What Not To Do When You're In Love

00 | Prologue

00 | Prologue

A second.

Less than even that, actually. One moment.

All it takes is one single, slow moment of doubt, or confusion, or plain panic, to change everything. What you'd thought you wanted, what you always knew you would never accept, and what you thought would never change about you ⏤ it is all suddenly meaningless. You stand there helpless and watch them transform your life into something entirely different from what you want it to be ⏤ within a span of mere days.

Your thoughts become foreign to yourself.

It was that painfully slow moment of tangled emotions and scattered, broken thoughts that I said it. They were all waiting, and I couldn't think straight because of the dramatic things they threw at me each time I tried to speak.

Whenever I think back to it now, I blame it on mamma. Or on my brother Jebrail. I blame society, and then myself. I tell myself that I did it in a fit of apathy ⏤ I'd let happen whatever they did to me because that was how tired I had grown of resisting.

How wrong could things go if it was sunnah, anyway?

But still, there are doubts. Part of my acceptance was caused by my curiosity to see who Allah selected for me. I don't let myself think of that a lot. Because it was again a repercussion of the burden our society laid on little girls' heads - the promise of a happily ever after right after the wedding vows.

I thought of how I had been brought up, with strange rules, unnecessary reprimands, and haunting glares.

The idea turned me to steel.

At the last moment, however, I felt myself start to shake again.

I did not plan for this, I wanted to say. But then I'd be fed some sweets and told to smile wider. Straighten your back, fix your scarf, blah blah; look at that bridal glow, look at her beautiful henna stain, blah blah.

"She is looking so beautiful crying!" Someone shouted. "Can you take my photo sitting next to the bride?"

None of them wanted to listen to what I had to say.

I want to go home, I wanted to say. I am feeling sick. But they kept praising how I looked.

I never wanted any of this, I wanted to say. But a special guest required to be greeted immediately.

Leave me alone for a minute...let me gather my feelings, I wanted to say. But the crowd around me only grew.

In the end, I could never say any of those things out loud. After crying my eyes out, hiccuping and looking around to find a single person who didn't condone the marriage I was emotionally blackmailed into, I had to say it.

I pronounced, weakly, my reply to an unknown man, the words that cuffed me to another.

"...I...do."

-

They sat me down in the middle of the bed with all the elegance of a queen.

How many days does all this pretend glamour last?

The huge, blood red bridal scarf, heavy with all the sequin work, weighed over my head and made it hurt even more. Having sat still for so many hours made me dizzy.

I couldn't look up when they were all there staring, but even as I looked down at my dress, I felt the lights glare down on me - the spotlight of half a dozen phone flashlights, for my temporary celebritihood.

All my senses were perpetually being stimulated, and to an overwhelming degree. I could smell a variety of wedding food, some of which someone would occasionally make me try a bite of, out of mercy. I couldn't say no.

Can't someone give me a sip of water?

I was shaking countless strange hands, and everyone around me was somehow a relative I'd never met. There were children all over the place, touching the flowers the place was decorated with, touching my clothes, my bouquet...

Most girls enjoyed this day, and especially this time. Sitting with their family for the last time before they moved to someone else's house...having the attention of everyone, and looking their best. Most girls actually dreamed of this day, and sitting this place, since childhood.

Yeah, most of them, I guess.

Maybe I had wanted all this too, once upon a time...but certainly not in the circumstances I was handed it all in.

I wanted all of this to be over. I wanted them away. I wanted to be by myself, even though I knew it wasn't going to happen.

Because when I'd finally leave this place, I wouldn't go back home. I'd go somewhere new. And when the lights would finally dim down there, he would come in. And, he'd be there all the time, all my life...

...like a prison guard.