by Zainab Salbi
“I felt so angry at God,” I told him. “I felt God betrayed me.”
“You wouldn’t feel betrayed by God if you didn’t love him in the first place,” he said. “You had to have a relationship with him to feel that anger when something went wrong in your life, right?”
That one comment, logical and generous like Amjad himself, lifted a huge burden from my shoulders and ultimately enabled me to begin a larger quest for spirituality. He reintroduced me to that part of Islam that was not confused with rule-bound ancient cultures, that part of Islam that was beautiful, my mother’s faith. Amjad came from a Sunni family and had an undergraduate degree in religion. His knowledge of Islam was based not only on faith, but on history and contemporary politics. His parents had been dispossessed in Palestine and were finally able to immigrate a few family members at a time to the promise of America. His father worked at a mill as he got his college education and his mother worked in the school cafeteria. Little by little they built their lives. His father became a translator and his mother a sales clerk. Starting from zero, they had sent both their sons to college; both sons were now in Ph.D. programs.
I was in love with a wonderful and intelligent man with whom I could talk, laugh, and enjoy myself. I had a great circle of friends, an interesting job, and though I was able to get credit for just one year of college of the three I’d had in Iraq, I was finally back on track to get my university degree. Everything felt new, including me, and I felt free in every single step I took. That was one of the happiest times of my life. I was learning to breathe again.
Then I got a call from my mother in Jordan. She was panicked. I had been talking to her on the telephone every week or two, mostly about how hard her divorce was and how she was losing money on her restaurant business. I never mentioned Amjad—the last thing I wanted was Mama’s advice on marriage. But one of Amjad’s relatives had told me she was going to Amman, and just to be friendly, I had given her my mother’s number. The two had gotten together and, of course, Amjad’s relative had told Mama about Amjad and me.
“Oh my God, Zainab, you’re dating a man!” she said, quite upset.
The rules hadn’t changed just because I was living in America. I was openly dating a man I wasn’t properly engaged to. I was every immigrant parent’s nightmare, a divorced woman living on my own outside traditional cultural norms in a foreign country. I had even allowed Amjad to kiss me, though she didn’t know that. But that wasn’t what scared her the most.
“Why haven’t you told me, habibiti?” Mama asked. “Have I finally lost you?”
“It’s okay, Mama, calm down,” I told her, trying to think of a way to assuage her hurt feelings. “His name is Amjad. He is wonderful. It all happened very fast. I was just going to call and ask you if it was all right for him to go to Jordan to meet you and ask for your approval to marry me.”
As soon as I hung up, I called Amjad and told him he needed to go to Jordan to ask for my hand. He was thrilled, and his parents were thrilled; one thing led to another, and I realized my two-year waiting period was gone. Once again, I had let Mama’s emotional needs take precedence over my own. I called her back.
“Mama, there is something I want you to know,” I told her. “I want your blessing, but I love him, and I am going to marry him even without it.”
Baba agreed to drive to Amman with Haider to meet Amjad. I watched in admiration as Amjad planned his request for my hand with every respect for cultural tradition, as well as for my family personally. Two close friends joined him to speak for the men of his family.
“I love your daughter,” he told Baba after a few visits to get to know them. “I know she has been through a lot. I want you to know that I will do anything I can to make her happy. From the bottom of my heart, I promise you I will give her the best life I can.”
Amjad told me Baba cried as he gave his blessing. I knew Baba felt he had failed in his traditional paternal role as protector. The Gulf War had prevented him from coming to rescue me, leaving me all alone to fend for myself. Now, for the first time, he was agreeing to entrust his daughter to someone he liked and respected during their few meetings, but a man who came from a world entirely separate from his own. Amjad was still learning Arabic, and much of their conversation was in English.
“I am giving you my daughter, whom I love more than anything in my life,” Baba said. “I can’t be there for her. You can. I only ask you to make her happy, and I trust that you will do so. Remember that behind every great man is a great woman, and behind every great woman is also a great man. Zainab is the jewel of my eye, Amjad. Take good care of her.”
I wish I had been there. I wish I had been able to run into Baba’s arms. But unlike Amjad, I wasn’t a U.S. citizen and couldn’t get the proper visa. And because of visa restrictions on Iraqi men entering the United States after the Gulf War, Mama was the only one from my family who was able to come to the United States for my wedding. When it came to dividing our family, the global political issues spun off by Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait would seal the division that Amo had started. It would be nine years before I would see my father again, nine years before I would step foot in Baghdad—and I would barely recognize either one.
Amjad’s adviser from the University of Virginia, Dr. Abdul-Aziz Sachedina, was the religious cleric, or imam, who was to perform our Islamic wedding and help with the marriage contract. Amjad and I had already discussed the dowry and had agreed that it was to be symbolic, a single old coin from Jerusalem.
“This is good,” said Dr. Sachedina, when we met him in his office in Charlottseville. “But you have a lot more rights to discuss besides the dowry, Zainab. You need to put down all your conditions.”
