First Comes Marriage

by Huda Al-Marashi

  Hadi, on the other hand, went straight to the camcorder we'd borrowed from his parents. He set it up in our hotel room, and later he lugged it to Retiro Park and then on every city tour after. Every time he opened the viewfinder, he addressed our future children and asked me to say something to our unborn offspring. I hated that Hadi was already turning us into fuddy-duddy parent-tourists with a video camera, but admitting as much seemed to establish Hadi as the better parent prematurely. And so on camera, I protested wordlessly. I was grumpy, uncooperative, and sullen.

  It was a mood that soon came to color off-camera moments too. I'd expected the same religious immunity that applied to weddings to apply to our honeymoon. I'd packed an evening gown, hoping we'd go out dancing in Madrid. Even though neither one of us had ever set foot in a club before, the image of us dancing together had always defined my mind's picture of what it meant to be grown up and independent.

  During the four nights we spent in Madrid, we never went dancing, and I kicked myself for harboring the ridiculous fantasy that merely being in Spain would suddenly transform us into a pair of ballroom dancers. The gown stayed in the suitcase. We came back to our room almost every night around eleven, and even though we had sex on every one of those nights, I pitied myself because of it. I was tired of setting aside so much time every day, sometimes twice, to pleasure-seeking. I had a lifetime of sex ahead of me. What I really wanted to do was to see this country that would only be available for my eyes to see now.

  When we later arrived in Málaga, my aspirations for the evening gown transferred to the bathing suit at the bottom of our suitcase. The modest swimwear industry was still years into the future, and so I justified this purchase with thoughts of Jamila and the swimsuits Mrs. Ridha had bought her daughter for her honeymoon in Hawaii. How wrong could it be to bare a little skin, I rationalized, if Jamila's own mother, my mother-in-law, had purchased a bathing suit for her daughter?

  From our balcony, the views of the bougainvillea-laden trellis, the shapely pool below it, and the shimmering Mediterranean only a few footsteps beyond seduced me. It couldn't be possible that I'd been brought all this way only to be denied an opportunity to enjoy either body of water. I waited for Hadi to offer that we go for a swim, and when he didn't I hinted.

  “I bet you really want me to wear the bathing suit I packed so we can go swimming.”

  “I do want you to wear it,” he said, “but not to go swimming.”

  “But why else would I wear it?”

  “For me. In here.”

  My blood boiled. I had believed in the Islamic ideal of a woman's beauty belonging only to her husband. I had so ardently defended it to my classmates, arguing that it brought intimacy to a relationship. But now that I was the object of such singular attention, I chafed. I knew I didn't necessarily want to wear a swimsuit in public. I just wanted to break the rules on this one occasion, the way others before me had broken the rules. I wanted Hadi to condone my behavior, absolving me of my guilt, and then together we'd resume our religiously observant lives. But because Hadi was now denying me this one chance to bend, it was him I resented. Not wearing a bathing suit in public was no longer my choice, the way it had been when I was in high school. It was Hadi's decision, Hadi's fault.

  Bringing my hands up to my hips, I said, “We came all this way. You don't want to go to the beach?”

  “I'm fine.”

  “But I'm not fine.”

  “So we'll go.”

  “We'll go, and what will we wear?”

  “Our clothes.”

  “I didn't come all this way to stare at the Mediterranean Sea in my clothes.”

  “You want to wear a bathing suit?”

  I shrugged because I couldn't bring myself to say yes.

  “Why would you want to now? You've never wanted to before.”

  “Hadi, I haven't been in a hotel pool since I was nine. Nine. And it was fun, and I liked it, and I just want to feel that again. Your mother bought a bathing suit for your sister. She took her honeymoon break, and I want my break too.”

  “That doesn't make sense to me. If something is wrong, then it's always wrong. You can't take breaks from rules. They're there for a reason.”

  I never imagined I could have this kind of disagreement with Hadi. I'd assumed we shared such a similar background that our religion and culture were going to be the conflict-free areas of our lives, but here we were, one of us willing to break the rules, one of us not.

