Eight years ago today, I married Mian after a whirlwind seven week engagement and only have known him for fourteen months. I once wrote about our wedding day which involved two different wedding functions in two different cities. Today I will tell you about our honeymoon.
It's a short story. We didn't have a honeymoon. The End.
Of course that's not the end - it never is with me, is it? I am nothing if not long winded. My honeymoon was living intimately with my Pakistani mother- and father-in-law for fifty two days. People laugh at me when I say that, like "oh ha ha, you counted all the days?" but believe-you-me, if your honeymoon had been 52 days with your in-laws, you'd have been keeping count too.
M's parents had originally organized a trip to the US to attend their precious eldest son's graduation ceremony and see him hooded with the big D R. Two weeks after they got their visas, they got the "surprise, I'm planning to marry a white girl while you're here' phone call. They had planned to stay two months and our wedding was to be at the beginning of their trip, so really, a honeymoon was never even really discussed. We were all going to be in Florida for the wedding and graduation, and then we'd go back to the DC area where M lived. Since we'd be in Florida, we decided we'd take Ammi and Abbu, (Mian's parents) to Disney World and Sea World. We ended up getting married on a Saturday, holding our Valima on Sunday, attending M's graduation on Monday, going to Disney World on Tuesday, going to Sea World on Wednesday, and flying to DC Wednesday evening.
It was very hectic.
After getting to M's apartment, there was a scuffle about where everyone would sleep. M only had a tiny one bedroom apartment, and his parents didn't want to force the newlyweds to sleep on the couch or something, but we in turn didn't want to make the elderly sleep on the couch. In the end we got an air mattress and M and I slept on the floor of the living room. Ammi and Abbu would wake up early and pass by us on their way into the kitchen for morning tea, where Ammi would try very hard to keep Abbu quiet as long as possible so we could continue sleeping. Sometimes she was almost successful, too.
I actually didn't stay for the whole 52 days, though. I was on winter break in the last year of my undergraduate studies and I had to return to Florida the second week of January. I was scheduled to return to Virginia two weeks later to visit, but by that time Ammi and Abbu would be on their way back to Pakistan. We said our goodbyes at the airport and I awkwardly hugged them both. (Oh, also, while they were here during the first three weeks of our marriage, there were two deaths in their family. Luckily no one ever mentioned that perhaps M marrying me had brought bad luck to the family.)
After Ammi and Abbu were gone our real married life started. Unfortunately I was absent from it for most of the next six months because of school. I flew back to Virginia SIXTEEN times between January and July, but only for weekends and Spring Break. Then in July, finally finished with school, M flew back, we rented a big SUV and we carted me and all my possessions to Virginia for good.
Over the course of two years following our wedding, we would take a few trips and call them our make-up honeymoon. First we went camping over spring break a few months after we were married and called that our honeymoon. Then we went to Niagara Falls and that became our make-up honeymoon, usurping camping because Niagara Falls is such a traditional honeymoon location. Then we got to go to Italy because M's company paid for him to go to a conference there and I got the tag along for only the price of airfare. Well, Italy by far beats out camping and even Niagara Falls, so that got top billing from then on for the slot of make-up honeymoon. After that we stopped and future trips could just be self-justified rather than having to fill the honeymoon gap.
Now, whenever we travel anywhere, we talk about our son's honeymoon instead. M is always insistent that he will pay for our son's honeymoon and send him to all the places we've been. I'm pretty sure our future daughter-in-law will want to choose her own destinations. We'll see though.
Here's to a happy and healthy year number nine!
It's a short story. We didn't have a honeymoon. The End.
Of course that's not the end - it never is with me, is it? I am nothing if not long winded. My honeymoon was living intimately with my Pakistani mother- and father-in-law for fifty two days. People laugh at me when I say that, like "oh ha ha, you counted all the days?" but believe-you-me, if your honeymoon had been 52 days with your in-laws, you'd have been keeping count too.
M's parents had originally organized a trip to the US to attend their precious eldest son's graduation ceremony and see him hooded with the big D R. Two weeks after they got their visas, they got the "surprise, I'm planning to marry a white girl while you're here' phone call. They had planned to stay two months and our wedding was to be at the beginning of their trip, so really, a honeymoon was never even really discussed. We were all going to be in Florida for the wedding and graduation, and then we'd go back to the DC area where M lived. Since we'd be in Florida, we decided we'd take Ammi and Abbu, (Mian's parents) to Disney World and Sea World. We ended up getting married on a Saturday, holding our Valima on Sunday, attending M's graduation on Monday, going to Disney World on Tuesday, going to Sea World on Wednesday, and flying to DC Wednesday evening.
It was very hectic.
After getting to M's apartment, there was a scuffle about where everyone would sleep. M only had a tiny one bedroom apartment, and his parents didn't want to force the newlyweds to sleep on the couch or something, but we in turn didn't want to make the elderly sleep on the couch. In the end we got an air mattress and M and I slept on the floor of the living room. Ammi and Abbu would wake up early and pass by us on their way into the kitchen for morning tea, where Ammi would try very hard to keep Abbu quiet as long as possible so we could continue sleeping. Sometimes she was almost successful, too.
