The Fourth Finger

Nana’s Story Pre-arranged marriage is still a deep-rooted institution in some countries with a long cultural history, like India and parts of Africa. My grandmother (whom we call Nana) had a pre-arranged marriage that lasted for over forty years; in short, my grandparents were together till death separated them. I remember asking my grandmother when I was young how it felt to be married off to a man she hardly knew. She replied, “Feeling is out of the question; it is more of a duty.” Back in her day, when a child (girl or boy) reached marriageable age, the parents scouted the community for a suitable life partner for him/her. What they did back then is no different from what we do today in matchmaking two of our friends and/or setting up blind dates. It wasn’t that difficult for parents to play matchmakers to their children and find suitable life partners. All they had to do was identify the qualities they wanted in a potential son- or daughter-in-law and search for someone that possessed those qualities. It was that simple. Nana explained to me that she was an extremely introverted girl while growing up; therefore, her parents searched for an extroverted kind of guy, because they believed that matching her with another introvert would only bring a lifetime of boredom to their marriage. To make a long story short, parents always had the responsibility of acting on behalf of their child’s interests to find them a suitable life partner. Nana narrated one funny story that had me laughing throughout that particular evening. There was this guy in her town called Jonathan Tamir (His Muslim name was Tamir, but everyone called him by his English name Jonathan) who was a notorious sex addict. But the good thing about him was that he only loved having sex with one woman. He was not the womanizing type; he loved being in a monogamous relationship. This was a problem for the parents because they knew that it would be difficult to find a nymphomaniac woman to pair with their son. Another problem that they faced was how they would determine whether the woman actually had a high sex drive, because back in those days, women were expected to remain virgins until they got married. If a woman lost her virginity before marriage, she was still obligated to claim that she was a virgin to the community in order to avoid shame. And if she eventually married a man who was not responsible for deflowering her, the couple kept it a secret. Let there be no illusions; there were many women who were not virgins, but once it got out in the community that a particular woman had lost her virginity, most men would shy away from marrying her. Nana claimed that men were not that particular about marrying virgins per se, and it was more of a conception stipulated by the culture. The community believed that a woman who saved herself for marriage usually turned out to be a better wife than the one who did not; however, a lot of men found out bitterly that this was not always the case. In other words, there were many women who remained virgins until marriage, but after marriage, cheated repeatedly on their husbands. Nana affirmed that this type of selection criterion was just like choosing a man who doesn’t smoke or drink over the one who does because you think he would make a better husband; it is not factual, and thus, not a reasonable thing to do. Since societies at that time were very conservative about sexual matters, Jonathan’s parents almost gave up on their search for the ideal wife for their beloved son. After much prayer, one beautiful day, a fight broke out in a house about five blocks away from theirs. The fight was a blessing in disguise. It was a very quiet afternoon, because everybody was indoors due to the heavy rain. All of a sudden, shouts and screams could be heard from the house on the corner of the street, and almost the whole town rushed down to the house to find out what was going on. The wife of the man who owned the house was physically fighting with another woman. They were going at it like wild animals; the two women were practically ready to kill each other. The men of the town quickly intervened and pulled the two women apart, but they did not stop raining insults on each other. Nobody was interested in what made them fight; everybody was more interested in hearing the secrets the two of them were letting out about each other. A couple of minutes into the verbal assault, one of the women spat out a huge secret that would be an answered prayer for Jonathan’s mother. One of the women started calling the other woman’s daughter a nymphomaniac and a disgrace to her family. She shouted at the top of her lungs about how her friend had moved from another town to my grandma’s town out of shame because of her nymphomaniac daughter. In fact, the daughter’s first marriage had failed because the husband could not keep up with her sexual demands; therefore, the girl started having extramarital affairs. While all of these ramblings were being uttered, Jonathan’s mother was silently jubilating. Immediately, the following day, the family went to ask for the girl’s hand in marriage, and my grandma said that the mother of the girl (called Dina) cried so hard because she could not believe someone could actually want her daughter’s hand, especially after her secret had been leaked the previous day. She was already contemplating pleading with her husband to move the family to another community where no one knew Dina. Nevertheless, when Jonathan and Dina got married, they moved to another community and only returned once in a while to visit their parents. I asked my grandma if their marriage lasted, and the answer was a resounding yes. My grandma said that the couple was so deeply in love that the whole town came to admire them. However, for some reason, I had a hard time believing that true love could exist in a pre-arranged marriage. I couldn’t bring myself to believe that Jonathan and Dina were in love; I just believed that they were together out of duty. I don’t know if I was wrong for thinking this way, because I know my grandma and grandpa were very much in love when they were alive. I admired them so much. They were inseparable; it was rare to see my grandpa without my grandma at his side. I always prayed that I would have a marriage like theirs one day, until the day my grandma told me that their marriage was pre-arranged. Maybe I’m being stubborn or something, but it’s quite hard for me to accept that crazy love and passion can exist in a pre-arranged marriage. There is nothing as beautiful as spending your wedding night with the man of your dreams. I envision a man that I have known, spent time with, dated, grown to love, and excitingly anticipated the day that he proposes marriage, not the one my parents arrange for me, where we go out on a couple of dates before the wedding with the thought at the back of our minds that we are already married, even though we have not formalized it. The latter scenario is so boring—no excitement whatsoever. Well, I can look forward to my wedding. And come to think of it, who exactly are my parents trying to hook me up with? Aleem. I’m so not attracted to Aleem in any way. He is like a brother to me. What are my parents thinking? No, I kindly refuse the offer of a pre-arranged marriage for now. I believe pre-arranged marriages work for those that truly believe in them, but I don’t, and therefore, I don’t think it’s going to work out in my case. There is a saying in my culture that “Only what you believe in can work for you. If you don’t believe in something, then that thing can never work for you.” I am just going to call them tomorrow and blatantly refuse their proposal.