by Samra Zafar
I tried to assure her that I would be all right.
“You can’t be sure of that,” she said. “Anything can happen at any time.”
It was as if, when my mother looked at me, she saw a time bomb, waiting to go off.
* * *
When we returned to Ruwais after our summer in Pakistan, my mother made a new friend.
Her name was Fatima. She was slightly younger than my mom, with four children all a bit younger than me. Fatima almost immediately came to be like family to us. She called my mother bhabhi, or brother’s wife, and my sisters and I called her Fatima-aunty. As the months unfolded, Fatima became a constant presence in our home. She was particularly attentive to me, often telling me how tall and beautiful I was, sometimes even stroking my cheek as she complimented me. She chatted with me about my friends and what I was doing in school. When she discovered I had a big art assignment, she confessed that she had always loved art and asked if I wanted her help. We had a great time working together, so I wasn’t surprised when she offered to teach me how to make some of my favourite desserts. I baked a cheesecake for the first time under Fatima’s watchful eye.
Perhaps because my mother and I were not especially close, I devoured this attention from an older woman and was delighted every time Fatima walked through our door.
My mother seemed perfectly happy that Fatima was taking me under her wing. By the time the new year arrived, Fatima’s involvement seemed to create a sort of bridge between my mother and me. I noticed that Mama would often ask me what I wanted her to make for dinner—and even unprompted, she started to serve my favourite foods with surprising regularity. In the evenings, she began to come into my room while I was studying, bringing me snacks or offering to massage my head with oil to help me relax. On the weekends, she took me shopping for books and new clothes.
I had always been jealous of the attention my mother lavished on my younger sisters. I had my father’s favour, it was true, and there was some comfort in that. But it had never been enough. I loved the way Fatima sought out my company, but my mother’s tenderness was slaking a thirst I’d had for years.
One evening, as I sat at my desk bent over my math homework, my mother walked into the room. She had a glass of juice in her hand. As she set it down beside me, she placed her other hand on my head and gently stroked my hair.
“Can you take a little break, Samra?” she asked softly. “I want to talk with you about a few things.”
I pushed my books away and turned to her as she settled on the edge of my bed.
“How are you getting along with Fatima?”
It seemed an odd question. She knew that I liked her friend. I told her about how much fun I had cooking with Fatima, about some of the things Fatima had offered to teach me to make. My mother was nodding and smiling.
“You know, she thinks of you as a younger sister.” That made me smile in turn. “Did she mention that she has a brother in Canada?” I nodded. My mother paused. And then, “She says you would make the perfect wife for him.”
It was as if someone had knocked me down. For a few moments I was so disoriented that I forgot to breathe. When I could finally get some words out, I realized that I had been sitting there with my mouth wide open.
“What?” I gasped. “What are you talking about?”
“You’re so beautiful, Fatima says. And you’re both so tall.” My mother continued, talking quickly and not looking at me, as if she had rehearsed this little speech.
“I told her when she first suggested the idea that you were far too young. And too ambitious. I told her that this was not a good time, that you had plans for university. But Fatima says that isn’t a problem. She says that her brother, her parents, the whole family are very progressive, very broad-minded. She says her mother married at fourteen but continued school afterwards. She says they would never stop your education.”
“But, Mama . . .” I started to protest.
“Samra, this would be such a great opportunity for you. I know your teachers say you can get scholarships to schools in England, but what does that matter? How could we send you to a foreign country to live on your own? No girl in our family has ever done that. You couldn’t live unchaperoned. If you were married to a Canadian, you could go to a good Canadian university, you could—”
“But Fatima’s brother—he’s so old . . .”
“He’s only twenty-seven,” said my mother. “And he earns a very good living. Computers. And—”
“I don’t care about that,” I said. “I’m not ready to be married—to anyone!”
I still felt shocked by the conversation we were having, but I had found my voice. My mother heard it.
She clasped her hands in her lap and then sighed. “Okay,” she said, as she began to stand up. “Don’t worry about it. It was just an idea. Maybe it’s something you might consider in a few years.”
As my mother walked out of the room, I let out a long breath. I pulled my books back in front of me and picked up a pencil, glad to put the absurd conversation behind me.
CHAPTER 3
THE PROPOSAL
My mother left my bedroom that night suggesting I had at least a few more years before I had to grapple with the idea of marriage. But neither she nor Fatima had any intention of waiting that long.
My mother brought up the proposal the very next day. Then the next. And the next. She returned to the idea of university abroad. My teachers had talked to me about applying to the best schools in the world: Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Stanford. Now my mother began to sow doubts.
“Even if we could find you a safe place to live in any of those cities, what if you don’t get into those schools? You’d be left with Pakistan. Do you really want to go to university in Karachi or Lahore when you could go to an excellent school in Canada?”
My mother knew that the UAE had no prestigious universities we could afford—and that the prospect of attending school in Pakistan, living with relatives, was one I did not relish. And maybe she was right. Why did I feel such confidence that I would get into any of those distinguished places? It wasn’t as if I knew of any other students who had gone. Perhaps this was just wishful thinking on my teachers’ part.
