Free Tantrika by Asra Nomani Page B

Subtle pink lined my lips tonight. It was my walima, the reception thrown by the groom’s family to mark the consummation of the marriage. I broke tradition and walked around the reception. Traditional brides sat quietly. I couldn’t do that.
    We returned to my husband’s house. It was quiet when his father turned to me, as we sat in the front hall.
    â€œYou are a Muslim. You must speak Urdu. You are Pakistani,” my husband’s father told me.
    I stayed silent, but his proclamation infuriated me. My identity was instantly being remade to mimic the bumper stickers I’d seen in the bazaar proclaiming national pride. “ PROUD TO LIVE IN PAKISTAN .” “ GOD BLESS PAKISTAN AND PLEASE HURRY !” I didn’t like it.
    The man I married turned out to be my emotional nightmare, and I his. We were incompatible. I had too many ghosts to be patient with his emotional distance. He was too young to know how to soothe me. The black-and-white image of my mother, her eyes downcast in her wedding picture, haunted me.
    Within four months, I’d borne all I could bear and slipped into depression. I dispatched my friend Rachel Kessler, a buoyant, cheerful pal, to buy me books about overcoming depression.
    My parents took me to a psychiatrist. He recommended a psychologist, Dr. Donna Kozuch, whose name my father scribbled on the back of a flyer advertising a four-session program, STEP, Systematic Training for Effective Parenting. She was next door to the Holiday Inn in a sterile office building. But she filled her office with antiques and magazines like People and Good Housekeeping. She was commanding as she welcomed us with a firm handshake. Her hair was a wildly tousled mix of blond and brown. Her face had the seams of a woman who had stitched much fun in the sun into her life.
    Dr. Kozuch heard my story. “You don’t have depression,” she told me. “A woman who’s depressed doesn’t get a pile of books to research depression. You’re just in a depressing situation. Get out!”
    I was stunned and shocked. Get out? But we didn’t do that. We suffered. We endured. But I wasn’t enduring. I was suffering.
    I feared the wrath of failing my parents. I was clearly not yet wise about such things. “We don’t care about the marriage,” my father told me, his face twisted in anguish, but his eyes gentle with love. “We care about you.”
    I went home to Morgantown to recuperate. When I returned, I still wasn’t ready to leave my marriage. The man I married agreed to meetme. He picked Hoolihan’s behind our apartment building. It was the kind of chain restaurant that I avoided. But I agreed. I made sure I looked pretty, putting some pink lipstick upon my bare lips.
    I walked past the bar and cheesy wall prints and saw him waiting for me in a side room at a table for two, his back against the wall. His eyes looked vacant. His face, weary. Bags hung from his eyes the way they sometimes hang from the underbelly of a woman’s behind. I took a seat across from him and offered a weak smile. Wary. Weary. I, too, had gone through hell.
    I started, gingerly: “I’m willing to give it a try.”
    He was flat in his response. “I’m not.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œI’m not. It’s too much work.”
    â€œWhat?” I couldn’t believe my ears.
    He pushed his chair back, as if about to leave.
    â€œYou’re walking away?”
    â€œIt’s too much work.”
    â€œWhat about the promise to make this forever?”
    â€œThat was then. This is now.”
    â€œThis is now?” I was stunned that he was abandoning the marriage.
    He pushed his chair back completely and bolted. He ran out onto the patio. There was no way out. Even more stunned, I watched him hurdle over the black metal railing around the patio. And he kept on running. I ran around the side entrance, chasing after him. I didn’t know