Friends Who Hate Me (Part 2)

We left off with M's closest friend telling me that I could consider him a friend and to call him whenever I needed to, and M about to jet off into the great unknown far, far away from me. At the time I was already living in another city in my last year of college, four hours away from where M lived anyway. I would come home to visit every weekend, visiting both my family and my then-boyfriend Mian. I was finishing college, and trying to get involved in the school's Muslim Students Association and taking a lot of religion classes, and eventually, a few weeks later, I converted.

When M found out, he immediately hopped on a plane and proposed. It was unexpected because we didn't talk about religion very much at all, as I've said before he was usually not a very good resource for religious questions I had. The only "our future plus religion as a stumbling block" conversation we'd ever had prior to that had focused on him asking a friend who he considered knowledgeable person on religious questions whether he could marry a Christian - getting the answer that he could marry a Christian if they really were a Christian and not just a lapsed Christian and M kind of trying to coax out of me whether I considered myself lapsed or what. Me becoming Muslim was never on the table as an option -converting wasn't expected and wasn't tied to a marriage proposal. So I was surprised that he proposed.

Apparently, M's closest friend Shane had a different understanding. Later, M would tell me about how he called Shane to break the news of our engagement. He called Shane and told him first that I had taken shahada and converted to Islam. He said that Shane immediately started laughing and didn't stop for awhile. Then he said "Well, I guess you guys are getting married then." M got angry about that and the conversation didn't last long.

Then several weeks went by with M calling Shane and his other friends, Mike and Oliver, and not really getting much back. His calls went mostly unanswered, his messages unreturned. Finally it was Thanksgiving, and M was to fly down and attend my family's Thanksgiving dinner and stay at Mike's house. The evening before Thanksgiving I was supposed to come over to Mike's house so M and I could go out for a movie. My mother even made strawberry shortcake - M's favorite - for me to take to all the guys.

When I got there, M was alone. No guys, no strawberry shortcake sharing. M was so angry he was red. They'd had an argument. M had asked what the heck was going on and Shane had tried to get out of talking about it but then there was a big long discussion about how I was no good, M could get a better girl to marry in Pakistan. You're in America, you have a Ph.D, Shane said, you can pick the best of the best in Pakistan. She's white trash - she even says so herself, Shane said, and she'll never go to law school, she's lying to you and she's just out to get your money. American girls, he said, were just for "playing" - not for marrying. Mike added nothing except that M should think about it some more, he was rushing into his decision to marry. Oliver said I could never be a good Muslim and he knew M wanted to live a good Muslim life, so he shouldn't marry me. M defended me, told them he was sure of his decision. Shane said he couldn't stand behind him, he felt guilty and responsible for the fact that M would soon marry me and later figure out what a bad decision it was because he was responsible for our meeting. He said he couldn't attend our wedding. M pressed him - you're my best friend, he said, I need you there - but Shane said he couldn't, he might not be able to control his tongue and he'd tell M's parents "the truth" about me.

M still hoped his friends would come to the wedding. Shane didn't. Mike and Oliver stood in as groomsmen.  Eventually Mike stopped returning his calls too.

Ever since then, it's felt like the situation with Shane is still waiting for the other shoe to drop. A year later M got a phone call. Shane was saying he was sorry, he never should have butted in a said anything, but he was just trying to protect M from what he thought was a bad decision. He wouldn't do it again. I don't know what M said, but he told me it was over, he couldn't have Shane in his life. "You're my family," he said "I can't have anyone close to me that would say or even think those things about you."

Two year later he got an email, Shane was departing for Hajj and wanted to make amends before leaving. If there's anything I've done to wrong you, please forgive me. M replied - you're forgiven, have a blessed Hajj. Three years after that, six years after the blowup and our wedding, M signed onto Yahoo Messenger for just a second (he never uses that anymore, but all the other options weren't working well that morning) and who should send him an IM but Shane.

It was a crazy long IM conversation. Shane saying he's sorry, he was just trying to protect M, that's what a good friend would do. M saying a few things about being disappointed, and how Shane was wrong and how M needed support at a critical time and Shane not being there. Shane saying he said a lot of things he regretted . "I am sorry for what I said about [Gori Wife] before you two got married. I never said anything after you two were married. My intention were always right. I looked at you as a dear friend and I thought at the time that you were being taken advantage of by [Gori.] You were my friend not so I was being protective about you. I agree once you had made that decision I should have stood by you which I didn't. Other people around you didn't care what you did at the time but I did.I went too far with that and that was my mistake."

