Laughing All the Way to the Mosque

by Zarqa Nawaz

  “Fine,” I said, simultaneously disappointed and so excited. He was definitely The One. I knew I had been wrong before, but this time it all added up.

  “Any other questions?” he asked tentatively.

  “Do you believe in God?” I didn’t need any more curveballs.

  “Of course, I’m Muslim.”

  “You’d be surprised,” I answered.

  When my mother came home that evening, she was also excited.

  “Uncle Mumtaz found a man doing his PhD in Nebraska. He’s perfect for you. He has a good job and doesn’t mind a wife that works occasionally. He may even be willing to settle somewhere in North America,” she told me, unpacking groceries while my father tried not to make eye contact with me. “He’s coming to meet you in two weeks.”

  “I have news too,” I said. “I talked to Sami, a guy Muzammal found, and I think he’s the one, so I don’t need to meet Nebraska after all.”

  “But Uncle Mumtaz will be insulted after all the work he did for us,” said my mother.

  “I don’t want to meet Nebraska, I know Saskatchewan—I mean, Sami—is going to work out.”

  “Listen to me, two men are better than one,” my mother called over her shoulder as she left the kitchen. “Meet them both and then see who still wants to marry you.”

  I knew I’d have to talk to my father to get out of meeting Nebraska. It was going to be difficult. He’d never warmed up to the topic of marriage. I waited until seven on Saturday morning, when I knew he’d be the only one up.

  “Daddy, I know it was just one phone call, but I really think Sami’s going to work out.”

  “Isn’t he the one who lives in the Arctic?”

  “It’s still closer than Pakistan,” I countered.

  “True,” said my father. “I’ll tell Uncle Mumtaz that Nebraska can’t come.”

  I thought that was the end of it. I should have known better. For my parents, truth is a moving object. My father told Uncle Mumtaz that his mother was unwell in Pakistan and he had to rush back to be with her. By unwell, he meant dead and he was going to visit the grave, but who was splitting hairs at that point?

  Unfortunately, Nebraska had bought a non-refundable ticket and couldn’t cancel his flight. Uncle Mumtaz assured us that he understood that my father couldn’t be there to meet him.

  “Just meet Nebraska,” said my mother. “How do you know that Saskatchewan will work out?”

  Because you didn’t have anything to do with him, I thought.

  “I feel that this is who God would want me to marry,” I said.

  “I feel that Nebraska is who God would want you to marry,” countered my mother. “So let’s meet both and find out who God really wants.”

  Again with the God-off.

  My mother wouldn’t relent, but Muzammal brokered a deal. I’d only have to meet with Nebraska for five minutes.

  “Fine, but I want to meet him at Uncle Mumtaz’s house, and I don’t want you around.”

  She agreed.

  Two weeks later, Muzammal and I walked into Uncle Mumtaz’s meticulously decorated house. I could see a polished pair of black leather shoes by the door. Their owner sat on a brown leather sofa flanked with two identical coffee tables holding the same Chinese vases. Nebraska was slender, with short hair parted on the side and a kind face that I avoided looking at

  “How are you?” I asked the Chinese vase. Four minutes and fifty-two seconds left.

  “I’m fine,” he said.

  “Good,” I said to the other Chinese vase.

  “I’m very happy to meet you,” he said.

  I’m not, I thought.

  “So, where do you buy your prayer mats from?” I asked. Four minutes and thirty-three seconds.

  “Isn’t everything made in China these days?” he replied.

  “That’s smart. They really do make the best ones.” There was an awkward pause. Four minutes and ten seconds. Forget it. “Well, have a good trip back to Nebraska.” I got up and left.

  Nebraska was flabbergasted. “What? You’re leaving already?” he asked. “Don’t you want to talk some more?”

  “Not really,” I said as I left the living room.

  “Would you like to eat a samosa?” asked a confused Uncle Mumtaz, looking at his wife for support.

  “Sure,” I said as I grabbed a samosa and put it in my pocket. “I’ll take it for the road.”

