First Comes Marriage

by Huda Al-Marashi

  “You know what else I have strong feelings about?”

  I wasn't ready to hear Hadi's answer. I had no idea how I'd reciprocate.

  “What?” I finally asked.

  When Hadi answered with the anticipated, “You,” I smiled demurely and opened the door.

  The next day, my entire family was invited to join Hadi and his extended family for dinner at his parents’ house, but only my parents came with me. The rest of our clan had gone to Universal Studios instead. After dinner, Hadi asked me if I wanted to watch the video of yesterday's party. I followed him out of the living room, waiting for one of our mothers or Hadi's aunts to stop us, to say that we should bring the video out for everyone to see, but no one said anything. We sat on the floor, the door to Hadi's room wide open, and huddled around the camera's small viewfinder.

  We appeared on the screen, walking in through Marwa's front door, our hands at our sides. “Cute couple,” Hadi said and kissed me.

  Warm, wet lips upon mine.

  A lip's soft touch was so surprising, so tender, so natural—so not disgusting. I'd confided in Diana that kissing looked beautiful on television, but the exchange of saliva it involved struck me as terribly gross. It was like spitting inside another person's mouth. She shook her head at me with pitying eyes and said, “No, Hudie. It's nothing like that at all.” It was this I then remembered, this my body now understood. What a complete form of communication kissing was. All this time I'd wanted some declaration of love from Hadi, but this kiss had made me feel it.

  Hadi pulled away and said, “I've wanted to do that for a long time.”

  “What were you waiting for?” I asked.

  He touched the diamond on my ring. “For you to be officially mine,” he said.

  Hadi's comment reminded me of him waiting to answer my question at the prom, then waiting to tell me he loved me, and now waiting to kiss me. It wasn't our religion's rules Hadi had been following, but they were his own.

  Neither one of us brought up that we had technically committed a sin. Nor did we close the door because that would have drawn attention to the fact that we were in his room alone. We just relied upon the entry's short hallway to obstruct our view, and we kissed again. And again.

  From deep within me, I felt a stirring, a pleasant but unsettling push of desire. Yesterday's disappointments seemed a distant memory. I wanted Hadi. Maybe that was all that had been missing from our relationship all along. This kiss that filled my mouth and my nose with his scent.

  With one hand I touched Hadi's cheek, and with the other I ran my fingers through his hair. Hadi's hands moved along the length of my hair, his fingers massaging the back of my head, my neck.

  I was kissing a boy. I was happy and nervous. Nervous that someone would walk in and see us kissing. Nervous that the moms, dads, aunts, and uncles outside assumed we were kissing. Nervous to face them when we left the room. They'd know. It would show on me.

  But these kisses were worth the risk. For the first time, Hadi Ridha was more than just a name in my life. For the first time, since I was a six-year-old girl, standing at the doorway of this house, our relationship didn't feel like the hope of wishful parents. It felt natural. It felt like my choice. I wanted these soft, warm lips on me, this skin under my hand.

  The sound of clapping, music, and conversation that had been playing in the background of our video cut off abruptly, and so did our embrace.

  “That's the best video I've ever seen,” Hadi said.

  I smiled and said, “Good because I'm afraid to leave the room now. Curly hair expands on contact. One look at my hair and my mother will know we've been up to something.”

  Hadi got up and passed me a baseball cap from his closet. “Anyone asks, say it was a gift from me to you.”

  I pulled my hair into a ponytail that I slid through the slot in the back of the cap and wondered if it would be enough of a disguise. I could smell Hadi's cologne on me. I could still taste his fragrance on my lips.

  We decided I would exit Hadi's room first, as if by leaving his room as individuals we'd put to rest the suspicion that we'd been doing anything as a couple. Fortunately, I found my family distracted with getting ready for our own departure. We all gathered in the foyer, in front of the Ridhas’ stained-glass double doors, for a classic Arab goodbye—another twenty minutes of chatter at the door; an exchange of thank-yous; apologies for any trouble from the guests; apologies for shortcomings in hospitality from the hosts; and finally, a round of kisses on both cheeks, exchanged only between women and women, men and men.