M saying hey, you're crossing a line by repeating those things again, and forgiving isn't the same as forgetting. Shane saying he wanted M to bring his family to his house for dinner, M saying that's crazy, we can't have a relationship, it's over and done. Shane saying M should just say so if he can't really forgive him, not say he's forgiven but then refuse to ever talk again. M saying he's has forgiven him, but doesn't want to be friends again. There's no path forward from here. The whole conversation was incredibly long and convoluted, and of course I saved every word of it. M and Shane both left it at we hope and pray for the best for you, and then it was done. There's been no contact since but I'm not positive there won't be in the future. I'm not even sure which ending I prefer sometimes.

I still scan the crowds whenever we're at a mosque in Florida, or at a shops near Shane's house. In some ways I'm really sad that M lost his best friend. For a very long time, and even still today, M was really damaged by that. As if he didn't want to be burned like that again so he wasn't going to put himself out there. He's pretty social, but he never brings anyone close into a real, true deep friendship. I had always assumed they'd get over it and one day Shane would come crash on our couch or something. For a long time I tried to get him to return Shane's calls. I didn't want to be the thing that stood in the way of them.

Then later, Oliver got a job at the same company M worked at. I used him like my one path of redemption. I pressured M to invite Oliver for dinner often. We had dinner together 3-4 times a week sometimes, and we always made him a big birthday dinner, three years in a row, even though his birthday was on Valentine's day. M would sometimes just want to come home and chill and have dinner and I'd insist he invite Oliver. It was like I had one last opportunity to prove myself as a good Pakistani wife. But I preferred to prove myself to Oliver instead of to my own husband. I cooked the best foods I could think of - always Pakistani. I talked with him about books and current events and updated him on my law school. I just wanted desperately for those ghosts from the past to acknowledge how wrong they were - how good I was, how good our life was, how good we were together. It's like after being put down so badly I needed to gain the approval of those who had wronged me, and Oliver was the only one I had access to.

After Oliver married, things slowed down. A little time and space helped me realize (at least I think I've realized) that I don't need to prove myself to anyone. We've been married eight years now almost, we have a beautiful boy and a house and a family that loves us. We can be content in that.

And I can try my best to stop scanning crowds whenever we stop near where Shane lives on our yearly trek back home for Thanksgiving.

Friends Who Hate Me

When I first met Mian, my husband, he had a group of very close friends. There were four guys, we'll call them Oliver, Matt and Shane. Shane was the ringleader and the one M considered his very best friend ever. He was the one trying to get M out of his shell, trying to get him to experience some of the American culture he was living in the midst of. Shane and Matt took M out to shop for new clothes once they realized he wasn't ever going to stop wearing those pleated khakis. They took him to a barber and taught him exactly what to say to get a cool looking haircut. They convinced him to stop oiling up his hair and scalp with coconut oil all the time. They took him out to the entertainment complex the night we met - they're the reason M and I ever met in the first place. Shane even came along for our first date to see a movie.

After we met, I didn't meet his friends for six weeks. He kept talking about this close group of friends and how loyal they all were to each other and how they'd do anything for each other but somehow I couldn't swing a meeting invite. Later I pressed him (and pressed some more) and finally got my friend Jennifer and I an invitation to join them at a pool hall for a fun evening. It was nice, all the guys were on their best behavior and friendly. Later, M told me they didn't want to do it. "No one had ever introduced a girl to the other guys before" he said.

After that, we'd occasionally spend time all together as a group. M was a student, he didn't have a lot of free time, so he'd often combine his social outings. At first it was fine. I've always been a mostly "guys-gal" kind of person, so I was fine hanging out with these four guys. We'd go to dinner or shopping or to a pool hall. They often barbequed at home together. (M and Oliver were roommates, but the other two lived pretty close by and visited often, usually unannounced.) Occasionally someone would throw a dinner party and I'd see them there (this was after other friends got married, the married couples would throw dinner parties. The barbeques were very bachelorhood-ish affairs.) Eventually, I felt pretty comfortable around them, though there were a few strange times when it seemed I was unwelcome or particularly made fun of. I could always take it though, I'm pretty self-deprecating most of the time. And usually after the first awkward hour together things would normalize and we'd have a good time all together.