  Uncle Mumtaz’s wife looked at me as if I were insane. “But the tea is—”

  I never did find out what the tea was doing because I flew out the door.

  The meeting was three minutes and fifty seconds shorter than the agreed time but I felt I had lived up to my end of the bargain. I had feelings for someone else, and this meeting felt like adultery. It was too bad, though. Nebraska seemed like a decent guy, and in another situation, things might have worked out.

  My parents offered to drive Nebraska back to the airport, my father’s mother having made a miraculous recovery.

  “It wasn’t the money,” he agonized, “it was my time.” He was in the middle of his PhD and couldn’t afford unnecessary delays. He ripped apart my parents for the entire ride. My mother came home a wreck.

  “Marry anyone,” she said. “We don’t care anymore.”

  I asked my parents to leave the house when Sami came over for the first time. Exhausted from their recent public humiliation, they agreed. Muzammal bought an apple pie, in the hope that it would encourage romance. His marriage to Suzanne depended on it. My life, which was in a state of purgatory, depended upon it. Sami had no idea how much happiness hinged on his existence.

  The doorbell rang and I heard Muzammal leading Sami into the living room. My heart stopped beating. My brother found me cowering in the kitchen.

  “You’ve been through enough of these,” said Muzammal. “You’re an old hand at this.”

  “It’s scary when you think it might work out,” I said.

  “Tell me about it,” he said as he pushed me out of the kitchen.

  As I walked past the front door into the living room, I could see a pair of raggedy, tattered running shoes sitting on the mat. Sami put down the newspaper he had been reading. He had a round jovial face, a closely shaved beard flecked with red hair, long flowing hair to his shoulders, the build of a football player and pillowy lips—lips that caught my attention right away. He was wearing a smiley face T-shirt with a pair of faded blue jeans. He was the most exotic thing I had ever seen. He was different from all the other brown men I had met. In fact, he wasn’t even brown. Like so many other cultures, South Asians put a premium on fair-skinned women, and it wasn’t so common for a man to seek out a darker woman. But he didn’t seem to mind or even notice the difference in our colour.

  “So, we finally meet,” he said in that rich, deep voice of his. I took my eyes away from his lips to meet his gaze.

  “Finally,” I said, thinking about the ten weeks I had waited.

  Muzammal came in with some apple pie on a plate and gave me an arch look.

  “My uncle works at the CBC,” said Sami. “Did you really tell the producer how to pronounce ‘Muslim’?”

  Oh God.

  “Well, I wanted to impress him so he’d give me a job,” I offered. “I hope that isn’t my legacy in the world of journalism.”

  We talked about his career aspirations and life on the prairies. I had heard enough. I wanted to get this show on the road.

  “So, what should we do next?” I asked gingerly.

  “We should take our time and get to know each other.”

  “How much time?”

  “My next holiday is in December,” he said. “We can talk some more then.”

  I was starting to see my mother’s point about arranged marriages. All this yammering and “getting to know you” stuff was exhausting. Then my parents came home. My mother took one look at Sami and pulled me into the kitchen.

  “His hair’s too long!” she said nervously as she desperately made tea to soot
he her growing apprehension. My mother was used to seeing clean-cut men in three-piece suits eager to please her. A few years ago, Sami would have never made it to the living room couch, but now I was twenty-six. All the birds of that feather had flown away. She was down to a guy who looked like a beach bum.

  “Should I ask him to leave?” I replied coolly. But her sense of pragmatism set in. After all, beggars couldn’t be choosers, and this was the first man who had lasted through two slices of apple pie. At least he wouldn’t scream at them all the way to the airport. I went back into the living room.

  Sami and I talked every week on the phone until he came back in December. We went to the CBC together, where I recorded a radio segment for the show Morningside. Afterwards we went to Pizza Hut for lunch. It was the first time we were alone without my parents hovering over us.

  “We’ve talked a lot about your career, but how do you feel about family?”

  “I’d like kids,” I said.

  “Me too. How many do you want?” he asked.

  “Depends. How many do you want?”

  “Four.”