“Conditions?” I asked. I knew almost nothing about the legalities of Muslim marriage. When I married Fakhri, the only issue I knew about was the dowry. A piece of paper had been put in front of me and I had signed it.
Dr. Sachedina sighed.
“Unfortunately, this is a very common problem,” he said in a calm, professorial voice. “People don’t know Islamic law, and they assume cultural practices stem from Islam. You have a lot more rights to discuss than the dowry. When a woman marries in Islam, she has the right to stipulate all the conditions she wants to have in her marriage. Then, the husband needs to sign if he agrees to those conditions. This is your chance to put whatever conditions you choose as part of your contract for marrying Amjad.”
“Anything I want?”
“Anything from the kind of lifestyle you want to the way you want to raise your children,” he said. A kind of prenuptial agreement.
“Here’s my computer, Zainab,” he said, standing up and offering me his seat. “Just type in all your conditions for the marriage contract, and if Amjad agrees, they’re binding. Good luck.”
And he left.
Oh my God, I had no idea! I had just learned about a whole new right nobody had ever explained to me I had as a Muslim woman. Another thing we hadn’t been told about in Iraq! How many women knew about this? Even my mother, who had just finalized her divorce, didn’t know! If I had only known about this when I was marrying Fakhri. Instead of going around the house trying to obey him and be a “good wife,” I would have been able to look at the contract and say, Here, you signed this. I would have had proof in writing of all those promises he had made me right before we got married.
I didn’t know how to type or use a computer at that time. So Amjad typed and I talked.
“You may not stop me from pursuing any career or educational path,” I dictated.
“Agreed,” Amjad said as he clicked away on the keyboard. I was so excited, he got excited watching me.
“You must share with me all household duties fifty-fifty. You must do half of the cooking, you must do have of the cleaning, you must—”
“Before you add vacuuming, don’t you think it is clear when we say all household duties that that is implied?”
“Hmmm,” I said hesitantly. He had
a point, but I went through every other possible condition I could think of. I didn’t want to leave anything out. “Okay.”
“The most important thing,” I said at last, looking at him as if waiting to catch him in a lie. “I want to share the right to initiate divorce.”
“Absolutely,” he said. And typed it in.
Oh my God, this actually works, I thought to myself.
“I can’t think of anything more now,” I said.
“Well, you can always add to this contract if you want,” he said. “At any point in the marriage.”
Later that day, we had a small and intimate religious ceremony at Dr. Sachedina’s house with Amjad’s family, my mother, and a few friends who had been with us the day Amjad and I met. I couldn’t wait to show my mother the contract that evening. I was proud to have learned something so important and to have a wonderful man who was so supportive.
“But, Zainab, a woman doesn’t have the right to divorce the husband!” she said. “The husband must agree to the divorce first.”
“All the more reason to have a contract,” I said. “No one told us we had that right.”
“But even so, honey, are you positive you want to put all these conditions in?” she persisted. “You don’t want to risk your marriage with Amjad, after all.”
“Mama, what’s come over you?” I asked. “Are you really suggesting that I give up rights that might have protected me in my marriage to Fakhri? I don’t understand! Why?”
I was very upset. What was wrong with her? I had never told her what Fakhri had done to me. First, there was the war, her nervous breakdown, then the divorce from my father. But even if she didn’t know about the rape, it felt like she was a different person now than the strong, independent woman I knew.
“I’m sorry, Zainab,” she said. “Do whatever you want. I’m sorry I said anything.”
“It’s not just the marriage contract, Mama,” I said. “Ever since you’ve been here, you’ve been giving me advice about cooking and housekeeping. You used to call yourself a strong and independent woman, but I can feel the difference in you, Mama. I don’t understand.”
Then she sort of broke down. It had been several months since Amjad had seen her in Amman, and in that time, she had finally given up on her restaurant business for financial reasons and returned to Baghdad, where at least she had a free place to live. But the society she had returned to wasn’t as open to single women, especially divorced middle-aged women, as it had been in the 1970s or 1980s. She tried having dinner parties and inviting couples she knew, only to be scolded by some women who felt it was inappropriate for a divorcee to be holding “mixed” parties. She was striking up some of her old friendships, but instead of dancing, she and her friends read and discussed the Quran.
“Some of my friends blame me for our divorce because I was the one who initiated it,” she said. “As I think about it at the end of the day, I wonder if maybe I have been wrong. Maybe it would have been better for me to stay with your father.”
“Mama, don’t give up!” I said and instinctively hugged her. “You have to be strong. You’re beautiful. Your marriage with Baba may not have worked out, but you’ll find someone else.”
“I don’t think so, habibiti. I no longer trust the advice that I gave you on love and marriage. I no longer trust in myself. Maybe what I taught you about being a strong woman was wrong. Maybe it is better to be a good wife.”
She was looking down at the floor, not meeting my eyes at all.