Soon, though, M's graduation was upon us. He interviewed for two jobs, one in Alabama and one in DC. After a year of knowing each other I'd become his official airport-dropper-offer, and I took him for the first one. Before the second, though, I got a phone call and it was Shane on the other line. That was a first, we had never had any contact except when we we'd been thrown together in order to hang out with M. He told me on the phone that he'd like to be the one to pick up M at the airport because he hadn't been seeing him much lately and he missed him. Somehow it got turned into a big group affair and I showed up at M's house and met the three guys, went with them to pick up Mian at the airport and then we all went out to dinner. I remember talking to Shane about it on the phone and arranging how it would be a surprise, and then M wasn't surprised at all and he told me Shane had already told him he was coming. I felt so stupid. Why didn't he just tell me the surprise thing was out and he was telling M.

That phone call and the weirdness that accompanied it was the first glimpse I had into the next few weeks and how Shane would come to haunt me and my relationship with M. It just got stranger and stranger every time I saw him after that, and then soon turned into something I thought was openly hostile. M had accepted one of the job offers and was preparing to move. I was very sad. I was certain this meant the end of any relationship I had with M. There was no question in my mind we had no long-term future, and his moving several states away just hastened the end of any short-term future we had. I was sure he'd be in a marriage arranged by his parents within the year. I was okay with that, I'd expected it all along, but I was still very, very sad about it. So I was a bit emotional at the final dinner I was invited to at his apartment. All the guys were there, and after dinner they all went out to smoke cigarettes and drink their tea. I went with to drink tea and chat with them and Shane asked me "So how does it feel knowing you'll probably never see him again?" right there in front of everyone. Me and these four guys, and he's calling me out like that. I didn't answer, I just tried to hold it together and couldn't. I slowly, slowly started falling apart, first glistening eyes, then droplets ringing my eyelashes, then frantic batting them away as they started their descent.

M very quickly remembered something he had to do at the school and asked if I'd like to walk with him and I protested, all the time saying "I'm fine, it's nothing..." but luckily he still pulled me away. Then I really got going when I was out of the presence of these three judgmental pairs of eyes. I just couldn't understand why he would want to ask a question like that. Eventually I got it together, M wrapped up whatever task he'd remembered, and we went back. I don't think there was any mention about it again. But then two days later, after M had been deposited at the airport and seemingly out of my life forever, I got another call from Shane. I didn't know what to expect and almost didn't answer. I was sure no good could come out of it but curiosity and nosiness got the best of me and I answered anyway. He was calling, he said, to apologize. He hadn't meant to upset me and he'd also felt very emotional that evening because his closest friend ever was leaving and he also didn't know when he'd see him again. He ended the call by telling me that I should consider him a friend and if I ever needed anything, to please call him.

I was shocked. It made me happy. In the coming months I would think about Shane's phone call again and again. Unfortunately I would think back in confused wonderment, though, as things between he and I went from bad to worse and eventually Shane boycotted out wedding and threatened to tell M's parents "the truth" about me - whatever the heck he thought that meant. Why tell someone to consider you a friend when in reality you think they're white trash, not good enough for your friend, and you plan to work very hard to overthrow their relationship? It still confuses me to this day.

Two (of each) For The Road

The yearly Thanksgiving pilgrimage to my family home begins. This year in new and improved comfort of a minivan. But as I was packing, I once again was struck by how even small, little things in my life reflect our half-Pakistani, half-American life:

Behold, entertainment for a five year old boy of half Caucasian American, half Pakistani heritage about to embark on a 16 hour roadtrip:

I Have Officially Started Lying

I have finally done it and taken the plunge. I am a full time liar now. When people ask me about how I became a Muslim, and whether that happened because I married my Pakistani Muslim husband, I say "Oh, I converted before marrying him."

That's not a lie, that's true. But if they press me I'll even say I converted before I even MET him, and that's not entirely true. I said the shahada - the statement of faith that I believe in one God and that Muhammad ﷺ is his messenger - the thing that one must say before becoming Muslim - after I met him. BUT! I starting reading about various world religions - shopping around, really, - well before I met him. I was the assistant manager of a book store when I was 20 and I was responsible for the religion department. Then I exhausted my small community college's entire Religion department course offerings. All 100% before ever meeting M or knowing the first thing about Pakistan. M, was, however, the first real, live, practicing Muslim I ever got to know. (Only once before him, a heavily bearded man in a long white cloak used to come into the bookstore to special order stacks and stacks of some hard-to-find religious material. I never read the booklets he ordered. I think that's probably a good thing.)

Here's why I've decided to change my story. Every time in the past I would say that I converted after we'd been dating for 14 months and then we got engaged, it seems like I can never find any legitimacy again. Not among Muslims or non-Muslims. Muslims will likely always think I'm not a "real" Muslim and I converted in name only in order to marry. Non-Muslims will likely also think the same thing, probably along with things like I "had" to convert because a Muslim man couldn't marry me otherwise (which is not true) or that my husband is controlling (also not true.) No amount of trying to change those perceptions seems to work, but of course it could all be in my own head. Some part of it definitely IS in my own head, and some definitely ISN'T, though it's difficult to say how much.

