If I speak a lot about marriage and my beloved, it is out of gratitude and in awe. It’s not easy to find a companion and soulmate, and even if you do, there are always others who will place obstacles in your way. The half a decade before we met was a real test for me, but the opposition of the weeks afterwards: nothing compares to that.
Continue reading “Love opposed”Category: Relationships
Gönül Dağı
The kids love watching a Turkish comedy-drama called Gönül Dağı. Actually, they’ve already watched the entire series on YouTube back home, but as we’re here, they’re quite content to watch repeats on television.
Continue reading “Gönül Dağı”Most engaging
Second thoughts on engagement, post party. I confess to be confused the following morning, because what we experienced was basically a wedding, without the marriage. There were the vast numbers of guests, the dancing, the photographs. The only thing missing was the nikah. Which begs the question: why not just get married?
Continue reading “Most engaging”Drift apart
Change is inevitable, so too the drift apart. Of the multitude we once knew in London, only our Ealing friends remain close. All those days socialising with dear friends in Acton, Hounslow and Central London: long forgotten. Some moved away, just as we did. Others went through personal crises, disappearing into their own worlds. And all of us: simply raising a family has taken priority over all things. This is our life now. Relationships are a WhatsApp message, a Facebook like or the occasional phone call. Our lives, like the vast continents beneath us, must inevitably drift apart.
Glorious fourth
We didn’t get away, just the two of us, to Kaf Dağı Konak hotel. Nor did we have cake. Instead, a day spent in Teams meetings for me, carers duties for my beloved downstairs. Still, it’s not as if we’re deprived. Even in adversity, we reside amidst such beauty. We can’t complain about such blessings.
Engagement
On Saturday, we will be attending the engagement party of one of my wife’s cousins — just a toddler when I first came to Turkey twenty-one years ago. She’ll be getting married some time next year.
Continue reading “Engagement”All okay
My beloved looks at me apologetically. “I’m so sorry,” she says.
“Sorry for what?” I ask, perplexed.
Continue reading “All okay”Beyond control
In a chain reaction, the initial event may bear no relation to the final outcome, but that makes it no less significant.
Continue reading “Beyond control”Anniversary
By tradition, we always celebrate our wedding anniversary. It’s our one day off-duty, when a friend or relative will take our children for twenty-four hours. Occasionally, we’ve even had two days away, with my parents entertaining them in our absence. It’s the highlight of the year.
Continue reading “Anniversary”Green light
You say I proposed to you, down on one knee, at the traffic lights opposite the park on West Ealing Broadway, waiting for the traffic to come to a halt. As you were thinking about it, the green man said “Go!” and you agreed with him. “Yes,” you said, and there we crossed to the other side. But me: I thought we were already good to go, for we’d already been down to the town hall to book our civil marriage. Suffice to say, I wasn’t exactly worldly-wise.
Continue reading “Green light”Doing it right
There are so many things we did when we were young, which with hindsight we might choose to do differently today. Mindful of the long engagements that many Muslim couples nowadays have, I suppose we could perhaps have slowed down a bit too.
Continue reading “Doing it right”Stand with him
On a forum today, I read a question from a woman asking for advice on how wives and partners deal with this diagnosis in their spouse.
Continue reading “Stand with him”I’m fine
Friends call me, concerned. “What’s happened to you? Have you become a recluse again? You’ve dropped off social media. We don’t see you on WhatsApp anymore. Are you okay?”
Continue reading “I’m fine”Tie that knot
What stops the man from being honourable? Is it so hard for him to marry the one he claims to love and make it all tayyib? What prevents him from making two halves whole?
Continue reading “Tie that knot”This gift
My beloved doesn’t like me talking about her, us or our life together. That’s part modesty, but more fear that it will bring disaster on our heads. Which, of course, are reasonable concerns. It’s precisely why we recite Surah Al-Falaq daily, because those harms are real. So I backtrack, withdraw and seek refuge in the One from my own ignorance.
Continue reading “This gift”Clueless
How might my life have been different had I chosen — or been able to choose — my friends more wisely?
Continue reading “Clueless”Bu kalp
I know you asked me not to write anything about you, us or our life together. But I can’t help it. I get emotional thinking about it, tears in my eyes. I have never known anyone like you, capable of embracing me just the way I am, and sticking firmly at my side through all the tests that life has thrown at us. Bu kalp sonsuza kadar minnettar.
Moments long gone
I suppose those who have had the misfortune to encounter me again after all these years may be asking one another: “What does he want from us?” But apart from their forgiveness, I don’t want anything at all. I don’t need their approval, we don’t need to meet, we don’t need to have a conversation or become lifelong friends. Nope, just forgiveness for what occurred in their presence, and all that then occurred afterwards.
Continue reading “Moments long gone”A good union
Today, may the honourable be honourable. May blessings descend, good bestowed. May the gentleman be gentlemanly, his beloved valued, his companion cherished. May peace descend, serenity spread out, kindness rule. May the One guide the couple, granting contentment, gratitude and a good return. Let it be a blessed union, destined to carry them to paradise, hand in hand.
Satnav
May God bless the developers of satnav. I shudder thinking back to the daft rows we had in the early days of marriage when stressed by a map reading mishap, completely lost on the way to some event in London in our little red donkey. Such ungentlemanly behaviour, tempers flaring. Thank God we have mellowed with age. Thank Satnam we now have satnav!
