First Comes Marriage

by Huda Al-Marashi

  I couldn't imagine declaring that I loved Hadi with such confidence. After so many years of being told it was ayb to be interested in a boy, it still felt shameful and wrong. And here was Zoya, raised among Muslims but so confident in her love for her husband. She wasn't running away from any stories about what Muslim love was or trying to prove she had an American love story. She'd married the man she wanted to marry and was going about her life, an amazing cook, a talented seamstress, and, later I would discover, a capable math tutor.

  I hadn't expected this move to Mexico to raise so many questions about my own culture and community. All of my MSA sisters from college had grown up with rules so similar to mine if not more, but the Muslim women I was meeting in Mexico had been raised with such different boundaries. I soon became good friends with the hijab-wearing medical student who told me her parents had few reservations about letting her study in another country. Now she was in her last year, planning on becoming a pediatrician. She'd mastered Spanish, and she showed me all around town with total confidence, bargaining down our taxi fares and answering jovially any questions about what order she belonged to when our drivers assumed she was a nun. Then, there was the student in Hadi's year who declared at the Friday afternoon prayers that she was heading to the airport to pick up her boyfriend, her white, American boyfriend, named Steve. She made the announcement plainly, without even a hint of secrecy or shame.

  Back at our home, I called Mama, confused. “I see all these Muslim girls in school here, and I don't understand why you didn't want more for me. Why didn't you want me to go off to school and become something?”

  “That's funny,” she said, “I always compared myself to my cousins who were becoming doctors and wondered why Jidu didn't want us to finish school before we got married. But I really thought I was giving you more. I wanted you to marry someone younger. I wanted you to finish college. I just wanted to keep you safe, too.”

  “Yes, I know, if we fly, we fly together, so if we die, we die together.”

  “Of all the things I've told you, this is what you remember?”

  “That's the kind of thing that leaves a pretty big impression on a kid.”

  “When you've seen as much death as I have at such a young age, you don't take life for granted. I guess it gave me some comfort to think if you were married, you'd always have another set of eyes watching over you.”

  After we hung up that night, Mama's words stayed with me. I attributed so much to our religion and culture that I rarely allowed her the everyday motivations of instinct and fear. And she was right; no matter how confused I was about my feelings toward Hadi, I'd married someone I'd grown up with and considered a friend. I had an elaborate wedding and graduated from college. I'd already had more. I only wished there'd been less concern for my reputation and our friendship with the Ridhas, and less istikharas, so that this could have felt like enough.

  Baba arrived in Guadalajara with a small Middle Eastern grocery store inside his suitcase. Wrapped among his pajamas and undershirts were a sack of basmati rice; a vial of saffron strands; a couple of jars of grape leaves and tahini sauce; and a few bags of pita bread, bulgur, and pine nuts—everything I'd requested before he left.

  Although Hadi and I had found a rather large Lebanese restaurant in town, owned by a Lebanese immigrant family and appropriately named El Libanes, eating Middle Eastern food didn't feel as important as making it. I needed our apartment to be filled with the nutty smell of rice, the food on our table to act as an edible identification card, declaring who we were to our friends and visitors.

  I'd never felt so American and even more specifically Californian as I did living in Mexico. In this third space, it didn't matter where my parents or Hadi's parents were born. Since we spoke English, most Mexicans accepted us as American students, our names registering as foreign rather than particularly Arab. And, among the other American medical students, our shared spoken language and the common experience of having lived in the United States were enough to bond us to a community of expatriates we might not have had anything in common with stateside.

  Sharing our food, and even Baba himself, felt like a way to introduce our new friends to the people we'd been before we moved here. Even though Baba would only be in town for a few days, I'd invited all the Muslim medical students over for dinner—a mix of American-born Indians, Pakistanis, and Egyptians, and a few of our other American friends. In preparation, Baba and I took a taxi to an open-air market where Baba delighted in the reminders of his tropical island life. He drank coconut water straight from a fresh coconut and loaded up on papayas, guavas, mangos, and avocados. “You know in Zanzibar,” Baba said, “we used to eat avocado like a dessert. We put the sugar and scoop it with a spoon.”