A few months later, my mother flew over with the wedding dress she had made for me, a gold-and-white dress she had embroidered with love poems and our names. Amjad and I were married in January 1993. His family arranged the ceremony, which in Iraqi Muslim tradition is hosted by the bridegroom’s family. Amjad and I had rented a hotel suite for our wedding night, and Mama and I checked in early to dress for the wedding. She looked beautiful that day. We combed each other’s hair and were giggling when the makeup lady came to our room. She thought we were sisters. When she left, I put my arm around my mother’s neck when we were still in our bathrobes and giggled. “We are two sisters!”
When my mother helped me into the dress, I worried about how low-cut it was.
“Oh, honey, don’t worry about it!” she said, kissing me on the forehead. “Just enjoy your wedding and your life. I love you, habibiti. Amjad is a good man. Take good care of him, and be happy. Don’t ever forget to do that! Be happy!”
I was happy that day. I was really happy. Mama looked like a bride herself, and everyone commented on how beautiful she was. I felt a spark of her old self shining through. That was my mama. The beautiful Alia. I could hear her laughter through the crowd as she enjoyed herself. My wedding was the best party I have ever gone to, though I didn’t really care. I spent practically the whole time just dancing with Amjad, reflecting on how much I loved him and how lucky we were.
Little by little, I came to trust him sexually, as he undoubtedly knew I would. Amjad was a healer, the most patient, understanding person I have ever met. There were times we stood in my little apartment kissing for hours—so long my knees would quiver—but I was afraid to lie down, and there was no place to sit. Then, later, we would lie together and he would just hold me for hours until we fell asleep. One night, when Natalie and Nat King Cole’s song, “Unforgettable,” was playing on the stereo, I was able to let my defenses down, and he talked to me and touched me and brought me through the other side of my pain, and I finally understood what my mother was talking about at our kitchen table.
Amjad was in his first year of a doctorate at the University of Virginia, a two-hour drive from Washington, D.C. I was twenty-three, working full-time and going to school at night. We were married, and it was logical that we would live together. But commuting seemed out of the question, and I was terrified that if I quit my job to move in with him, I would lose all the hard-won gains I had made toward controlling my own destiny. I had met the man of my dreams too soon.
“I can move in with you in Charlottesville, get depressed and leave you, or I can stay in D.C., see you on weekends, and be happy,” I informed him. He chose the latter, so we saw each other over the weekends.
The following fall I enrolled full-time at George Mason University and decided to major in women’s and international studies. Here, at last, I had an opportunity to read whatever I chose and say whatever I wanted. I learned about feminism and found it odd that Western women were still struggling for some rights, like equal pay for equal work, that were guaranteed in so many of what are called “developing” countries. I learned in one of my classes what I had never heard at a family gathering: Stalin ordered Russian soldiers to rape as many German women as possible during World War II. I learned about the Holocaust, the anti-slavery movement in the United States, and the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. My whole sense of the world was changing. Growing up as I had in a dictatorship frozen in place, I didn’t comprehend the basic dynamic of a world in active flux, with justice fighting injustice, actions and reactions, political and social changes, gender equality and gender-based discrimination, good and evil fighting each other constantly. I learned that other people had undergone oppression and survived, other nations had overthrown tyrants, and it gave me hope.
Amjad gave me books he knew would help me understand the world that had been off-limits to me until now. I saw patterns in Saddam Hussein’s atrocities and injustice and realized that these were common to all dictators, including Hitler and Stalin, whose work I had seen him read. I saw Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in George Orwell’s 1984 and felt the horror of Amo in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. I read Kanan Makiya’s Republic of Fear, and learned of even more horrors Saddam Hussein had committed in Iraq and wondered if my parents knew about any of them. It was from that book that I finally came to understand that the wave of Shia deportations that nearly took away my mother was one of Amo’s early ethnic cleansing operations. Makiya estimated that two hundred thousand Shia had
been deported, and that didn’t include thousands of families like Fakhri’s that had fled on their own. That campaign had been so ignored in the Western media, coming as it did as Saddam Hussein was fighting Iran with funding from the West, that even Amjad hadn’t heard about it.
I took all this information in but spoke to no one about it except Amjad. For me, it was personal and academic. It never occurred to me to join an opposition party, which might have had dangerous consequences for my family. I also completely opposed economic sanctions, which many exiled Iraqi dissidents supported. I didn’t believe in the idea of economic sanctions unless the oppressed people themselves requested it, as had been the case in South Africa. I knew that any economic blockade imposed on Iraq would only deprive average Iraqis of food and medicine while Amo got richer. Amo would never suffer, but the tortured logic behind sanctions was that Iraqis would suffer so much they would somehow rise up and overthrow him. How presumptuous this was, I thought, and how cruel, how removed from the reality of the average Iraqi family. The Amo I knew understood his people far better than those who favored imposing sanctions on him. Before I left Iraq, I already suspected he had deliberately distributed different foods to different marketplaces so people would spend all day just trying to put together a meal and have less time to make trouble. Now, I knew, he would do far worse to punish those who had risen up against him. And that, of course, is exactly what he did, making himself ever richer by selling Iraqi oil on the black market as he distributed rotten food to the Shia in the south, stole their electricity, their water, their villages, and many more of their lives.