Lying, though, solves all of that. Whatever they think about my conversion, they don't associate it with my marriage. Whatever part of it is my own issues of searching for legitimacy on other people is gone too, because I've invented my own legitimacy.

I avoided lying in the past because I feel bad about it. Lying is wrong. Of course it is. I don't know exactly what is making me lie now, but I don't really feel bad about it for two reasons. First, it's none of these people's business anyway, really. I'm not lying about anything they have a right to know the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about. Second, in some ways I think it's not really entirely a lie. The PROCESS of my conversion did start way before I met my husband. I had already read parts of the Qu'ran, I had alreadly taken classes in college that explained the tenets of the faith. Perhaps if I'd lived in a more diverse area I would have even visited a mosque before meeting M. In one of the college classes I took an assignment was to visit a local faith organization other than your own. Had I done that before my marriage I think I would had definitely chosen a mosque.

I did choose a mosque anyway, though. Because I had already converted, and married, I wrote about visiting a mosque. I didn't lie though, I told the professor that I'd recently converted and thought I could write the paper with a different outlook anyway, and she was fine with that.

So at least I wasn't lying back then...

Ghosts of Pardesis Past

Back in the day, before this blog, I used to say that I'd never met another person in my situation. I even wrote that a few times in the first year of posting here, and mentioned how wonderful it had been to find a whole community of people who knew and had experienced some of what I had experienced in navigating an intercultural relationship. It can be hard to find someone who knows what it's like to introduce your partner to your family and then turn around and explain to them why you'll likely never have a future with this person because of his or her cultural baggage. Or try finding someone who knows what it's like to travel to the developing world with all of their own cultural baggage in tow and stay there for a month without stepping on any toes with "well, in America I'm just not used to seeing children working. Those kids should be in school..." Anyway, it can be strange to relate these kinds of experiences to people who haven't experienced them. But I was wrong, I HAD had a few interactions with people in my situation before, I'd just forgotten about them.

First, I've written about it before, was the wife of one of M's acquaintances. I think the acquaintance was a friend of a friend. However he knew of him, M remembered that he knew a Pakistani guy who had met and married a white American girl. After he'd proposed and I'd accepted and we were in the midst of wedding planning, he sent an email to the acquaintance and asked if his wife would mind reaching out to me since we were soon going to be in a similar situation. M had already cleared it with me and I'd been eager to talk to this woman. But when her email came, while it was friendly, it also made me feel weary. She told me to ask any questions I might have and congratulated me on coming to Islam and suggested links for if I wanted to learn various headscarf tying methods. My own personal shyness coupled with the fact that I didn't cover my hair meant that I never did contact her. Opportunity wasted. After a year or two I'd wished I had - since I felt so desolate at the prospect of never meeting another person in my situation - but it felt like too much time had passed. Later I stopped using that email address and lost her contact information entirely.

Another one of my first resources into intercultural marriage has been around me all my life, I just hadn't realized it. My grandmother's very very close friend had married an Iranian guy and all my life I'd known her and her children. After we were engaged, I'd asked my grandmother to tell her I wanted to speak with her about any insight she'd have into what my future would be like in an intercultural marriage to a Muslim man. A few weeks before our wedding, M and I met and talked with her during Thanksgiving. She has been one of the best resources for me and I thank God for her being in my family. Some of the things she's said have really stuck with me and I've adopted into my life. One I remember in particular is that she said over the years her family had a coping mechanism with her mother-in-law living with them for many months of each year and for years at a time throughout their own green card acquisition process. She said they had a master bedroom and seating area upstairs and that often, maybe even every night, they would retire upstairs to bed with their kids and watch a little television there together while the mother-in-law retired to her own room for bed. This way, they'd get some time with just their own nuclear family. I think that's been really helpful to me. In a multi-generational living environment, my own upbringing of "just parents and kids" can feel stifled and overwhelmed at spending ALL of our time all together in a larger group. In finding ways for our own little nuclear family to be together it strikes a good balance for me that makes me better able to interact as a large group the rest of the time.