  As we meandered through the dusty aisles, Baba spotted a familiar dry bean. With the scoop, he poured a few into his hand and said, “This is similar to the bean they used to make mbaazi in Zanzibar. Let us make it for your guests.” Baba paid for the beans and a few serrano peppers to season the coconut-milk-based stew, and I felt an unexpected stirring of pride. Being in Mexico had opened up a window into my father's memory; it had conjured up stories I may not have heard otherwise.

  After we got back home, Baba, Hadi, and I worked together to prepare the next day's dinner. Baba soaked the beans. I roasted eggplant for baba ghanoush. Hadi chopped the onions for a tomato-based marga and the rice I'd use to stuff the dolma. I marveled at how comfortably we worked together.

  In Mama's company, my heart stewed with a warring mix of blame and resignation. It was so easy to look at the istikharas Mama made and her affection for Hadi and make her responsible for my decision to get married. It was even easier to picture myself as Mama, a woman making the most of a relationship that was picked for her while striving to reach her educational goals. But here in Baba's company, I was forced to remember things I often forgot, that Baba had not wanted me to get married, that he'd repeatedly offered me an out and I was the one who had reassured him that this was what I wanted, that I'd been so caught up with the business of becoming a bride.

  It was a remarkably short-lived burst of awareness. Hadi's presence as a host began to annoy me as soon as our guests arrived for dinner the following evening. The assalamu alaikum he offered our Muslim friends was far too quiet to make them feel truly welcome, and instead of facilitating introductions between our guests, he left Baba alone to fill up all the conversational space in the room with his favorite stories from his medical school days in India and in Iraq. First, Hadi disappeared to set up the drinks and the ice chest. Now he was back in the kitchen again, leaning over me as I scooped rice onto a platter, asking me if I needed help even though several women were already standing around, waiting to do the same.

  “You need to go sit with everybody,” I whispered.

  “I'm just trying to help,” Hadi said in the same hushed volume.

  “The biggest way you can help me is by taking care of our guests,” I said.

  As I watched Hadi walk out of the kitchen, his shoulders sagging from my rebuke, I tried to shake off a sense of extreme exasperation. I had been the one to strike up friendships with the wives of the medical students, to seek out the Muslim community at the Friday prayers held in one of the student's living rooms, and to make the calls inviting over these guests. All Hadi had to do was talk to our company, and now this dinner that was supposed to be about Baba's visit and this food was turning into another one of my assessments of Hadi, another occasion to simmer with regret. I had seen this shyness at my prom. It would have been so easy to let Hadi go then, to explain to Mama that we were not a match. I had wanted an outgoing spouse, someone at ease in a crowd, someone who could fill up a room with chatter like Baba.

  Throughout dinner, I glanced over at Hadi, trying to guess what impression he was making on our new friends. It appeared as if he'd made his way into a conversation with a few of our guests, but this didn't please me either. I thought about how slowly Hadi told stories, his hab
it of including every detail, and I feared that he was boring our company. I imagined our couple-friends going home and talking about us, wondering why I'd picked such a dull husband.

  It startled me that I could entertain such a horrible thought, so cruel and judgmental while flattering myself that I was somehow the better catch, but still I could not banish the idea from my mind until much later that night when all our guests had left and the dinner dishes were washed and then put away. Baba and I had settled onto the de lujo couch in our living room, and he said, “You are right, Hudie. This Hadi is a wonderful boy.”

  I couldn't imagine how this evening that had irritated me so much had left Baba with such a positive impression. I prodded Baba to show me what my insecurity hadn't allowed me to see. “He's a bit shy though.”

  “It's not bad to be shy,” Baba said. “Imam Ali used to say, ‘Speak only when your words are more beautiful than silence.’”

  “I've never heard that.”