  “I don't even know what that reason is anymore, Hadi. Before we got married, I didn't wear a bathing suit, because I didn't want to show my body to other men, but now that we're married, what's the point? Nobody's going to look at me or ask me out.”

  “I'm really not comfortable with you wearing a bathing suit.”

  “I really resent that now that we're married, you get to decide this for me.”

  “That's not how I see it. I don't want anyone but you to see me. I don't want to go to a pool and have other women look at me.”

  Other women, please. And because it wasn't cruel enough to think it, I said, “I don't care if anyone sees your body, Hadi.”

  He looked wounded, and this annoyed me so much I began to cry from frustration. Getting our parents out of the picture, dictating what we could and could not do, was supposed to save us. Our wedding was going to be the new opening to our love story, but here we were falling into our old patterns, losing a precious day in Spain arguing over such muddy issues—religion and privacy, control and love. Each issue felt like a falling tree, crashing into our lives, impossible to get around.

  Hours of discussion later, Hadi and I went down to the beach. Instead of a bathing suit, I wore Hadi's shorts that swung below my knees and his oversized T-shirt. I looked ridiculous, I felt ridiculous, and as we walked along the water, I pointed out every topless woman and every G-string and said, “You really think people would've been looking at me when there are people here like her?”

  But we got on with the afternoon. We walked in the sand and gathered the seashells that caught our eyes. Working together on a common task felt like a reconciliation, and we went back to our room with shells in our pockets and our hands linked. That night, however, I struggled to fall asleep. I wondered if this fight meant we were destined to spend our lives together arguing. I wondered why my mother promised me I'd have more independence after I got married when marriage had only added on a husband telling me what to do.

  The next day and for the rest of our trip, I did not give voice to any of the thoughts that troubled me. We still hadn't explored any parts of Andalusia, the inspiration behind this entire journey, and I didn't want to waste any more of our precious time bickering. When we finally took the all-day bus trips to Grenada and Cordoba, the architecture filled me with so much awe and wonder I felt too grateful to utter a single, negative comment about our relationship. It had brought me here.

  On those day trips, I'd rest my head on Hadi's shoulder on the way going and coming, and we'd take in the fields of sunflowers outside our windows, chuckling at our multilingual tour guide's adorable English and the antics of the tanned-to-rubber, chain-smoking senior citizens at the back of the bus. At the end of the day, we'd have late-night dinners at the Italian restaurant across the street from our hotel, the same overworked waiter serving us every night. And perhaps, sweetest of all, we'd buy sizzling-hot mini-donuts doused with a squirt of chocolate from the elderly couple with the cart on the main avenue.

  At the time, it never occurred to me that married life could be a continuation of this pattern. A little bliss. A little strife. Mismatched ideals and conflicting viewpoints. Big clashes and small resolutions. On our honeymoon, these arguments shook me. If we could not navigate our happy, carefree moments without tension, then I feared for our everyday lives, the struggles waiting for us when we returned.

  It was my first wedding anniversary, and instead of jetting off to Europe like Amina or loading up my car for a road trip to a rustic cabin like Sura
, I was on an airplane, moving to Mexico. After overloading units to graduate a year early, I'd been nominated as the valedictorian of my graduating class, won the History Department's award for best senior thesis, and been accepted to a handful of graduate programs, some with tuition waivers and stipends. Hadi had been accepted into the medical school he applied to as a backup plan, the one in Guadalajara, Mexico.

  A flight attendant slid an omelet, the texture and color of a kitchen sponge, onto my open tray table. I picked at my food with a plastic fork. I couldn't cry and chew at the same time.

  “Why don't you try to eat something?” Hadi said, slicing into his bread as if he hadn't just uprooted my entire existence. “Maybe you'll feel better.”

  At first, the suggestion that mere food could offer me some comfort insulted me, but after I sniffled through the first two bites, it appeared that Hadi was right. The omelet was warm, and it filled some of the hollowness inside me. Without intending to, I finished everything on my tray. Refreshed, I turned to the window and cried again.