Another great benefit to having this close family friend has been that even when I'm not around to explain or defend the things my own family finds strange, she has been there whispering rationality into my grandmother and other family members. So when my family says things like "Are you really sure you want your children having identifiably Muslim names in this day and age?" she was right there to reply "My kids all have Iranian names and they grew up during the Iran-Contra times and they were fine, so her kids will be just fine!" Or if they worry about what it will be like for me to have my mother-in-law living with me, they can think back to her mother-in-law. This elderly woman in her billowing black clothing running around a tiny southern town gathering up secondhand jackets to take back to her country. Then when I talk about my own mother-in-law shopping for gifts, they know something about that, it's not completely and totally foreign to them. She's an example of what a successful and happy intercultural marriage can look like and since it's been around them for thirty plus years, it's something they have always accepted. It would have been so much harder for my family to understand some of these things if they hadn't. They may think that Muslim in-laws living with you spells disaster but they also know that can't always be true because here's this happy half-Iranian family and they've been married forever and have these happy, healthy, uber-successful kids and grandkids. It makes my job of helping my family understand my life choices exponentially easier.She also knows me well and thinks highly of me so she's able to tell them not to worry so much about me, I have a good head on my shoulders and I'm not going to go off the deep end or anything.

My last example is of a meeting that came after M and I were married. I think about a year after our wedding, M met a guy at our local mosque. I wasn't there so I don't know or don't remember the details of their meeting. All I remember is that he told me later he'd met a white convert who was married to a Pakistani-American girl and they'd talked about getting us all together for dinner. I was on board and he made the arrangements and one day we drove off on his motorcycle to the local mall to meet at a Chinese restaurant together. It was lovely. They were also newlyweds, neither of us had kids yet, and it was the exact opposite of our situation. It was one of the most enjoyable dinners ever. It was the first time I'd ever gotten to spend a good chunk of time just dishing with someone else about the things most people find strangest about my life. I think that evening has been part of the reason why I'm so fascinated by the "desi girl, pardesi guy" version of intercultural marriage, it's just so interesting to me to see what it looks like from that angle.

Those are three of the pre-blogging experiences with other people in similar situations. Three small tidbits of a feeling of community, a feeling that other people were out there blazing these trails right along with me and thankfully, ahead of me as well.

Three Years Strong & Urdu Status Update

I started this blog in November 2008. I haven't been around much to write these days. Back then, I was in my last year of law school and my Mian had just left for a month long trip to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. I had a lot of free time and a lot to talk about. I still have lots to talk about, it's just harder to find the time. So as you can see I've recently been on a bit of a blogging vacation. I tell everyone who asks about it that I have puh-lenty of ideas and I do. I have a "blog post ideas" list with close to a hundred topics on it. Some of them mundane, some of them silly, some of them about lotas. (I have been accused of tweeting about lotas a lot and I want to even it out here on the blog too. I can talk about lotas in many different dimensions.)

One of the reasons I've blogged less though is that I have real, live people that I can talk to about these various stresses and joys or intercultural married life. I've actually met some of the other bloggers doing this thing in person. Several times now. There are other places we talk too, sometimes forums, sometimes Facebook, sometimes email. And one lucky lady even gets to give me free Urdu lessons which then sometimes dissolve into hours-long chats about things other than Urdu.

Oh! Urdu! It was coming along nicely. I loved the classes I was taking mostly because of the amazing teacher. A few of us in class had formed a group that sometimes studied together and progressed on to the next class together. Then, unfortunately, our teacher decided not to teach for the next semester. He was going to be traveling and having surgery. They interviewed another teacher, someone who'd taught Urdu in Pakistan before, and they'd brought her into our class to do a small lesson and observe her teach.

That sealed the deal for me that I wouldn't be continuing with the classes for as long as she was teaching. Not that there was anything wrong with her. She seemed lovely and friendly. It's just that I don't think she could give me what I need right now. I have a good sized vocabulary, I just don't have the means to make the words into sentences. I don't have all the bits and pieces of different verb tenses and the only way I've been able to progress past the bits I've learned just by hanging around my family has been having a teacher who is a true linguist and can tell me WHY the grammatical rules are the way they are. I need it be taught like math. I need the grammatical rules like math so I can learn to just plug in the things I need. During her sample teaching class I asked a question about word use - something about chaning a word into its oblique form and when to do that and her response was just that it was right one way and wrong another. My original teacher had to stand up from the sidelines to flesh out the grammatical rule. I think the new teacher could offer other students a lot, but for me, in my situation, I think I've had years of "it just sounds right this way" and I'm not going to gain much further unless I'm working with someone who can give me the hows and the whys so I can start actually thinking for myself in Urdu rather than just stringing random words together like I have in the past. I've done that enough in the past, as you could read here if you'd like to laugh at me.