“Samra, you know what happens when a woman waits too long,” said my mother. I understood that she was referring to my aunt, the school principal. Aunt Nasreen had rebuffed all of her family’s attempts to find her a spouse when she was a young woman. Instead she went to university, got her teacher’s training and started to work.
“Before she knew it, she was forty. And there were no offers!” my mother reminded me. “Look who she ended up with because of that!”
The spectre my mother called forth was a deeply disconcerting one. After the summer months in Karachi, I was well aware of my aunt’s dismal predicament. She had her career, but her lack of options had left her locked in a childless, loveless marriage with a man who, it turned out, could not be trusted around young girls.
“No good man is still available to older women,” my mother insisted.
Not long after this conversation, Aunt Nasreen herself called to speak to me.
“Listen to me, Samra,” she said pleadingly. “Don’t give up a marriage proposal to go to school. Look at what happened to me.” She reiterated what my mother had told me: “The best proposals come when you are young. You’ll get more later, but they won’t be as good.” I could hear the sadness in her voice.
“Men aren’t usually okay with their wives studying after they get married, so if he says you can go to school after the wedding, jump at this chance.”
My aunt’s words carried the force of bitter experience and regret. But what she said next slipped into my thoughts and could not be dislodged.
“Even if he doesn’t let you go, it doesn’t matter. The most important thing is that a woman get married.”
* * *
Over the coming weeks, my mother also broached the delicate matter of the male attention I had been getting
.
“Think about what happened with your uncle this summer, Samra.” My mother’s tone was genuinely concerned. I thought of how uneasy and nervous she’d been since I had become a teenager.
“This kind of thing will happen again and again until you are safely married,” she said. “Next time you might not be so lucky. It’s so easy for a single woman’s life to be ruined by a man.”
And finally, my mother invoked a higher power. “This marriage proposal is Allah’s gift—his way of keeping you out of danger. If you say no, you will be showing your lack of faith in Allah, and you’ll surely be punished.”
Fatima’s approach was a little different but no more subtle. In the weeks after my mother had first told me about the proposal, Fatima’s visits to our home became even more frequent. She brought along photographs of Ahmed to show me.
“You see what a beautiful couple you will make,” she said. “Both so tall and good-looking.”
Fatima also talked about how wonderful her brother was—smart, kind, witty and open-minded. “I’m so sure you will like him, Samra,” she said. “Why don’t you exchange emails with him? Get to know him?”
I didn’t want to appear unreasonable or churlish, so I gave Fatima my email address. She gave me Ahmed’s, too, but I wasn’t about to write to him first.
When Ahmed’s first email arrived, it was friendly and brief. He said that I sounded like a nice girl. He would like to get to know me. He asked what my favourite colour was. What I liked to eat.
I responded even more succinctly. Black. Pizza.
He wrote back to say that pizza was one of his favourite foods, too.
* * *
Struggling with an onslaught of advice about the proposal, I sought out the support of my friends. I knew that most of these girls were much more interested in the topic of marriage than I had ever been. Every time one of them came back from the wedding of a relative or family friend, our conversations would be dominated for days by descriptions of the bridal dress or jewellery or decorations. But I assumed that, like me, they saw marriage as part of their distant future.
Sitting in the student lounge during our lunch break, I produced a photo of Ahmed that Fatima had given me and told my friends of the bizarre conversations I’d been having with my mother. Their shrieks of surprise were quickly followed by a volley of questions about Ahmed and then expressions of delight and envy.
“You’re so lucky!” they said, one after another.
I could barely believe what I was hearing. “I’m only sixteen,” I protested.
“But you could go to Canada!” one of them said.
“And he’s so tall and handsome,” someone else chimed in.
“But I don’t want to get married.” No one seemed to understand me.
“Are you crazy? If I had a proposal like that, I’d jump at it,” said another girl. Everyone was nodding. I looked around at all my dear friends but couldn’t find a hint of doubt in their faces. The bell rang.
“Samra, don’t be stupid. This is a great thing,” said someone, as we collected our books and prepared to go to class. All I could do was smile ruefully at her.
I seemed to be surrounded by a chorus of voices. The song they sang grew louder, with messages from my cousins in Pakistan exclaiming about my good luck and aunties weighing in on the “great news.” It was confusing to be so terrified and doubtful while everyone else was cheering my good fortune—as if I were complaining about the weight of gold coins in my purse.
I began to wonder about the future I had predicted for myself. My father and many of my teachers had been telling me for years that I was talented and special. I had become convinced that I would be able to do things a little differently than the women I saw around me—that I could have it all. But what made me think I would escape my aunt’s fate? I still didn’t believe that marriage was “a girl’s purpose,” but did I want to be single for the rest of my life? After all, an unmarried, childless woman invited nothing but pity and derision. No matter what else she accomplished, she would be considered a failure. Failure was something I had never been able to handle. The very prospect was terrifying. And yet it seemed that the path I had been carving out for myself might be paved with it.
