First Comes Marriage

by Huda Al-Marashi

  My heart raced, and my breath thinned. I never thought I would be asked to speak for myself. I liked things better the way they were before, with me complaining to Mama and Mama repackaging those concerns into polite and acceptable terms. A childhood urge to whisper everything I wanted said into Mama's ear overwhelmed me.

  I was being asked to stab Hadi with my words, and he had never seemed more defenseless. It was past noon, and Hadi had just rolled out of bed. His hair was rumpled, his face unshaven, and he still wore last night's T-shirt and shorts. This was not a guy ready to fight for the love of his life, but a guy who didn't know what hit him.

  A guy who I did not want.

  Those words flashed in a dim corner of my mind like a glaring, neon sign. This was my chance to return Hadi to his family, to tell them, “My mom bought this guy for me, but he doesn't fit.”

  But I'd been seized by a shot of inhibition that I would've required the assistance of narcotics to release. The thought was too radical, too dangerous to contemplate. The only thing I could do now was invest Dr. and Mrs. Ridha in my education. Then regardless of what happened with Hadi's schooling, nobody would expect me to sacrifice mine.

  I exhaled a breath I didn't know I'd been holding and pretended I was at school, talking to a professor. With all the confidence I could muster, I said, “I'm doing really well in school, and it's really important to me that I continue. But I understand that Hadi may not have the grades to get into medical school. If he has other interests, I'm willing to support him in that. But I think he should figure out what that is soon so that we're both able to continue with our educations.”

  I searched Hadi's face for his reaction, but he didn't meet my gaze. He stared at the mirror hanging above the buffet table and said nothing to defend himself. Disgust now stained the sympathy I'd felt for him a few moments ago. Hadi had no fight in him, no plan. It was tragic, really. I knew plenty of girls who didn't care about school. Another woman might have taken Hadi's love and run with it, and another guy might've appreciated my ambition. We both might've been happier with other people.

  Dr. Ridha cleared his throat again and asked me exactly what I wanted to study. This worried me. My current interests in history and academics had no currency in our community. People were always telling Mama what a shame it was that Ibrahim wanted a PhD instead of an MD, and I feared Hadi's parents wouldn't find my educational goals worth protecting. The only thing I had going for me was that I planned to study Islamic societies, and anything related to Islam carried weight with Dr. Ridha.

  But beyond a nod, Dr. Ridha didn't respond to my answer. He merely turned to Hadi and asked if he had anything he wanted to say. Hadi shook his head, but his tense brow and buttoned lips gave me the impression that he was too frustrated to speak.

  Baba, on the other hand, was never one to stay quiet in a situation. Irrespective of circumstance or audience, Baba had an anecdote to share. Now he looked to Hadi and said, “In my opinion, there are many other things one can do. I know many chiropractors and physical therapists myself, and they are doing quite well. This fellow, who is the physical therapist, he is a Pakistani Muslim. He has a very nice office, close to mine. I can give you his number if you like to talk to him, but the important thing is one should never give up on their studies. In medical school, I had to repeat several classes myself. My father had died, and I was so sad, but somehow, I got through it. This is the life.”

  No one commented on Baba's musings, and I was grateful that Baba had chosen to view Hadi's academic struggles with sympathy rather than recording it in memory as his first official complaint. Dr. Ridha turned to Mama for her input and caught her off guard. She tried to suppress an awkward smile and said, “It's important to me that Huda finishes her education, but I also think Hadi is a wonderful boy. I've always loved him like he was my own son, and I want to see him happy and doing well in whatever he chooses to do.” Mrs. Ridha said the same of me.

  Now it was Dr. Ridha's turn to weigh in. After a contemplative pause, he said, “Hadi has to improve. Of course, we do not accept his grades, and we are very, very disappointed in him. I do not know about him doing other things, but I know he has to do better. Now, we would like nothing more than to see you and Hadi married and happy together, but I think you and your family should think about whether you want to continue with this engagement and we will discuss this again after dinner.”