  “Oh, yes. Sometimes to have the good manners, one must say less.”

  Hadi's introversion had always struck me as a burden, something that I had to compensate for with cheery conversation. I had never once considered the virtues of reticence or that people might appreciate Hadi's thoughtfulness and sincerity, the way he carefully weighed everything he said before he spoke. I didn't consider it, because I forgot that Hadi was his own person whenever we were around other people. He became an accessory, completing the look I wanted to project, subject to the same merciless scrutiny with which I studied myself in the mirror.

  I scooted in closer to Baba and rested my head on his shoulder. Our conversation drifted into the kind of long silences that I expected when I was with Baba but resented when I was sitting next to Hadi. I puzzled over this stark contrast—the judgment I reserved for my spouse and the clear, uncomplicated affection I held for my family, and I hoped that one day I'd learn to love Hadi with the same acceptance, the same forgiveness.

  I decided to take a break between Spanish II and Spanish III to enroll in a two-week certificate course, being held downtown, in teaching English as a foreign language. I hoped that I'd make friends in the class, maybe find a job after, but there was no real potential for companionship among my classmates. They'd all flown in for the course, their sights set on teaching posts in other countries. And I soon discovered that teaching a language had the same boring quality as learning one. It only put me on a different side of the desk.

  I knew I didn't want a job where I had to teach English, but I also didn't know what I'd do after I'd taken all the levels of Spanish if I didn't teach. Go back to watching Santa Barbara dubbed in Spanish, to pretend reading the academic book I'd left marked at page fifteen for a month?

  Daily I left class feeling more alone than before I'd started. Coming downtown every day had only made me more aware of Guadalajara's largeness and my lack of a purpose within it. Here in the bustling centro nothing was familiar, not the streets, the bus routes, the restaurants, or the shops. Because of the intimidating newness of the downtown, I'd arranged for a taxi driver from my neighborhood to give me rides. Some mornings, I had to call him to wake him up. Some afternoons, he didn't show up, and I had to call him from a phone booth along one of the downtown's quieter cobblestone side streets.

  On the Friday after my first week of class, I called my driver for the better part of an hour, but nobody picked up. A neatly dressed, teenaged delivery boy had seen me on the phone, on his way to drop off a package and again on his way out. He asked me if I needed help, and when I explained about my neighborhood taxi driver not showing up, he said that he had a delivery in my area and offered to take me home.

  I wrestled with the idea. I could take a ride from a clean-cut young man, with a friendly smile, who was a stranger, or I could take to the corner and try to flag down another man of undetermined age, size, and disposition who was also a stranger and who would probably rip me off. What was the difference, I rationalized, between riding home with this guy and a taxi driver? At least with this guy, I wouldn't have to haggle down the price or, more truthfully, accept whatever price he named. Even though I had been in Mexico for almost two months, I was still too timid to bargain. The most I could muster was a frown at the driver's fee, and after a reluctant “bueno,” I'd invariably get in the car and spend the entire ride berating myself for my complete willingness to be had. It would be so nice to skip that inevitable sequence this one time.

  And this guy was cute. It seemed unlikely that such a handsome kid with dark brown wavy hair, neatly trimmed around the ears and neck, and a disarming smile could be capable of anything dangerous. Wasn't there some sort of psychological study that showed good-looking people didn't do bad things? Wait. No. It showed that women, like me, were more likely to think that good-looking men would not do bad things.

  I tapped one foot nervously and smoothed the front of my skirt. A few noisy, worn-out cars rumbled past along the rocky road. Maybe I should just ask him if he had any criminal intentions toward me. If I called him on it, he'd be way too embarrassed to try to rob or kill me later.

  So I said the only thing I knew how to say in my Level II Spanish. I asked, “Is it safe?” or at least that was what I thought I asked. I might have asked him, “Are you sure?” The word for “sure” and “safe” was the same, seguro, and I couldn't remember if I had used the right form of the verb “to be” to convey the correct meaning.

  “Of course,” he said, waving his hands in the air as if offended by the question.

