion to the list of experiences on the shelf: patience.
In My Yin
There is one thing that a state of extreme endurance gives you the freedom to do: to consider possibilities that you may otherwise have dismissed. It forces you to reevaluate the potential of a situation that at first glance you thought had no merit. To be blunt, I was open to consider anyone. But my experiences in hajj had softened me as well, pushing me to look beyond my initial assessment to the deeper soul of the person. Each individual I met, whether in an introduction or in day-to-day life, I looked at differently, exploring the human spark that might lie underneath.
For men I might have normally dismissed through irritation or personal dislike, I wondered what hidden universes lay underneath. Was he a Mohamed Habib, hiding mysteries of the universe for me to discover? Did a quiet, ordinary-looking man hold secrets of the Divine, with contentment and love lurking beneath his calm, unprovocative exterior? Or if he was at a different place in his journey from me, was he heading in the same direction at least? If I wasn’t attracted to him physically to start with, would the connection of ethics, personality, and time together reveal an attraction that would run deeper and more passionately? As the Prophet had alluded, physical beauty may be present now, but it only heads in one direction with age—away. Inner beauty was the key search criterion (if only the online marriage sites offered a grading on this point), for that only grew with time.
I started to take an interest in people simply for who they were. I was more reflective, gentler, more inquisitive, and open in my demeanor. What made this person tick? Each person was a delicious moment to be savored with respect for their humanity. There was no need to assess them as a potential suitor; instead I was more interested in seeing them as a window to a new world. I enjoyed getting to know people as human beings.
I realized that my bumpy ride across hills and potholes to look for love had allowed me to understand the universe around me in the most effective and enlightening way—through getting an insight into the microcosms that lay inside each unique and amazing human being. If the Divine could not be contained by the universe but was to be found in the heart of the human being, wasn’t that the place to look for the Divine spark? Each person represented a pat
h to God that I could not have seen on my own individual journey.
The ecstasy of the spiritual discoveries I had made created a glow on my face that somehow should have been eradicated by my arrival at Desperation Stations. Instead I felt more content than ever and shone with an inner happiness that I had not felt before. I enjoyed my life, and a husband would be a partner in an ongoing exciting chapter toward further self-discovery and fulfillment.
And so you would expect me to say that love struck at the moment I least expected it. The glossy magazines would diagnose that I had learned to love myself and I was now ready for someone to love me. However, I had always loved, always been ready, but now I had a different insight. I had enjoyed living my life and was happy being myself, but I could not help but think that had I got married younger, shown more interest in Ali at the very start—and I realized that he did have all the qualities to make a wonderful husband—then I would have had a very happy life on that path too. I didn’t agree that I “wouldn’t have changed a thing” in the journey I had taken. It was a meaningless statement. If I had lived a different life, I might have discovered different things that I hadn’t found on this path, and I might have been just as happy, perhaps happier. I would never know the answer to that question.
Waiting for love to strike “when you least expect it” is a wonderfully fatalistic cliché, which allows you to relinquish control over the most important part of your life: who you spend it with.
Hollywood and Bollywood rom-coms would write into my script an unexpected fairy-tale ending with Prince Charming arriving to sweep me off my feet. Or, in a more cerebral genre of film, the story would wind down and I would accept that I was not to find love. I would submit to my destiny and move on toward productive spinsterhood. I would reflect wisely on the wonderful path I had trodden and all the people I had met. I would end my story with the cathartic analysis that it was the taking part and not the winning that was important. I would realize that “finding the one” had been the wrong prize, for living life was the prize.
Shelina Janmohamed Page 24