  Everything that came out of Dr. Ridha's mouth took me by surprise—his harsh disapproval of Hadi's grades, the ticking bomb of an option he'd dropped on the table, the detonator he'd placed in my hands. I had to get out of the room. The consequences of a broken engagement were dizzying, and I couldn't consider them—not now, not with everyone watching.

  I went looking for Ibrahim in Hadi's room. I closed the door behind me, settled down on the floor in front of him, and burst into tears.

  Ibrahim closed the Arabic grammar book he'd been toting around all summer and asked me what had happened; I summarized the conversation I'd just had.

  “So break it off,” he said. It was a plea more than a suggestion.

  Ibrahim rarely gave me advice on anything outside of academics. Besides that brief moment on the phone where I told him about my engagement, we respected the boundaries of our sibling roles—his job was to tease me, and my job was to act exasperated. For Ibrahim to think the problems looming in my future were worth breaking the engagement that he'd believed in with such confidence, that said something. That said a lot.

  But even if my family supported my decision to break my engagement, I was far too worried about what people would think to do anything. I imagined the Iraqi mothers and grandmothers clucking and whispering about me in the corners of our masjids and dinner parties. I didn't want to accept that all the years I'd spent guarding my reputation had earned me nothing more than a broken engagement and a future filled with second-rate suitors.

  “I can't,” I said with conviction.

  “Why?” Ibrahim asked. “Because of what a bunch of dumb, old Iraqi ladies think? Then you wouldn't have to worry about what you'll do about school. You could apply wherever I go to do my PhD and at least do your master's with me.”

  Not even a year had passed since my engagement, but I found myself looking back on the months before I became committed to Hadi with the longing of an aging woman, pining over her lost youth. If only I hadn't been so hung up on getting married young and proving to the world how desirable I was, if only I'd ignored the istikhara's results, maybe this could've been my plan. I could've followed Ibrahim to a far-off place and met someone who liked to study as much as I did. But it was too late.

  This must be why all premarital touching was forbidden. It trapped you. Even if the ceremony Jidu performed for us was a dissolvable, temporary mutah, nothing could undo the kisses and embraces. Now I'd never be able to claim that I was a good girl to another man. Maybe worse, I'd never be able to remember the sweetness of those firsts without a sting of regret.

  I looked up, but my eyes only caught the top of Ibrahim's dark, curly hair. It was enough for him to broach the subject—too much for him to look at me while he was doing it. “I can't,” I said, this time as an apology. “I didn't work this hard to get a good reputation to throw it all away.”

  Ibrahim met my gaze, but his resolve to persuade me had been replaced by worry. He had no argument for this. Soon the future would offer us examples of Iraqi American friends who'd broken their engagements and married other people, who'd gotten married and divorced, who'd had a string of boyfriends and girlfriends and later chosen one to marry, but for now we had nothing but the rules we'd intuited from our parents and their immigrant friends. There was no greater Iraqi population to compare ourselves to, no sense of popular culture. Our Iraq was the one that lived on in our parents’ memories, frozen at the moment of their 1970s departure, immune to time.

  Now I wanted to comfort Ibrahim, to convince him I knew what I was doing. “I'll be fine. If for some reason, I can't go to
graduate school, it might turn out to be for the best. It's not like I can wait forever to have kids. And with Baba's health the way it is—at least this way, he'll have time with his grandkids.”

  This reasoning resonated with me in a way I hadn't expected. The mere mention of Baba's health brought with it the pressure of tears and the dreadful images my mind kept at the ready. A fatherless bride. Grandfatherless grandchildren. I closed my eyes to block out any more. Hadi loved me. Nothing about our relationship was so bad that I'd leave it at the risk of never marrying, never having children. I decided that not only would I stay engaged but that I would also marry Hadi next summer. I needed access to Hadi if I wanted to fix him, but I didn't want to rush my wedding planning either. Since our engagement had left me with few memories that satisfied my dreams of a sweeping romance, at the very least, I wanted to look back on a beautiful wedding.