  I had wished for so much of this. I had wanted the adult status that came with being a married woman. I had wanted to travel without heeding Mama's warning that we had to stay together so if we died, we died together. But I hadn't wanted to move to another country and put my education on hold.

  Hadi had offered to come with me to graduate school. He said he'd wait out another year, apply again, or maybe pursue a different career path. But I knew we couldn't survive another round of applications together. Hadi was a procrastinator, and I was a generous giver of helpful advice and reminders. We contemplated going our separate ways and meeting up during vacations to resume our married life, but this too would not do.

  I was carrying around a heavy bag of resentment with Hadi's name on it. Living with Hadi for almost a year had taught me two things about him: he was brilliant, but he also sabotaged himself. Hadi was a true problem-solver, someone who enjoyed troubleshooting all sorts of issues—be it a glitchy computer, a clogged pipe, or a flickering light—but when it came to school and applications, he never studied long enough or started anything early enough to have a real chance of success.

  I told myself that a few months of separation would turn my resentment into a rift too wide to bridge, but deep down, I also knew that I was afraid to go off to school alone. After years of Mama telling me I had to wait to get married to travel and live on my own, I believed it. I didn't know any Muslim girls who'd gone to school out of state, and now that I was married, it didn't feel very wifely either. The kind of wife I heard the aunties in our community extol was always dutiful and self-sacrificing. The type of woman who went to graduate school alone was independent, strong-willed, and indifferent to disapproving gossip. I had no idea how to pretend I was a woman like that. If I had I wouldn't have gotten married in the first place.

  The tissue in my hands had turned to shreds, so I reached for the coarse napkin on my breakfast tray. Less than two hours ago, I had waved goodbye to Mama and Lina wiping away their tears, and Baba standing awkwardly beside them, hands behind his back. At my feet was a bag with all of my acceptance letters to graduate school. Soon I'd have to write to these universities to tell them I wasn't coming, and those letters would be all I had left, each one a tiny diploma, a small salute to years of hard work.

  But just when it seemed that I'd reached a new depth of self-pity, a voice from within urged me to get a grip, reminding me that Mama had gone through far more, flying all the way from Iraq to the United States with a husband she barely knew. I was twenty-one years old. I had a college degree, and I was friends with my husband before I married him. Yes, I was moving to a different country, but I was only a three-hour flight away from home, and my family had already bought their plane tickets to see me in a month. This will be over in a few years, the voice warned, and you'll be sorry you didn't have a nice anniversary. Make a good memory for today, and then you can be sad again tomorrow.

  In the days before we left California, I'd entertained two competing and shamefully stereotypical images of what Mexico was going to be like. Either I'd find people in ponchos and sombreros, living in adobe houses with donkeys tethered outside, or they'd be dressed in flowing linen with flowers in the ladies’ hair and residing in palatial villas with large balconies overlooking a flowered courtyard.

  As we drove from the airport to our hotel, it appeared that only one aspect of my vision had been correct. Guadalajara was a landscape of contrasts. We drove past brick houses with glassless windows and flat tin roofs; past modern buildings and an even greater number of charming, colonial ones; and, finally once into the suburbs, past tall concrete walls, some of them a block long, safeguarded with jagged, broken glass bottles. Every time a gate opened, I craned my neck to get a peek at the mysterious mansion inside, the surrounding walls seeming to imply the home within was too precious to be viewed.

  In the taxi, I no longer felt the urge to cry. My eyes were now busy searching out my surroundings for clues as to what my life would be like. Everything had to be taken in: The vendors ladling colorful juices out of large tubs into clear plastic bags they tied closed with a rubber band around the neck of a straw. The intersections where children begged, men wiped down windshields, and clowns juggled. The arch strangely reminiscent of France's Arc de Triomphe. The multilane roundabouts that spoke a language of toots and honks.