  One of Hadi's aunts said, “You look nice in Hadi's hat,” and I couldn't tell if she was imagining us innocently watching our engagement video and trying on hats or if this was a hint that she knew.

  When Mrs. Ridha leaned in to kiss me goodbye, one of Hadi's aunts joked, “Somebody's jealous.” Then as I kissed each of his aunts goodbye, they teased, “We'll hug her longer for you,” “Hadi wishes he was me right now,” “Let your eyes take their fill of her now. Soon she'll be gone, and you'll be crying.” This banter struck the adults around us as terribly funny. Making light of unmarried couples’ sexual frustrations was practically a pastime in itself. (Not too long ago, Mrs. Ridha was sitting next to Mama on a bumpy car ride. Leaning into Mama, she'd joked, “If we were an engaged couple, this would make us so happy.”)

  I expected the teasing, but I didn't know my role in this. Was I supposed to look shocked and offended, or was I supposed to smile and joke along?

  I stood by the door with the plainest face I could summon, but Hadi had struck a particularly joyless pose. His mother offered, “You can at least shake Huda's hand.”

  “No,” Hadi said, his arms folded, the weight of his body shifted to one side.

  “Why?” Mrs. Ridha asked. “This is a chance for you.”

  Hadi was adamant. “No. I will not shake my fiancée's hand. That's for people who are strangers, who don't mean anything to each other.”

  Hadi wore the face of a sullen teen, and I felt as if I was witnessing an exchange I shouldn't have been.

  Get it over with, I pleaded in my mind. Shake my hand and make them happy.

  “It's up to you,” his mother surrendered with two hands in the air.

  Hadi offered nothing in return but the same pout, his arms still folded. Our families were waiting for our farewell, and it was clear that it wasn't going to come from Hadi. I waved and said, “Bye,” like a sixth grader, leaving her crush at the end of a school day. Hadi waved back, then followed us out the door to our car.

  The disconnect between who we'd been in his room only minutes ago and who we were now, in front of our families, bewildered me. We'd gone from kisses and an embrace to one wave and a sulk. Into the cool night air, the closeness between us evaporated, the warmth of our kisses carried away by the chimney smoke seasoning the night sky.

  From inside the car, I waved at Hadi one last time, the cold leather seats pushing through the thin barrier of my long, satin skirt. A shiver went through me and with it the weight of my transgression. A man's lips had touched mine. There was no going back no matter how much Hadi's behavior unsettled me. Never again could I claim my pure, untouched innocence.

  After I got back on campus, at the start of winter quarter, the reactions to my engagement ring were mixed.

  1. What? Let me see that ring!

  I'd expected my American dormmates to be shocked, to question how I got engaged and whether or not my marriage was arranged, but most of the girls on my floor ogled my ring and regarded me with a puzzled look that seemed to say, “Wait. Are we old enough to do this now?” A number of them even said, “You're so lucky. I wish I could marry my boyfriend, too.”

  2. You don't have to do this.

  I was discussing Madame Bovary with my professor during office hours when I told her I was engaged and added, “Almost every woman in my family married her Charles. Maybe Emma expected too much from her 1850s world.”

  She pulled out her c
alendar and said, “Let's find a time to have dinner and talk.” Later that week, over soup and sandwiches, I told her how I was engaged to the son of our closest family friends. She told me about her young marriage, how difficult it had been, and then added, “You do know you don't have to do this?” as if she was just making sure I'd been informed.

  3. Whoa! Okay!

  A handsome, blond guy approached me on my way out of the library. He said he'd been watching me in the library for weeks and had been trying to work up the nerve to ask me out.

  I held up my hand apologetically. “Sorry. I'm engaged.”

  “Whoa,” he said, “I never thought to look for a ring at our age.”