  I knew then I had gotten the question right, but I also felt a sudden twinge of guilt for asking. He was a nice kid, fresh from his mother's hugs and kisses, washing and ironing, and I had just been an obnoxious traveler.

  That was when I got into his car and scooted along the fabric seat toward the door. I put my bag in my lap so I could beat him with it if necessary, clicked my seat belt into place, and then slid my hands around the door's slender handlebar.

  My hands were still there when he looked over at me and asked, “Are you always this nervous?”

  I eased my grip and said, “A little. But it is good to be careful, no?”

  “Claro,” he replied. “I have sisters.”

  “Mira. You understand,” I said, my eyes fixed on the road. The part of me that feared for my safety relaxed, but another part of me stayed prickly with discomfort. As much as I'd rationalized taking this risk, it did not change the fact that I had little experience being in the company of men who were not related to me.

  At least I picked a good driver. I watched him maneuver his way through the downtown's cacophony of horns and checkerboard gridlock with ease. Not bad for somebody who could've only had his license a year or two at the most. I was terrified to drive in Mexico, but this kid kept one hand on the wheel, the other on the gear, while looking so calm he might as well have been driving a minicar around a track in an amusement park.

  He introduced himself as Antonio and asked me how I liked Mexico.

  “I like the people,” I said. “They are very good. I like the architecture. It is very beautiful. I like the food. It is very delicious.”

  I smoothed my skirt again, pulling it taut over my knees. I hated the flatness of my speech in Spanish, its toddler-like simplicity.

  We continued to have a typical local-meets-foreigner conversation, and I arrived home a half hour later unharmed but heavy with guilt. I couldn't tell Hadi I'd taken a ride home with a delivery boy I'd met on the street.

  Hadi came to the door, gave me a hug, and asked me about my class. My resolve not to mention the delivery guy did not waver, but I itched to pick a fight. I never would've done something like that had I not been put in this position of having to take taxis all over the place, of having to dig for ways to fill up my time.

  “Bad, like usual.”

  “What's wrong? Did the taxi forget you again?”

  “Yes, but that's not what's wrong. What's wrong is that I'm taking these stupid classes to teach English
instead of being in school, studying history.”

  “Here we go again,” Hadi said. “It's all my fault. I messed up in school, and I brought you here. Is that what you want to hear?”

  “No,” I said with exaggerated offense. “I just want you to appreciate how hard it is to be here.”

  “You always say that, but there's no way to make up for bringing you here. I could say thank you all day long, but it wouldn't change anything.”

  For an hour, we went back and forth, with me insisting that this interruption in my schooling was the end of my career, and with Hadi insisting that things would work out. Our argument moved from the doorway to the bedroom to the bathroom. We argued as I washed my face and changed. And then, I gave up. I started the fight, and I was the one to walk away. I said I had to make dinner and left the room.

  We didn't talk the rest of the night. We'd had this argument so many times I should've tape-recorded one, labeled it “the Mexico Fight,” and played it whenever the mood arrived.

  After Hadi went to bed, I sat down in front of our laptop, prepared to send an email full of complaints to a friend about my impossible life. Because our dial-up internet connection was so erratic, we wrote all of our emails in a word-processing program, before logging on and then sending off everything at once. There, I saw that the last saved file was titled “I love Huda.doc.” Without contemplating whether or not I was invading Hadi's privacy, I opened it. Filling up an entire page was that one line over and over again. I love Huda. I love Huda. I had heard Hadi furiously typing while I was in the kitchen making dinner. I had assumed that he was sending an email, complaining about me. And this was what he was writing.

  If only Hadi had been merely my boyfriend—not a husband whose future was so tangled up in mine—this gesture might have melted me. I might have sought him out and covered him with kisses. All these years, I'd regarded the temporary nature of a boyfriend with such disdain, but now I understood the value of that kind of a relationship, its appeal. What a gift it was to be able to experience what you did not want in a relationship and then walk away.