  “Good round number, I like it. Four it is,” I replied. I could hear the wedding bells chiming. I felt comfortable and easy around him. Things were going well.

  “Are there other things you’d like me to know about you?” he asked.

  I thought hard. “I’m a very light sleeper,” I said. “Any sound will wake me up.”

  “Oh, I’m a pretty heavy sleeper,” he answered. “Plus I snore a lot.”

  “Hmmm … I get cold easily,” I said.

  “I’m always hot. I love air conditioning.”

  We looked at each other. Suddenly things were not adding up. I was scrambling for common ground. “I don’t drink a lot of water,” I said.

  “I drink water by the barrel,” he replied.

  “We seem really different,” I said. “You’re a heavy sleeper, I’m a light sleeper, you’re hot, I’m cold, and we don’t even drink the same amounts of water.”

  “It’s a recipe for disaster,” said Sami sarcastically as he took my glass of water and finished it. The bells stopped ringing.

  “You think so?” I asked, frightened that we were over.

  “You’re a strange person,” he said. “A little spinny too.”

  “That’s what people say,” I said sadly.

  “I have a holiday coming up in May, Victoria Day.”

  “More talking?” I asked wearily.

  Sami rubbed his stubbled chin thoughtfully. “No,” he said.

  That was a marriage proposal if I had ever heard one. But he was proposing to the wrong person. When we got home, Sami asked my father whether he might marry me. Turns out that Sami was also the wrong person to be proposing.

  “You know, my parents didn’t even ask me if I wanted to get married,” said my father, reminiscing. My father had been working as a structural engineer in England, sending money home to support his family. But his parents decided it was time to lure him home.

  “I rushed home thinking my father was dying, and the band started to play at the airport.”

  “It was the happiest day of his life,” said my mother. “He just didn’t realize it.”

  “Yes, it’s taken a long time,” said my father. “Young people today have it so easy. You see each other before marriage. Sometimes get to know one another.”

  “Not that much actually,” said Sami. “So we’re all good.”

  “No,” said my father.

  “What?” said my mother.

  My father looked at me. “You should reapply to medical school. You could still get in.”

  Some dreams never die.

  “I’m a doctor,” said Sami. My father suddenly paid attention.

  “Really?” he said. “You’re the strangest-looking doctor I’ve ever seen.”

  “Yeah, I’m not big on dressing up, but I will graduate in May.”

  “Well, at least he has a job,” said my mother.

  “And two eyes,” I added.

  “What?” said Sami.

  “Nothing,” I replied.

  “In our culture, children do not speak to parents about marriage,” said my father.

  “So who should speak to you about this marriage?” asked Sami.

  “Your father,” said my father.

  Sami flew back to Saskatchewan and asked his parents to fly to Toronto to meet mine. The meet went well. The Pakistanis and the Bengalis had fought a war in 1972, but those bitter memories were going to end in this union. The wedding date was set: May 22, 1993, seven months after we met.

  We got married in Taric Mosque. I wore a cream lahenga accented with pearls and gold embroidery. Sami wore a black suit. I was supposed to buy him a tie, but I forgot. His uncle let him borrow a burgundy bow tie. Sami looked like a waiter.

  In South Asian culture, the bride is supposed to be sad she’s leaving her parents, so she cries a lot and acts like her wedding is a funeral. But I couldn’t fake it. I acted like a normal bride and beamed at everybody, which made my mom feel that I was thwarting her culture. She kept swatting me to remind me to stop looking so happy, and I kept swatting back. We looked like we were killing mosquitoes on each other’s arms. No one seemed to notice the commotion.

  Between swats, I stopped to look at my mother, who seemed both tired and elated. It had been a long journey for us both. There were days when I’d thought she was ruining my life with her obsession with marriage. But her obstinacy had paid off and I was marrying the one man who was right for me. Turning to watch Sami laughing, I knew I couldn’t have found him if it hadn’t been for her.

  Muzammal and Suzanne were married four months later.

  Birds of a different feather had finally come together.

  How to Name a Muslim Baby

  “What do you think of the name Maysa?” I asked my mother.

