First Comes Marriage

by Huda Al-Marashi

  “Wow. You'd think they had a script.” Our mothers facilitated our coupling so naturally I had to wonder if matchmaking was a maternal instinct.

  We didn't speak again until our food arrived. Hadi dipped a french fry in ketchup and said, “I'm so proud of you. You got so many awards today.”

  “Good. I want you to be proud of me,” I said and pulled two napkins out of the dispenser. I passed one to Hadi and tucked the other under my plate. “Because then you'll understand why I don't have any intention of giving up on school.”

  I wanted an American love story so much, and yet I was the one who immediately slipped into the role of the Muslim woman being courted, secure in the presumption that the boy on the other side of the table was there for marriage, well versed in her rights and ready with demands. Although Mama had never sat me down and told me what to ask for as a woman in Islam, I'd prepared for the talks I'd given in those world religions classes. I knew my future spouse had to match if not improve the lifestyle I'd been accustomed to in my parents’ home. I knew that I had a right to work and that my earnings belonged entirely to me and not to our household. I knew that I could request to be paid for childcare and housework. I knew that Hadi was the one who had to prove something to me.

  “Of course. I wouldn't want you to.”

  “Because I have plans for myself,” I said, still ignoring the plate of fries in front of me. “I don't know what I want to do yet, but I want to do something, and it's gonna be big. You only know the home-me, but the school-me is different.”

  “You don't have to tell me how special you are.”

  “I'm glad you think that because I plan on working like my mom,” I said, now picking up a thick french fry and waving it at him. “I'm not the kind of girl who's going to stay home and make cakes. I'll make you cake, but only when I want to.”

  Hadi dug a spoon into his sundae. “Well, thank you. I'm sure it will be very good cake.”

  “Yes, it will,” I said and bit into the fry that had been my pointer. “Now back to business. Since we both want to get advanced degrees, this should work out. My parents would never let me go to graduate school out of state, so we can apply together, and you can go to medical school, and I can go to whatever-I-decide school.”

  Back in March, I'd been wait-listed at Stanford. I moped and cried for about a day. I'd only been allowed to apply to colleges within driving distance, and at the time, I believed Stanford was the only university in our area with the kind of reputation that would prove to people that I was smart. As much as the people in our community stigmatized late marriage, they also made assumptions about the girls who married young, that they were less focused on school and only interested in starting a family. No matter when I got married, nobody would assume those things about me if I had been admitted to Stanford. But when I didn't get pulled off the wait list, I accepted my admission to Santa Clara University. They'd given me a small scholarship and a certificate to say I'd been accepted with honors. A certificate with gold edging. I told myself that was a university that knew how to treat a girl, but if I was married, I could go to school anywhere. I pictured Hadi getting into a prestigious medical school and us getting married after my second year. Then I could transfer and still have a name-dropping degree.

  “You do want to go to medical school?” I added as an afterthought. It just occurred to me that I'd never asked Hadi myself. Hadi and I had known each other our entire lives, but the things we knew about each other were limited to what our mothers had told us and the few topics we'd discussed over the phone.

  Hadi swallowed a spoonful of ice cream and said, “If I get in.”

  Hadi's lack of certainty was unexpected. “Why wouldn't you get in? You're smart,” I said. I'd gone to his high school graduation; he'd been on the honor roll. He was probably like me, got upset over Bs.

  “It's really hard to get in.”

  “But I'm sure if you do some research and get good letters of rec, you'll be fine.”

  Hadi raised his eyebrows and shrugged. I didn't like his noncommittal attitude. Whenever I wanted something, I made plans, plots, and lists. I feared that Hadi did not share the same ambition, and I wondered if I should press the issue or if he was just being humble. Humility, after all, was a good quality in a husband.

  I went back to my fries, and I told Hadi we'd better hurry up and get home before our families wondered why we were gone so long. As we walked back to the car, I marveled at the foot of space we still left between us. I'd just spent a half hour discussing my future life with a boy whose hand I'd never held, a boy who had not even told me that he loved me. I thought of my classmates back at grad night, and I couldn't imagine telling anyone but Nadia and Diana about this. For the rest of the world, I'd need a different opening to this relationship; I'd need a better story.

  When we got back home at a little past midnight, the family room was still full of our pajama-clad relatives drinking tea, watching television, joking, and laughing. After changing into our pajamas, Hadi and I sat among them, at opposite ends of the bench seating surrounding the breakfast-nook table. One by one, those around us got up to get ready for bed, but we stayed seated. When we were the only ones left at the table, Hadi scooted around the bench until he was sitting so close to me that our legs touched. It was the closest I'd ever been to him since we were children, squeezed in next to each other in the back row of the family car or peering over the pages of a comic book we were all trying to read. I looked up at Hadi, wanting to feel some certainty that this warmth coursing through me was love. But his eyebrows were so full. One end seemed to be reaching out in an effort to join the other. I hoped it was okay for a guy to pluck, but even if it was, how would I suggest it?

