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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?”

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?

How might my life have been different had I chosen — or been able to choose — my friends more wisely?

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.