I actually didn't stay for the whole 52 days, though. I was on winter break in the last year of my undergraduate studies and I had to return to Florida the second week of January. I was scheduled to return to Virginia two weeks later to visit, but by that time Ammi and Abbu would be on their way back to Pakistan. We said our goodbyes at the airport and I awkwardly hugged them both. (Oh, also, while they were here during the first three weeks of our marriage, there were two deaths in their family. Luckily no one ever mentioned that perhaps M marrying me had brought bad luck to the family.)
After Ammi and Abbu were gone our real married life started. Unfortunately I was absent from it for most of the next six months because of school. I flew back to Virginia SIXTEEN times between January and July, but only for weekends and Spring Break. Then in July, finally finished with school, M flew back, we rented a big SUV and we carted me and all my possessions to Virginia for good.
Over the course of two years following our wedding, we would take a few trips and call them our make-up honeymoon. First we went camping over spring break a few months after we were married and called that our honeymoon. Then we went to Niagara Falls and that became our make-up honeymoon, usurping camping because Niagara Falls is such a traditional honeymoon location. Then we got to go to Italy because M's company paid for him to go to a conference there and I got the tag along for only the price of airfare. Well, Italy by far beats out camping and even Niagara Falls, so that got top billing from then on for the slot of make-up honeymoon. After that we stopped and future trips could just be self-justified rather than having to fill the honeymoon gap.
Now, whenever we travel anywhere, we talk about our son's honeymoon instead. M is always insistent that he will pay for our son's honeymoon and send him to all the places we've been. I'm pretty sure our future daughter-in-law will want to choose her own destinations. We'll see though.
Here's to a happy and healthy year number nine!
15 comments:
Congratulations!! Eight years goes by fast, eh?
Please email me! I have a question about your blog :)
HeatherVonsj@gmail.com
Congratulations !! I love your blog.
Awwww... congrats Gori :) may you have many more!
Mabrook! Now that the little one's a little older, maybe finally have that honeymoon after all? Anyway, congrats on 8 years mashallah!
Lovely to know about your anniversary. Congratulations and lots of dua'as for happier years ahead!
Congratulations!
Belated Happy Anniversary... I've recently started reading your blog and it is absolutely a beautiful and a wonderful blog that sounds challenging and I pray for your life be filled with happiness forever InshaALLAH :)
Mabruk! Congratulations. What an achievement. May you have many more, inA. Your blog gives me hope for my future marriage, inA :)
Great blog. There's a Bollywood movie in here somewhere.
Congratulations (a bit belated!) Stumbled upon your blog when doing some researches on intercultural relationships (my bf is Indian & Muslim). I love your blog! It helped me in many ways to put things in a different perspective and see them more clearly...def. helpful!
We are now in the process of breaking the news to his parents...few challenges ahead.
Congratulations (a bit belated!) Stumbled upon your blog when doing some researches on intercultural relationships (my bf is Indian & Muslim). I love your blog! It helped me in many ways to put things in a different perspective and see them more clearly...def. helpful!
We are now in the process of breaking the news to his parents...so few challenges coming ahead!
I hope many like will benefit from your blog. I thought to share my experiences, but I'm not gonna do it. You were and are lucky to have got what you wanted to have. God bless you.
Hello :)
I have been an avid reader of your blog for quite some time now. I barely remember how I stumbled upon it but I remember looking around desperately for any information out there about western women being married to Pakistani men. Why you may ask? Well, because I too, am a "Gori Wife" My husband and I met in late 2007 and married in early 2009. It's been a roller coaster and I've always felt out of place with everyone around us. Too white for the Desi crowd and too immersed in the brown world for my 'white' counterparts.
We just had a daughter 6 months ago and are living in Pakistan right now. I love reading your posts and being able to relate to so many things that you say. It makes me feel good that I'm not 'alone'. Thank you for writing this, and doing it for so long. It's inspired me to try and do my own blog here soon. My husband is from Peshawar so some cultural aspects are different than your experiences but there are a lot of similarities.
Well, Allah bless and best wishes to you and yours! Thank you so much for sharing all of this.
I love your story! Your experience sounds so much like mine, twenty years ago. I am a southern girl, and my Indian husband and I got married after after a quick engagement. Dental school for him plus undergrad for me equaled near poverty. No honeymoon for us either. He, still very steeped in his duties to his parents, and having a hard time with living separately from them, suggested we live with them. Just for a few months, he said. Well, in love and naive, I agreed, and we moved into the master bedroom of his parents' house. The only catch was, that our bathroom was the only one upstairs with a working toilet at the time. So, at any time, day or night, we would hear knocks on the door by parents or siblings who needed to answer the call of nature.
And I swear that I caught his mother with an evil smirk on her face whenever the issue was raised in conversation. I think this was her revenge for my stealing her son from her.
Needless to say, this lasted only long enough for us to scrounge up some money and high tail it out of there! Been happy ever since!
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