Undying timidity
There is so much I have always attributed to a strict, Christian upbringing which should probably be more correctly associated with my undying timidity. When I begin exploring past events a bit more, it occurs to me that a normal youngster would have just asserted themselves to demand whatever their heart desired. Few would have been as passive as me, forever in fear of the consequences for transgressing the norms set out by the significant adults around me.
Continue reading “Undying timidity”This design
Lounging around in the garden, my wife and I have had a day reminiscing, reflecting on all the strange coincidences that brought us together. Actually, there are no coincidences. We’re taught repeatedly that God is in control and has knowledge of all things. The coincidences — too many to enumerate — were merely things being put in the right order to facilitate our union.
Continue reading “This design”Bonus content
We have in our tradition the notion that you marry a woman for one of four reasons: for her beauty, her wealth, her family or her religion. It’s then said, “Marry her for her religion and the Most Merciful will take care of the rest.” To which my response is: “So true!” The divine sense of humour is unmatched
Continue reading “Bonus content”The content couple
There are no couples that are not tested. This is the natural order of this testing realm we refer to as life. All couples will be tested by their relationship with each other, and by their children or childlessness, with good health or poor, with wealth or hardship.
Continue reading “The content couple”Social charter
I feel like I am only now coming to terms with the impact of my character on my ability to function socially. It’s certainly easier today to access research papers on the condition than it was when I was diagnosed eighteen years ago. At that time, the information available to non-specialists was negligible, with just a few resources providing a very generalised overview of the condition.
Continue reading “Social charter”Boasts
If I were to boast of famous friends I knew at university, it wouldn’t be the likes of Maajid Nawaz and Afzal Amin, only of Malini Srinivasan. I had significant dealings with all three, but only one of them I consider a friend. Two of them bullied and belittled me, one encouraged me and made me laugh. Two of them shared my faith, only one of them shared my humanity. One I regretted losing touch with for years, the other two I don’t regret at all. Only one of them I ever felt moved to reconnect with. Only of one would I utter with honest pride: “I knew that wonderful person.”
DJ Strange
At college, I had two friends of Muslim heritage. The first of them resented the Muslim tag and pretty much rejected the faith completely. The other one was slightly more serious, fasting in Ramadan and being careful about eating halal. The first of the two would get annoyed with the latter for telling him to give up his daily appointment with a sausage roll from the canteen.
Continue reading “DJ Strange”Remembering
What do I want? Vengeance? Compensation? Validation? No, nothing like that. I don’t really want anything actually. All I really want is the best for people. That’s the only reason I can think of for these notions to have been injected into my mind this past winter.
Continue reading “Remembering”Rumour mill
The difference between the victim and the perpetrator is that the victim remembers absolutely everything and the perpetrator remembers nothing at all. That’s probably why I remember every slander and pervasive lie so vividly.
Continue reading “Rumour mill”Good friends
As parents, we naturally worry about who our children take as friends. We’re worried about unserious mates who will distract them from their studies. We’re paranoid about county lines drug gangs targeting our sons. We’re frightened about groomers targeting our daughters.
Continue reading “Good friends”These eyes
The eyes do not see the self. They look outward, not inward. They seek beauty, imprinting the heart with all they see.
Continue reading “These eyes”Man of honour
Perhaps this time around you will get it right. Let the one in love marry the good man, and let her be honoured, valued and cherished. Let her find happiness, pleasure and contentment in that union.
I am completely opposed to compulsion in matters of the heart, for or against. A forced marriage, I cannot comprehend. But opposition: yes I have experienced that myself.
It’s natural for family to worry about their loved ones, but sometimes that worry just leads to a lifetime of unhappiness. Do something different this time. Be there for her. Stand by her side. Be a man of honour.
That chain reaction
It’s not really fair that I credit (or blame) particular individuals for the chain reaction set in motion back then. It was an accumulation of factors, going back long before I even met them.
Continue reading “That chain reaction”For love and honour
I believe — in my own limited understanding — that I fell foul of the defenders of a young woman’s honour thrice in my youth.
Continue reading “For love and honour”Sunset prayers
Be touched that you were remembered. Of the multitudes once known, you were never forgotten. Though separated by decades and lifetimes lived, still you are recalled in heartfelt prayers.
Continue reading “Sunset prayers”Strangers
How the years come and go, ebb and flow. How relationships blossom and then perish. All those moments socialising long forgotten, no longer even remembered, loving couples now bitter enemies, their children all grown up, setting out on adventures of their own. In two decades we have transformed from cherished friends to total strangers. Such are the tragic trials of life.
Clearer vision
I am a fool, I know it. I have been unjust, it is true. I jumped to conclusions unwarranted. I was blinded by my ignorance and an immature sense of entitlement. Self-absorbed, I couldn’t appreciate reality. I couldn’t see beyond my blues.
When we were young
Dear me,
This is another of those letters I’m writing from the future. I wrote to you previously, but it seems I didn’t go back far enough. I feel like the Terminator, going after Sarah Connor when she’s a fully autonomous adult, instead of a foolish girl just finding her feet. So here we go again.
Continue reading “When we were young”Isn’t it ironic?
I see my life as an exposition of irony. Divine poetry, if you will. People who repeatedly warned against me through different phases of my life turned out themselves to have been engaged in the very actions they erroneously attributed to me.
Continue reading “Isn’t it ironic?”Relinquishing the ego
Continue reading “Relinquishing the ego”Why waste your life in hatred, vengeance and conflict?
Amar Das