great expectations

“So,” the question emerged from one of the aunts, “Are you thinking of marrying a shabb (young man) from here or…?”

The rest of N’s female kin tuned in to our radio station. All eyes on N.

This was a hard question to answer without offending. If you said “No” there’d be a “Why  not? What’s wrong with us and our sons?” And if you said “Yes” there’d be a flurry of excitement, a few gasps at your unseemly audacity and quite possibly some (unwelcome) knockers at your door.

N was honest, brutally so.

“From here? No.” She shook her head. A dozen eyebrows asked the formidable question, so N explained, “The men here have these expectations — about their women. They expect them to cook and clean and take care of the kids.”

“And…?”

“And they act like it’s not their business. At all. The Prophet (pbuh) used to help around the house.”

“Her husband helps with the children,” they all turned to one of the women who, ironically, had a child on her shoulder and another at her foot.

“But they don’t help ‘illaw biminnu ‘aleich (except that they boast about their help), so much so that you regret accepting help in the first place.”

The women turned back to N, conceding the point.

“And men here are controlling–” N continued. She wasn’t letting anyone off the hook tonight.

“Of course,” one of the aunts remarked to her neighbor, “she’s used to coming and going without anyone standing ‘adda’ra (at her every step). It’s hard to go from this to that.” She raised her hand and tilted her head understandingly.

“So who would you marry?” They asked but looked afraid of the answer.

“An American.” Highly suspicious.

“An American Muslim –” I interjected.

“Do they exist?” Their faces seemed to say.

“Like her. Like us,” I tried to soften the blow.

“And shabab in Ameirca do those things? They really clean and help with the kids?”

“Well,” I interrupted, afraid that they’d think ours the land of Merry Men. “They don’t all do that, but there is more of an expectation that men should participate in chores, especially because women are most often working.”

“It’s because the women work!” Nods of satisfaction went around.

“I work,” one of them confessed, “and my husband doesn’t lift a finger, so I work inside and out.”

Another seconded her sentiment. Again, the swing states voted in our favor.

“It’s true. Our men don’t do that, but what are we to do? If you wait for a guy who’ll do those things, you’ll never marry.”

“Aunt, it doesn’t have to be this way,” N seized a teachable moment, “You can change this. You’re the only people who can. You’re the mothers. If you raise your sons to help out and to be less possessive vis-a-vis women, they’ll be that way. Sure, it won’t be your generation, but the next one — your daughters — they’ll benefit. That’s how society changes.”

“It’s hard. Hard.” The skeptics muttered. From others’ faces, I could tell that the  ideas were percolating.

After a long meditative silence, the aunt who posed the marriage question turned to me.

“And you? The same?”

“The same.” I said, as if indicting myself.

She shook her hands with (melodramatic) worry for us and our looming spinsterhood, and they laughed at us and we at ourselves. Then, from all around the room, little duaa’s (supplications) came flying towards us. Duaa’s for marriage and happiness. We were, after all, girls who were looking for ethereal partners, made of light, not clay. We were the kind of girls who made mothers’ hair grey early. We were girls with great expectations.