  4. Mashallah! Now let's talk about the wedding.

  My Muslim Students’ Association (MSA) friends were the only ones I told every detail about my engagement party. I made light of all my disappointments, my ring with the cloudy diamonds, Hadi's commitment to whispering, and Baba's requests to “Say it loud.” They comforted me with not just their laughter but also with their shared understanding of Muslim couples, of the way our families celebrate. However, it was precisely because of that shared knowledge that I didn't dare tell anyone about my unauthorized kiss. I couldn't risk my friends casting me off as the bad girl among them.

  As a group, we were almost all first generation, born in America to immigrant parents, and the majority of us were the oldest daughters in our families. We had no older cousins or sisters to look to for tales of their engagements or wedding nights—no generation before us to shine light on the gap between what parents say and what young people do, no internet to bring us the news of Muslims in other parts of the United States, let alone the rest of the world. All we had was our shared questions, our collective wedding-night innocence. Together we tried to imagine how one went about the business of commencing sex:

  Are you supposed to wear something sexy underneath your wedding dress and let him undress you, or do you go to the bathroom and change into one of those flowy gowns?

  What about your evening prayers? Do you say, “Wait, let's pray,” and then take each other's clothes off?

  And then what about the manicure you spent all that money on? Do you believe your wudhu doesn't count if you're wearing nail polish? Maybe it's okay to make an exception for your wedding night, because how silly would it be to sit there taking off your nail polish before you prayed?

  How bad do you think it hurts? It doesn't seem like there's enough room to stick anything up there. Has anyone ever worn a tampon?

  Do you think it's really bloody? How embarrassing would it be to make such a mess on a guy? And then if you're in a hotel, do you leave it there on the sheet or do you wash it?

  What about the hair down there? Will you wax it? Ouch.

  These conversations with all their unknown answers lingered in my mind. Maybe it made for a more magical wedding night for it also to be the moment of your first kiss. And, if I had done too much and ruined our wedding night, then what was left to look forward to after we'd already had such a disappointing proposal? Were these memories good enough for the only love story I'd ever have? What if I rushed into committing myself to Hadi, and I could have had everything I wanted with someone else?

  I had a guy in my life who I'd kissed but I never saw. We had nightly phone conversations, but after a long day poring over my books in the library, this sometimes felt like another thing on my to-do list. Many nights we argued over why I was always the one who wanted to get off the phone. How come Hadi never said he had to study? How was he going to get into medical school if he had so much time to spend on the phone talking to me?

  The only way I could think to remedy this angst was to see Hadi again, to arrange for the moments that would make me fall for him. But planning for Hadi to visit felt like applying for an international travel visa. Before Hadi's metaphorical passport could be stamped, both sets of parents had to agree to the necessity and length of the journey and the itinerary (namely, how long we'd be alone together). I first planned a Valentine's Day visit, complete with an appointment for engagement pictures, dinner out, and tickets to the symphony. But a few days prior to his departure, Hadi called to tell me he'd come down with mononucleosis and had to cancel his trip. We made all the requisite jokes about who he'd been kissing. Then I hung up the phone and cried; our first Valentine's Day in our engaged lives was only adding to the list of disappointments I was trying to defeat.

  After another week of phone conversations, our families agreed to a fresh attempt at engagement photographs. On the first weekend in March, Hadi would take a cab from the airport to my campus. He'd wait for me until I finished school for the day, and then we'd take the bus to the mall to take our photographs. Mama would pick us up from the mall and take us back to my house where we'd spend the rest of the weekend. Sunday, she'd drop Hadi off at the airport and me back at school.

  Hadi knocked on the door to my dorm room early on Friday. Since our engagement party, we'd bickered so much over the phone that I wondered if we'd kiss again, wondered if we should. Maybe that first kiss was a passionate fluke, a transgression that now that we'd had more time to think about it, we wouldn't repeat.

  But as soon as I opened the door, Hadi's arms circled my waist and his lips met mine, and the only thought that occurred to me was a single “oh” of recognition. In that moment, I understood that kissing was going to be something we did now, and maybe it took away from our wedding-night mysteries but never mind. There would be other things to discover that night, and this—this was too good to delay. These kisses proved that when we saw each other, things were different, better.

