Love in a Headscarf Read Online Free PDF Page B

family to make a proposal to the girl’s family after one meeting. In fact, they may have sent the proposal even without a meeting: family references would have been sufficient. However, it was now more likely that there would be a second meeting, or perhaps even a third. By then you should know if he was the one or if she was your wife-to-be. And really, truly, having spent intensive sessions with them, and armed with details of their life, family, intentions, reputation, and aspirations, why wouldn’t you know?
    You would have met in person to know if you liked each other’s company. You would have a full reference history on their background, reputation, job (including salary), leisure activities, social participation, religious and mosque status, and even their school grades and a CIA, FBI, KGB, or NASA check if you wanted. Additionally, you would also know their family and their family history, including their track record as a unit of treating new spouses and their marriage and divorce rates. Your conversations would have been open and about the long-term. You ought to know exactly what this person was about and where they were going. It was a robust and time-tested method that seemed to work. As the Aunties said, wasn’t this the information you needed to choose the right person with whom to build a successful relationship?
    Any risk that you might expect when marrying someone after such a short period was dealt with by community structures. Family would be on hand to support the new couple through their needs and worries, and parents and relatives would counsel the couple on any relationship-teething issues. And as one of the newlyweds you would be prepared for the relationship to take time to settle down before the Harlequin story kicked in.
    The Aunties asked, what would make knowing someone for three years rather than three intense meetings a better match? It was hard to disagree with them on this point. They saw the world through a simple and practical choice between love—exciting, romantic, fireworks love—on the one hand, and a well-reasoned assessment of the practical sensibilities of life on the other. The first offered danger, exclusion, risk, a defying of convention. The latter had been proven out by history and offered respectability, a place in society, and a recognition of status and worth.
    It would take me many years to realize that I had been living their paradox of believing that this was an either/or choice but also longing and desiring to have both. I believed that I was special and could and should have both. It would take a search for my faith to reveal to me that my instinct was right—that love and practicality needed each other.
    “Shelina …” began my mother.
    “Isn’t he such a nice boy?” chipped in the matchmaker. “ Such nice manners and so good-looking. Ali said he thought Shelina was very nice and friendly.”
    “Shelina …” my mother tried again, then stopped mid-sentence. “Yes, he was very nice, and his family seemed nice too.” As my mother opened her mouth to say the next sentence, the course of my life was set.
    “Shelina is not keen to go ahead with him.”
    In the silence I could imagine the matchmaker picking her jaw up from the floor. “Oh,” she squawked, trying to hide her shock. “Why not?”
    “Well …” began my mother. What could she say that was both credible and conciliatory? Besides, she did not entirely agree with my decision. My family had encouraged me to meet with him a second time.
    I was nineteen and he was the first man I had ever been introduced to, the first candidate I had considered spending the whole of my life with. It had been a constrained and artificial setting, and the signals, emotions, and chemistry couldn’t work their usual magic.
    I was not aware that the artificiality of the meeting place had sucked away any instinctive attraction. In my ignorance of this fact, I did not understand that this was the reason why “that