  Hadi leaned in closer and smelled my hair. His chest pressed against the length of my arm, and I felt him breathe. I forbade myself any further study of his eyebrows, but Hadi was staring at me so intently and lovingly that I had to look down and fix my gaze on my hands folded in my lap.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw Hadi reaching for the curly piece of string, attached to a sheet of wrapping paper discarded on the table. He twirled it between two of his fingers, and then, without saying anything, he took my hand out of my lap and tied the string around my ring finger.

  I held my breath. Please don't ask me to marry you now. It can't happen like this, with me in my pajamas, my hair a mess, no diamond ring, no audience.

  “I want to spend the rest of my life with you,” he said, placing his palm against mine, his way of holding my hand without holding it at all.

  “Is that supposed to be a question?” I asked and withdrew my hand back into my lap before anyone wandered into the kitchen.

  “I'm asking you if you'll spend the rest of your life with me.”

  I stared down at my still-warm hand. Hadi's touch had been more remarkable than the question I'd spent night after night imagining. Those words did not slow time or cause music to erupt from the walls. They did not make fireworks burst from the sky or conjure up a crowd hooting congratulatory cheer.

  I didn't want to accept that such life-changing words could feel so ordinary, that this moment I'd been waiting for my entire life could already be over with such little ceremony.

  “Yes,” I said and then added, “But this doesn't count, okay? You still have to ask me for real.”

  Hadi nodded, and I was relieved. The string was a tender gesture without a doubt, but I needed a grander memory for the official proposal in my life's only love story.

  That fall, as soon as I moved into my dorm room, Hadi started calling me from his on-campus apartment at UC San Diego. These were secret phone calls—between Hadi, me, and my mother. I'd told Mama that Hadi had expressed his intention to marry me and that he wished to call, but in return, she'd given me only tacit consent. She did not want to be complicit in our conversing before Hadi's family officially approached us. These conversations could only be the behind-the-scenes work, the orchestrating of a relationship. If Had
i and I wanted to officially become a couple, all our parents would have to become involved, permission granted and hard, precious metal rings placed on our fingers.

  In the meantime, I took notes in a journal while we talked.

  Hadi: It would be nice to actually touch you.

  Huda: It may be a disappointment.

  Hadi: I haven't been disappointed so far. You would be about as disappointing as an ice-cold glass of water on a hot day.

  Hadi: Whatever you are, I like. If you were to tell me you had three arms, I'd think that was great. You could carry more stuff. I'd think that's the way everyone should be.

  I never scribbled down my feelings for Hadi or my thoughts about our impending engagement or marriage. All I wanted was a log of compliments that proved Hadi had said the kind of things to me that any Western woman might have fallen for, that we'd been brought together by more than family friendship and istikharas. I couldn't imagine a day when the omissions in those journals would speak more to my mind-set than the words they captured. At the time, I only wanted my flattery of the day recorded so I could get back to studying. I'd set a goal to graduate with a 4.0 GPA, and after an hour of talking, I looked for excuses to get off the phone. Sometimes I picked a fight.

  On one such occasion, Hadi asked me if any of the people in my study groups were guys. I said that none of them were, and he said that he preferred it that way, adding, “I can't imagine how anyone could spend time with you and not fall in love with you.”

  I balked at the suggestion, called it ridiculous. Not only did Hadi sound jealous, but he was also making his feelings for me far too undiscriminating. “If I need to study with a guy to do well in a course,” I added, “I will.”

  It was a silly declaration because I didn't mean it. Ever since a boy in my dormitory asked me if I wanted to join him at dinner and I had to tell him that I was Muslim and not allowed to socialize with boys, I'd made up my own set of rules to avoid being put in that awkward position again. Never sit next to a boy in class. Never speak to a boy unless he speaks to you first. Give an excuse if a boy asks you to study.

  But three weeks into the quarter, I found myself struggling with my ethics class. Not only did Dr. Farber announce that she'd be giving us a multiple-choice midterm the following week (I preferred courses that required papers—I'd start them early, get feedback during office hours, and write and rewrite until I could almost guarantee myself an A), but the content of our class had also taken an uncomfortable turn. On the day we discussed sexual philosophy, Dr. Farber came to class bouncing a coiled black leather whip in her palm. She said we'd be exploring different cultural attitudes toward sex and that the ladies in the classroom would find Taoist sexual philosophy especially interesting. Taoist men, she explained, trained themselves to last. “That's why a Taoist man is hard to find,” she added as if delivering a punch line.

  The class had erupted in laughter, but I didn't get it. Last at what?

  After class the curly-haired, blond guy who sat two rows over motioned me to his desk. He introduced himself as Matt and the woman standing next to him as Jen and said, “We're getting a study group together. Interested?”

  “Sure,” I said. I could use the help of what I figured to be a senior and a thirty-something on her second career.

  “Do you wanna grab some lunch?”

  I didn't. Matt and his mature friend seemed like boring lunch company, but it struck me as impolite to refuse now that they'd invited me to join their study group.

  “Okay,” I said.

  We were headed for the cafeteria when Jen turned and walked away with a wave, and Matt started walking toward the parking lot.

  I stopped. “Isn't Jen coming with us?”

  “No, she always leaves right after class.”

  “Then aren't we going to the cafeteria?”

  “I make it a policy not to eat there. I'll take you somewhere off campus.”

