After she passed, he called me. I was in a terrible state and felt vulnerable. The family was a mess and everyone tried their best to console each other. But we were all weak and I needed a rock.
Our calls started up again and this time he did not hide the fact that we needed to legitimize what was going on. He wanted to do the right thing and insisted I tell my father. It was not until a year later where I got the guts to do this and it leads us back to my post when I revealed it all to my father.
This happened in the summer of 1990. After my father grilled him about our past, present and future, the chess game began. What was my next move? After the talk, my father sat me down and asked me point blank if this was what I wanted. I slanted my eyes and looked him squarely in the face. "Why do you ask? You already know this is what I want." He sat in silence and just stared at me. No expression on his face.
"Then if this is your decision, we need to start the ball rolling. I need to contact his parents." My father got up and left the room. I sat motionless for the next ten minutes. Did I hear him right? Did he just agree to it? It was completely anti-climatic. I expected yelling, arguing, him convincing me not to go through with it. But instead, he gave in. Too fast. Without a complaint and much worse, with the intent to push forward! I felt blindsided. I felt unsettled. It was the first checkmate.
My father called his friend and he contacted the parents. They invited us to come and visit. His mother lived abroad but we met his father and younger sister. Nice family from humble means. They lived in a modest home and prepared a simple meal. But there was already a difference in language. Although they spoke our native tongue Urdu, they conversed amongst themselves in Pushto. Their family was from the Northern part of Pakistan where many dialects were spoken in the Sindh province. It didn't bother me but my father made a point of highlighting this fact. Their customs would be slightly different from ours. He slyly moved one player on the board.
He called me the next day to tell me that his family approved. I was elated but something troubled me. But I could not figure it out. It was more a feeling than anything logical in terms of a thought. I didn't know why I was bothered. I knew I was making a huge decision but I knew it was the right thing to do. I knew him, he knew me so what was the problem? I was resigned to the fact that if I married someone else, someone of my father's choosing, I would not know that person as much as I knew him. It was the fact that I knew him which supported my decision to marry. If I was going to have an arranged marriage, I wanted to know my spouse before I married him: his likes, dislikes, ambitions, his personality and his mindset.
My father's friend spoke to me the following week. He congratulated me on the phone, confirming that he spoke to their family and that a verbal agreement for marriage had been finalized. All that we needed to do was to have a formal engagement. As I nodded in approval, I glanced up and found my father watching me from the living room. He was looking over his newspaper with only his eyes visible.
It was unmistakable. Although I could not see the expression on his face, his eyes were laughing.
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