  That morning, with the door to my room closed and locked, we kissed each other's lips, necks, ears. Because there was nowhere else to sit in my tiny dorm room, we sat on the edge of my bed. And then after a moment, we weren't sitting anymore. It was entirely functional—this movement from vertical to horizontal—and it never crossed my mind to worry that Hadi's hands would stray from where they rested on my waist. We'd already bent so many rules: I couldn't imagine we'd do more than kiss until we were married.

  When I left for class an hour later, I felt that our kisses had fixed everything. All of those labored phone conversations were a by-product of distance, and if we had to bend the rules a little to bring us closer together, so be it. By American standards, kissing was innocent, and maybe Americans had the right idea on this. These kisses were the only things that made me feel as if I was in love. For the first time, I walked across campus, with my makeup faded away, my hair a mess, my body warm. I passed the same adobe buildings, manicured lawns, and blooming rose bushes that marked my daily path, but everything seemed changed, as if my entire being and the buildings themselves throbbed with the knowledge of my secret. I had been kissing a boy. A boy was waiting for me in my room.

  When I returned an hour and a half later, Hadi was asleep in my room, his hands resting on his chest. I sat on the edge of the bed, watching his hands rise and fall with each breath. Hadi's fingers were long and thin but thick at the knuckles. The band he wore on his right hand had turned, the tapered bottom facing up. His lips were sealed with the weight of sleep, and in that instant, I knew I would kiss this boy in my room and wake him up.

  Hadi's eyes opened as soon as my lips left his. He smiled and said, “That's nice.”

  “I know,” I said to suppress the warm blush rising to my cheeks.

  We kissed again, our kisses taking on a force of their own, a power to draw our hands under our shirts and onto the marvel of skin. I wondered if I should resist, and then I did not wonder anymore. Wondering ruined everything.

  Hadi brought my head to his chest and held me there for a moment. “I have something for you,” he said.

  “You do?” I asked and sat up.

  Hadi got up and bent down in front of the duffel bag, lying slump at the foot of my closet. When he turned around, he was holding a tiny velvet box. “Happy Valentine's Day,” he said.

  I wasted
no time with polite you-shouldn't-haves and went straight to lifting the box's lid. Inside were pearl stud earrings. Delicate, small, and exactly what I'd coveted. Finally I was getting all the little things that I believed proved love in a relationship: visits, kisses, hugs, and tiny trinkets.

  “I love them,” I said, walking to the mirror over my wardrobe. I slid the gold hoops I was wearing into my jewelry box and put on the new earrings.

  Hadi stood behind me and looked at my reflection. “They look beautiful on you,” he said before sliding his hands around my waist and kissing my neck. I turned around and kissed him deeper now, our hands on each other's backs. I could see myself slipping my hands up his shirt; I could imagine him doing the same to me. The desire shocked me. I'd always wondered how teenage girls wound up pregnant, why they couldn't just resist sex, but in a flash, I understood how getting too close made it far too easy to take too much.

  “We should get ready,” I said to myself as much as to Hadi. He pretended not to hear me, and I liked that he wanted me too much to listen. I pushed him a hand's length away from me and said, “You know we'll be in big trouble if we don't take those pictures.”

  I gathered my things and told Hadi he could use my room. I crossed the hall into the bathroom, where I dug into my makeup case, the taste of men's cologne still on my lips, and marveled at this sweet but dangerous problem we now had. We had not set our wedding date. In one day, I'd gone from thinking that kissing would be the only contact we'd have during our engagement to reaching under Hadi's shirt. I felt awash in shame and wondered what had come over me. A good Muslim girl was supposed to resist the boy, to be a reserved, proper lady until her wedding night. I thought of my MSA friends. I imagined them saving every act of intimacy until they were married. What did these kisses make me? Easy? Horny? The very thought made me cringe, but those kisses were the only time when all those noisy doubts about Hadi—his hair, eyebrows, clothes, and studies—finally went quiet.