  That afternoon, I pulled Hadi into his room, knowing that the gravity of our problems had bought us the privacy to work out our concerns. We sat on the chairs pushed against the wall of his bedroom. Hadi looked down, his shoulders slumped. His body was prepared for me to tell him that I was leaving, and this posture of surrender sent a ripple of ire under my skin. My mind railed, Fight for me, man! Where's your strength? Am I really going to tell you I want to marry you? You, who I want to throttle and shake?

  But with my mouth I said something else entirely. “I think the best thing we can do now is work together to figure out what you should do next, whether it's medical school or something else. But that means, this school year, you're going to have to study around the clock to bring up your grades. And then, I think, we should probably get married earlier rather than later so that I can help you stay on top of everything.”

  Hadi looked up, and his face brightened. “I think that would really help,” he said.

  A wave of relief washed over me. I had spared myself so much discomfort with nothing more than my simple acquiescence. Now I wouldn't have to tell Hadi I wanted to leave. I would not break his heart or disappoint his parents. My family would not have to deal with an awkward goodbye, the question of whether to pack up our bags and leave that day or whether to stay until the next morning and pretend that this was not the end to a decade of friendship with the Ridhas.

  I took Hadi's hand in mine, and his skin felt like a rescue from all the things I could not bear to confront. Then I leaned over and kissed him, both resenting and appreciating this kiss that adhered us together, that would not let us fall apart.

  Back at school that fall, I reunited with my MSA friends in the library and announced that I was getting married next summer, a few months after my twentieth birthday. Both Amina and our mutual friend Sura had shared that they'd gotten engaged over the summer, and I was grateful not to be mourning my past while my friends were looking forward to their futures, especially this quarter. My MSA sisters and I weren't merely studying together, but we were enrolled in the course on women in Islam, as well.

  We had agreed that we needed to be in that classroom as a group to deal with the stereotypes about women being forced to wear the hijab, genital mutilation, and nonconsensual arranged marriages. Six of us, including Amina and Sura, signed up to be there to raise our hands and object, “Not all Muslim women live like that. Look at us. We are Muslim women, too. How come nobody writes about Muslim women like us?”

  My MSA sisters were all high-achieving students. The majority were studying to be doctors and engineers just like their hardworking, professional mothers who'd overcome language barriers and carried on working as physicians and engineers in the United States. Only three other women, besides myself, had chosen majors in the humanities, but our unconventional choice only motivated us more. We had to prove to our immigrant communities that success was possible outside of the sciences.

  The day we watched a documentary about the feminists who threw off their veils in an Egyptian train station in the 1920s, Amina addressed our class first: “Those women were clearly responding to the hijab as some sort of symbol of patriarchy, but most of us wearing the hijab today do so for our faith. No one forced us to wear it. This was our choice, an expression of our freedom. You think women who walk around in a bathing suit, obsessing over their weight and cellulite, are free? We're the ones who are free from judgment and unreasonable beauty expectations.”

  Then for emphasis, I added, “Just because I don't cover my hair, it doesn't mean I don't believe in it. I have always tried to live by my own standards of modesty even if I am not ready to wear the hijab yet. I don't wear sleeveless shirts, and I stay away from skirts that go above the knee.”

  A week later when the topic of female circumcision arose, we exchanged exasperated looks. Sura took the lead with, “Look, you have to stop and consider the way religions work. You have a faith, and you have its practitioners. Islam can't stop its adherents from clinging to unfortunate cultural relics. Female circumcision predates Islam, and it is practiced almost exclusively in Africa. This is a horrible deviation from Islamic teaching.”

  By way of proof, Amina explained, “In Islam, both men and women have an equal right to sexual pleasure.” To the doubtful glances that followed, she said, “Yes. Islam is always being written off as a misogynistic religion when it is such a progressive faith in regards to female sexuality.”