  Before I was ready for our drive to end, we arrived at our hotel. From our room, I called home to inform my parents of our arrival and then opened up my suitcase to change for dinner. On top was the evening gown and strappy, silver high-heeled shoes I'd lugged on my honeymoon and what was beginning to seem like a symbol of my relentless, impossible hope. Last night while packing my bag with Mama, I had imagined finding a fancy restaurant to celebrate our anniversary, that there in the glory of a romantic moment this unexpected move would be transformed into the grandest of adventures.

  How foolish this dream now seemed as I stood in front of all the clothes my mother helped me select and fold. Just thinking of Mama twisted my stomach with a tightness that proved the word homesick terribly apt. For the sake of posterity, I coaxed myself into a cotton summer dress and the same pair of flat, black sandals I'd worn on my honeymoon. I would want a better story of our first anniversary than an evening spent in our hotel room, crying.

  Outside, the weather was still warm and inviting even though the sun had begun to set. We walked until we came to an indoor shopping mall, the center of which was filled with children bouncing silver missile-shaped balloons. Instantly I felt my mood lift. The lack of rules inhibiting children's play struck me as very Arab. It reminded me of services at the masjid where all the children wandered about oblivious to the speaker behind the microphone, snacking on chips, climbing over the bodies seated on the floor. Maybe we would fit in here. Maybe we'd fit in here better than we did in the United States.

  The only restaurant options were an outdated Mexican diner and the Kentucky Fried Chicken we had passed on the way. Hadi asked me if I wanted to leave and keep walking, but it was getting late, and I was afraid we'd get lost or, worse, find nothing and wind up coming back to the same spot. But when he asked me which of the two places I preferred, I panicked. I could not have my first wedding anniversary dinner at either of those places.

  I tried to pass the choice back to Hadi. “I don't know. Where do you want to go?”

  “It doesn't matter to me.”

  “You always say it doesn't matter. Today I need it to matter.”

  “That's not what I meant. It's just that you care about where we spend special occasions more than I do.”

  I started to say, “Let's just go to the di—” but then traveler's anxiety overcame me, and I suggested KFC. It took a lot more language to sit in a restaurant than it took to order fast food.

  We stood back before entering the line, staring at the lit-up menu. The options were limited enough to make the choices decipherable, but that still didn't solve the problem of what
we would order. Up until that moment, Hadi and I had only eaten halal meat, but there wasn't going to be any halal food in Mexico. We hadn't discussed the issue. Were we going to be vegetarians, or were we going to start buying store-bought meat?

  I said, “If we aren't getting chicken, then that pretty much leaves biscuits and mashed potatoes. And the coleslaw, but you don't like that.”

  “The gravy is probably meat-based, so you'll have to tell them to skip it.”

  “Mmm. Mmm. What a dinner,” I said.

  “I'm fine with that. Go ahead and order.”

  “Me? Why me?”

  “You're the one who speaks Spanish.”

  “I do not. I took Spanish in high school. Everybody knows that you don't actually speak the language you studied in high school.”

  “But you still know more than I do.”

  “Is that how it's going to be here, too? Me taking care of everything? Fine. I'll order.”

  I stepped into the mazelike line, fuming. As the line thinned, I rehearsed, “Puré de papas, bisquets,” but how do you say “gravy,” and how do you say “I'd like”? Do I just say, “Quiero, I want…” or should I say, “Puedo tener, can I have…”?

  Standing in front of the cashier, my mouth went dry. A language barrier was all it took to make a teenager in a paper hat intimidating. I'd never actually produced Spanish words for another person's ears. In my mediocre Spanish classes, we read and took tests, but even our teacher spoke to us in English. Now this boy was going to think I was so stupid.

  “Buenas tardes. ¿En qué le puedo servir?”

  I already didn't understand, but that was okay. All I had to do was tell him what I wanted.

  “Quiero,” I said, “purè de papas sin gravy.” I prayed that he knew the word gravy, but his expression was blank.

  At once, I grew uncomfortably warm. I took a deep breath and then tried another approach. “¿Habla inglés?”