  “I don’t like it. Call her Munzal.”

  “What? Munzal’s a horrible name,” I said, flabbergasted. “Why don’t you like Maysa?”

  “It’s not Islamic.”

  I was nine months pregnant with our first child. Sami and I had scoured all the halal meat shops for every Muslim baby book we could get our hands on. (I know that sounds weird, but that’s the only place you could buy them.) We had started our search for the perfect name the moment I knew I was pregnant. One name stood out to us: Maysa—a woman who walks with pride. There was no second choice. We didn’t even know at the time that we were going to have a girl. If we had had a boy, I guess he would have toddled with womanly pride. My mother’s declaration devastated me.

  “How Islamic is Zarqa?” said my father.

  “It’s very Islamic,” countered my mother. “Lots of Muslims choose it.”

  “Nobody had heard of Zarqa before you chose it,” said my father.

  This was true. I had hated my name growing up. It was a really odd name, even for Muslims.

  The only other Zarqa I ever met was when I was ten, and she was a sad-faced girl who looked like she couldn’t believe her fate either. And that was it. The only other Zarqa I’ve ever encountered is the henna brand sold in my local halal meat shop. (Yes, halal meat shops sell the most bizarre things.)

  My mother had chosen my name because she read a story about a woman named Zarqa al-Yamama when she was pregnant with me. Zarqa al-Yamama was a legendary Arab woman who lived in ancient times and was able to see great distances. Because she could see so well, she would warn her tribe when danger was approaching. But word of her powers got out, so one day the enemy tribe hid behind tree branches. When Zarqa warned her people that the forest was moving, they laughed at her. As a result, the enemy was able to defeat Zarqa’s people. Members of the enemy tribe plucked out her eyes with the ancient culinary equivalent of a melon baller so that they could never be used in battle again. It was a pretty gruesome story.

  “Why did that name appeal to her?” I asked my father.

  “The problem is that your mother’s name was so
common. There were at least four Parveens in all of her classes growing up.”

  “It was the Britney of its time,” I said, thinking about it. My mother had been searching for a unique name, just like I was now. “Fine. But Ummi, Zarqa’s story predates Islam. Which means that she wasn’t even Muslim, so how Muslim could my name be?”

  “She didn’t even exist,” said my father. “That legend exists in almost all cultures.”

  “Jordan named a city after her,” retorted my mother. “So she could have existed. It is a beautiful name—you were lucky to grow up with a name that didn’t sound like any of the others.”

  Somehow, as a child, I didn’t feel lucky.

  “It didn’t sound like any of the names at school, but every time I watched TV as a kid, there was a creature from outer space who had a variation of my name like Zarkon or Zirkonian,” I complained.

  “I can’t help what white people do,” said my mother. “They take perfectly good names and ruin them.”

  But it wasn’t just white people who had a problem with my name. Zarqa actually means “blue,” because Zarqa al-Yamama was named for her beautiful blue eyes. For Arabs, the name Zarqa is synonymous with blue eyes.

  “It’s like my face is a disappointment to every Arab Muslim I meet. It’s false advertising—my eyes are brown, not blue.”

  “I didn’t know it meant ‘blue,’” said my mother. “I thought it meant ‘brave woman.’”

  She probably did. Pakistanis have a bad habit of picking Arabic names without understanding their meanings. Sometimes they open the Qur’an and plunk their finger down on a word and name the child. I have known a Fig Tree and a Table. Both were lovely people, considering. One summer at Muslim camp, I met a guy named Ahmer, which means “red.” We were teased about getting married and naming our child Banafsaji, which is “purple” in Arabic. Muslim summer camp humour is very sophisticated.

  I looked at my father.

  “Why didn’t you stop her?”

  “I wasn’t there! I never got a chance to weigh in.”

  It’s true—he wasn’t there when I was born. My parents were living near Liverpool, and my father was on his way to work as an engineer on the Mersey Tunnel. It was a rainy day and he was stopped at a red light when a tractor-trailer across the intersection lost control and hit him head-on.