When my English teacher, Ms. Harr, gave the class a creative writing assignment, I knew immediately what I was going to write about. I had gone to bed almost every night imagining what it would be like if I accepted the proposal. I wrote the piece about sitting on a bed in my red-and-gold silk wedding clothes, with the serpent bangles creeping up to choke me.
The day after I handed it in, Ms. Harr asked to talk with me at the end of class. Once the rest of the students had left the room, she asked me to come with her to her office.
“What’s going on, Samra?”
I told her about the proposal.
Finally, someone else looked as shocked as I felt. “You are just sixteen. How in the world can you be thinking about this?”
But Ms. Harr’s outrage somehow made me feel defensive. I found myself repeating all the arguments that had been made to me. And I added a few of my own. “His family are very nice people. And he’s so similar to me. He’s tall, and he likes pizza.”
Ms. Harr sighed. Her look of concern had not eased.
“I am very mature for my age. I can handle this,” I said defiantly.
“Yes, you are mature. But you are also a child,” she said firmly.
* * *
Despite my mother’s excitement and all the talk about “the proposal,” my family had not actually had an offer of marriage. That formality would come only once Ahmed’s parents had met my family and approved of me.
A few weeks after my talk with Ms. Harr, I learned that Ahmed’s parents were travelling from their home in Kuwait to visit Fatima and to meet me.
Our house became abuzz with preparations. My mother thought it would be an excellent idea if I showed Fatima’s parents that I enjoyed cooking. She hovered over me as I prepared chicken puffs and samosas, explaining that it was also important that I made myself look as attractive as I could.
The afternoon of the dinner, I put on a shalwar kameez and dupatta. I straightened my hair and put on a little makeup. I had been told that my presence in the living room would not be required immediately. I was to eat in the kitchen with my sisters until I was summoned.
I sat at the table, mute with nerves, as my sisters chatted excitedly about the strangers in the living room. Then Fatima appeared in the doorway.
“Are you excited to meet your future in-laws?” Her voice was teasing, but only my sisters giggled. I tried to smile.
“Don’t be nervous—they already like you,” she said even though we had not yet met. “Just say salaam when you go in, and make sure that you behave shyly. Don’t talk a lot, but be yourself.”
I wanted to point out that her last two directives were completely contradictory, but for once words escaped me.
Then I noticed Fatima’s brow crease as she stared intently at my face. “You aren’t wearing enough makeup,” she said. “Come to the bedroom, and I’ll do it for you.”
In my room, she pulled out eyeliner and put a long, dark sweep across my lids. Then she went through my makeup bag and plucked out the darkest lipstick I had. When she was done, she pulled back and looked at me with satisfaction.
“Now you look older,” she said. “Time to take you in.”
I stood up and draped the dupatta over my head. We went back to the kitchen, where I picked up the tea tray.
As I followed Fatima into the living room, I felt as if I were an actress walking onto a stage. Fatima had taken care of my makeup and given me direction. Now it was my turn to play the part as convincingly as I could. I kept my head lowered, but as I stepped into the room I could see Fatima’s parents. Her mother was sitting by her side in the middle of the sofa. Her father was in a chair next to them. Her mother reminded me faintly of an older version of Fatima. My only thought about her father was that with his wh
ite hair and grey complexion he looked vastly older than Papa.
I moved towards them, lowering the tea tray onto the coffee table in front of the sofa.
“Please serve our guests, Samra,” my mother said.
I sank demurely onto the floor beside the coffee table and with a trembling hand lifted the teapot. “Aunty, how much sugar and milk do you take?”
As I prepared each cup of tea, I tried to keep my hands from shaking. I could feel all eyes on me, as if the way I poured the tea or how I spooned sugar into the cups could convey all that was important about me.
After everyone had their tea, I sat down beside my mother.
“No, Samra. Come sit with me,” said Fatima’s mother. She was patting a spot that she and Fatima had made between them. I looked at my mother. She nodded.
Once I had settled between the two women, Fatima’s father started to ask me questions. What was I studying in school now? What did I want to study in the future?
It was a relief to talk about something I truly cared about. But I hadn’t got very far in my explanations when Fatima’s mother cut me off.
“Enough about school. Tell me, what dishes do you like to cook?”
I had just begun to answer that question, when my mother interrupted me. I could hear the nervous excitement in her voice. “Samra really loves cooking. She made the chicken puffs we had tonight, of course, but she also makes biryani and amazing rotis. And she loves trying new recipes. Just the other day—”
“She also plays cricket and squash,” my father cut in.
The room went silent. Fatima’s father took a long sip of tea and then put down his cup.
“Oh yes, sports are great for the young, but of course Samra won’t be able to do that for very much longer.”
Before my father could respond, Fatima’s mother had grabbed my hand and pulled it towards her. “Now, let’s see what size ring you would wear.”
She slipped off her own ring and shoved it onto my finger. It spun around easily. “Hmmm,” she said, taking the ring off my hand and putting it back on hers. Next she slid one of her bangles onto my wrist and then lifted my elbow. The bangle dropped off. “She’s very thin,” she exclaimed, “but that’s a good thing. Women always put on weight after they have children.”
