Ishrat Aunty, gathered beside me. My eyes scanned this curious document. Line number five asked, âWhether bride is a vergin, widow or divorced,â virgin spelled incorrectly. VIRGIN was typed in capital letters as if writing it boldly would make it true. Line number thirteen asked, âThe amount of Mahar.â
FATIMI was typed beside it in bold letters.
It was said the Prophet Muhammad asked his future son-in-law, Ali, for only a small wedding dowry, the proceeds from the sale of a shield, for his daughter Fatima. Doing the same now wore her name, as if making it virtuous. I signed. My dadi signed as half a witness, her hand grazing the page from right to left as she wrote her name in Urdu script. Ishrat Aunty followed, as the other half of a witness.
Moments passed.
A flurry of action filled the room. Seated there alone, my head bowed under the weight of my dupatta, I had just been wed to the man in the next room. My fiancé had become the man I married. It was sometimes the bride led to the groom, a heavy dupatta veiling her face. This time, it was the groom led to the bride. He wore garlands of red roses and white jasmine flowers over his dark sherwani with its high collar and regal air. His father led him into the giant ballroom, surrounded by my uncles, cousins, and my pensive father. A cone of a towering silver turban sat on his head with a gold ribbon coiling around its base like a serpent, a stiff plume over his left ear reaching to the sky.
When our eyes met, I smiled. My marriage was the completion of my struggle to bridge my culture with my adopted country, I thought. Brides are supposed to cry when they walk toward the car that will take them to their groomâs house. I didnât cry. I figured he should cry. We were returning to America. He was the one who would be living far from his family. Not me. My fatherâs wrist curled from the weight of a Qurâan he held for us to walk under. As someone else took hold of the Qurâan, it slipped and fell on my head before Ishrat Aunty, my fatherâs youngest sister, caught it. Was God trying to tell me something?
With huge ceremony I was led to my in-lawsâ house. The doors were massive wooden double doors with intricate carvings. Red rose petals showered upon the man I married and me as we stepped out of a gray Honda. A black bukrah, a goat, on a chain greeted me. It was the goat to be sacrificed for the wedding. My new sas, my mother-in-law, opened both doors as she dreamed of doing. The man I married carried me inside in his arms. My mother-in-law fed me milk, a symbol of fertility. His relations handed me gifts of jewelry and envelopes of cash that I was told to pass to my father-in-law. I did.
The man I married led me to the wedding room that had been decorated for the night. Garlands of white jasmine flowers hung from the bed as if it were wearing a thousand strands of pearls. A few days before, I had asked Omar to arrange to have us spend the wedding night away from his parentsâ house. When I saw the bed I wanted to stay there. It had the magic and scent of romance.
But he had already hatched an escape plan. He sneaked me away from the relatives strewn like a big slumber party in the front hall. We arrived at the Marriott Islamabad, a sweeping hotel with brass doors leading to a glittering lobby. He took me upstairs and opened the door on a sterile room with two double beds and without the garlands of jasmine. I lay on the bed closest to the window. He pressed a button on a tape player. The theme song from Beauty and the Beast dripped out, as we did that which we had avoided during our engagement.
The next day I went to another hairdresser. I was told this one was where Benazir Bhutto supposedly had her hair curled before her marriage to a mediocre polo player. Now she was under house arrest for crimes aplenty during her tenure as Pakistanâs first and only woman prime minister. I insisted on light makeup.