  Islamic teaching held that regular sex was essential to a healthy marriage, that you earned God's favor or thawab for sleeping with your spouse, and that women had a right to experience an orgasm. When our wedding nights arrived, we would wear sexy lingerie of every color and style, wax every hair-covered surface, and know that the physical moments we shared with our spouses were halal, permissible and blessed in the eyes of God.

  When the discussion moved onto the topic of arranged marriages, Sura strategically rested a diamond-studded hand under her chin and said, “It is just so much more complicated than that. Like I just got engaged last month to my brother's roommate. I didn't know this, but he'd liked me for years. He was waiting until he finished college to tell me, and no, we didn't date before he proposed, but I don't feel like I needed to date him to know. And when he asked, it was really sweet. He cried. I cried.”

  Our classmates nodded with interest, as if Sura was an exhibit at a museum. Without skipping a beat, Amina added, “I think most people in this room would think I'm having an arranged marriage because my parents introduced me to a guy a few months ago. We talked over the summer and got engaged a few weeks ago, but I would never consider myself as having an arranged marriage. I want to marry my fiancé. He is smart and good-looking. He's a total catch, and I hate that just because I'm Muslim, my parents can't just introduce me to someone without people thinking it was a setup.”

  I chimed in, “Amina's totally right. I met my fiancé when I was six. We grew up together. We both liked each other, and he asked me to marry him before his parents asked for my hand.”

  For the purposes of this course, my current ambivalence toward Hadi was irrelevant. We'd just finished reading A Wife for My Son by Ali Ghalem, and the novel depicted the stereotypical arranged marriage, complete with a distasteful bloody sheet scene. Outside of class, my MSA friends and I criticized its author. What type of a Muslim would write stuff like this? So what if disgusting things like this happened? We needed literature that made us look like the normal people we were, with educated parents who asked their daughters’ opinions on who they wanted to marry, and sent them to expensive private colleges, and would never dream of insulting them by checking their wedding-night sheets. With Ghalem confirming my classmates’ worst assumptions about Muslims and Arabs, I had no choice but to keep my angst to myself. The last thing I wanted was to confirm the views my fellow Muslims and I were working so hard to discredit.

  It was the same reason why I never mentioned my Shia identity in class—image control. I didn't want to add sectarian differences to a conversation that was already so rife with misunderstanding, that years later still circled back to the movie Not w
ithout My Daughter. The irony of erasing my own individuality to challenge stereotypes was entirely lost on me. I may have only been nineteen years old, but I took seriously the responsibilities that came with representing my religion. This was not only a class but also an opportunity to change the way eighteen people thought about Muslims. Beneath every raised hand, every argument my MSA sisters and I made, I could hear us whispering this unspoken plea: “Remember us after this course ends and when you're listening to the news. Please remember us.”

  A Lebanese sales associate named Samira ushered Mama, Mrs. Ridha, Lina, and me into a fitting room as big as my dorm room. While they got situated on the armchairs pushed up against the wall-to-wall mirrors, Samira asked me what kind of dresses I wanted to see. Amor was not the kind of store where customers were allowed to rifle through the dresses on their own. I told her not to bring anything sleeveless or strapless and that I liked full skirts, preferably tulle.

  It was winter break, and Mama, Lina, and I were staying with the Ridhas for the weekend while we went wedding-dress shopping. Because Wedding Dress Shopping Day was a special occasion, Lina and I had spent the better part of last week deciding what I would wear. I now slid out of my carefully chosen outfit, an angora top paired with a houndstooth pencil skirt. On the carpeted platform in the center of the room, I stood in suede heels, nude hosiery, and a matching set of lacy underwear because I didn't want Mrs. Ridha discovering that I was a cotton-granny-panty kind of gal. Now was her opportunity to get a peek at the body that her son was marrying, and I didn't want her to be disappointed—even if Hadi didn't want her seeing me undressed.