  I had to say something. But what? I'd already said I'd go to lunch. Maybe I was making this too complicated. In college, boys and girls had lunch together, and it didn't mean anything.

  Matt opened the door of his run-down Datsun for me, and I sat down dizzy with regret. I remembered something Nadia had said: “When an unmarried boy and girl are alone together, the third person is the devil.”

  Matt parked outside a diner that looked like a barn, its name printed in capital letters that appeared to be dripping paint. Inside, a sign asked us to wait to be seated, and my stomach turned. I wanted to stand in line for fast food, eat, and get out.

  At our table, I ordered a salad, and Matt frowned. “Don't tell me you're one of those girls who doesn't eat.”

  I didn't feel like explaining this restaurant's menu was a festival of meat and I only ate halal—a term that referred to anything permissible under Islamic law. Given the circumstances, my concerns were a tad ironic. Meat or no meat, this lunch was certainly not halal.

  “I'm not that hungry,” I said, which was true. I was so nervous and remorseful I'd lost my appetite.

  After an awkward pause, I brought up our ethics class. “It's hard to get through all the reading,” I said, hoping Matt might impart some upperclassman advice that would justify this outing.

  “So don't read it,” Matt said with a nonchalance that annoyed me. Why would I want to study with someone who didn't even do the reading?

  When the check came, Matt paid for lunch despite my protests. I didn't know much about guys, but I knew that paying for meals implied things. He drove me back to my dormitory and idled in the loading zone.

  “We should do that again sometime.”

  “We really should get together with Jen and study.”

  “Have you ever been to that amusement park around here? One of these weekends, we should go.”

  I panicked. “This has nothing to do with you, but I can only study with a guy, and even that can't be one-on-one. In my religion, guys and girls don't really go out together.”

  “What kind of a religion is that?”

  “I'm Muslim.”

  Matt let his head fall back on the headrest with a thud. “You've got to be kidding me.”

  “I'm so sorry,” I said, suddenly certain that this entire exchange was my fault. He'd just wasted twenty bucks on lunch.

  “I've heard a lot of excuses from girls, but this is a first.”

  “No. It's not like that. I'm really not allowed.”

  Matt nodded dismissively. I apologized, got out of the car, and then sank into the bench at the front door of my dorm room. Mama had always said there was no such thing as a guy friend. I shuddered at the thought of what she and Hadi would think if they found out I'd gone out with a boy, and then I cursed the vagaries of American male-female relationships. At least in Islamic culture, a man secured a woman's consent to be pursued. For the first time, I saw a benefit to the directness I'd spent so many nights lamenting.

  Back in my dorm room, I pulled my course catalog off my shelf and ran my finger along the list of phone numbers printed on the inside cover. I probably couldn't yank an A out of that professor, and I never wanted to see Matt again. What was the number to dial to drop a class?

  Nadia called from UC Berkeley and told me of a girl in her Muslim Students’ Association (MSA) who wore the niqab, a veil drawn across her face so that only her eyes showed. She was so attractive that covering her hair with a hijab was not enough to contain her beauty. Men would follow her home, relentless in their marriage proposals.

  Thoughts of this girl occupied my mind for days. I'd joined the MSA at the start of the school year, and for the first time in my life, I had a social circle made entirely of people who not only shared my religion but who were also more conservative. In our meetings, the women sat on one side of the room, the men on the other. We averted our gazes before addressing one of the guys with the title “brother” before his first name. And one of the girls was already engaged, the rest screening suitors. This meant that Mama and Mrs. Ridha were right. Your e
arly twenties really was the time to get married.

  In my MSA friends’ company, I felt remiss for being one of the three girls who didn't wear the hijab. “Inshallah, you will,” my friend Amina had said to me in the library one afternoon. “You just have to be ready. When your iman is strong enough, you'll do it.”

  For Amina, the decision to wear the hijab was a sign that her faith could withstand the challenges of wearing a scarf in a Western country. She dealt with the stares, assumptions, and stereotypes because she cared more about earning the favor of Allah than she did about the opinion of others. And now there was this Super Muslima in my backyard, covering not just her hair but her face, too.

  Although I had no desire to cover my face, I pictured this girl, her life made rich by rituals, and felt as if I'd fallen behind in my faith. As one of two Muslim girls in my high school, I had considered myself observant. I fasted during Ramadan, I said my five daily prayers and kept up a steady stream of personal supplications for Baba and Lina, I only ate halal meat, and I wore thick tights to school under my uniform skirt. But in college, I feared I was losing a piety contest that I didn't know existed. I may have been getting As in school, but these girls were excelling in our religion. The very least I could do was stop talking with a boy to whom I was not officially engaged.

  The next time Hadi and I spoke, I confessed my concern. From my dorm room phone, I said, “After all these years of being told how it's wrong to talk to a boy you aren't engaged to, I feel bad that we're talking. I know I told my mom, but it's not my mom I'm worried about. It's more of a religious question.”

  “I can understand that,” Hadi answered as if he'd already given the matter some thought.

  “It's not that I don't want to talk to you. It's just that I don't know what you are to me for me to tell myself this is okay.”