“I don’t get it,” I said. “How is it possible that you know nearly a dozen languages fluently, but in Urdu you can’t even remember “My name is …” or “How are you?”
“I don’t know, sweetheart,” he said. “Maybe it’s some kind of mental block. Anyway, I don’t learn like that. I can only absorb through intense study.”
I reasoned that maybe learning these languages had taken Adam more work than I’d previously imagined. He was, I’d discovered, incredibly hardworking. And the truth is, Adam’s success sometimes made me feel inadequate. I was embarrassed of my own job, which felt so sporadic and solitary, when I saw him working long hours and traveling and staying out late to have drinks with colleagues. I would feel like I had wasted all my opportunity and privilege, whereas Adam, who had come from quite difficult circumstances, had done so well in life. In fact, I would sometimes think that it was precisely those difficult circumstances that gave him the drive to come so far, and that maybe I had been too coddled. Then I would berate myself for indulging in this weird “poor little rich girl” stuff. I pushed these toxic, spiraling thoughts to the side as much as I could.
“If it’s important to you,” Adam said, “I can learn Urdu. It’s not a problem, you know.”
“No, it’s fine,” I said. “It just surprises me. Mera naam Adam hai. Easy.”
“Mera naam Adam hai,” he repeated resolvedly, but forgot again the next day.
·
After a couple more months of living together, Adam and I welcomed a little kitten into our lives. We named him Billee. Uff, there are no words to describe Billee’s kittenhood. Tail chasings and lap nestlings, teeny tiny paws and the sweetest pounces. Then, a shockingly fast transition into a calmer and more independent, much larger but equally cute, cathood. It was a step, a big step, for us to get Billee together. We settled into each other more and started to speak of the future, of hopes and dreams that involved children. And yet, it was all said in a somewhat abstract way. I went along with it, enjoying these discussions the way I would a daydream. It was only when he seriously brought up marriage that I found myself stopping short, unable to give him a clear response. He mentioned it casually after breakfast one morning while putting the dishes away. He was telling me his best friend had just gotten engaged.
“Do you think one day you and I should, you know?”
I just laughed awkwardly and saw his back tense in response. Then, after he left for work, I reactivated my long-dormant Tinder account.
“Don’t you think that might be a bad sign?” Naima asked sarcastically when I told her what I’d done.
“Maybe I’m just one of those cold-feet types,” I said.
“I think your instinct’s telling you something.”
“I should probably just say yes.”
There was no reason to say no. It was just my overthinking mind, I feared, that was, as usual, ruining everything. I had spent nearly a year in relative contentment with this man. Now, it was only a matter of taking the next step.
It was just that, sometimes, when I woke up in the middle of the night to go to the toilet and came back to see him huddled up on his side of the bed, my heart would sink a little.
And sometimes, it felt like I was smearing a thin layer of vanilla over my life to make it more palatable for him.
And he kept asking me, possessively and insecurely, whether I fancied my married friend, Mazhar, despite my constant denials （I did, in fact, fancy Mazhar, but that’s neither here nor there）。
And once when we were watching a Bollywood film, he’d called it “colorful” and asked whether our wedding would be like that.
And, of course, the sex. I still dreamed of the fireworks that had never come. And I hope this isn’t a bad thing to say, but sometimes, it felt like a deliberate withholding. Like, how come when it came to running or biking, the man seemed to have endless energy, but when it came to fucking, he was so easily depleted? There was some emotional work, surely, that needed to be done there, but he just wasn’t interested in doing it. Instead, he would deflect, or become defensive. Like when he teased me once about my always “being in the mood.” I swiped back saying that it was because I rarely got any, and the conversation descended into a heated argument that ended with him leaving the flat and not speaking to me for days.
And I didn’t like hiking, nor the countryside, nor football, nor the pub. And I’m sorry, but his family was cold and boring, and the first time I met them, they tried to serve me pork even though they knew I was Muslim. Adam insisted this was accidental, but seriously, come on. And then he brought up the fact that I drank alcohol but didn’t eat pork, implying hypocrisy in a way that felt all too familiar.
But still … still, still, Adam was good. Reliable. Dependable. Secure. I also felt fairly sure that if I didn’t marry Adam, I wouldn’t marry anyone at all. I’d had enough relationships to know that if another one didn’t work out, the problem very likely lay with me. So I couldn’t say yes, but I also couldn’t say no. I decided, maybe as an in-between step, or a consolation prize, or perhaps a test, to fly with Adam to Pakistan and introduce him to my parents.
I’d already told Amma and Abba about Adam, but I’d kept it casual, simply saying there was someone I was sort of seeing. Amma, excited, had asked for a photo, and I’d sent her a YouTube video of him speaking at an event for the Italian company he worked for. That got her stamp of approval straight away. Abba, a workaholic surgeon, was more circumspect; he had always felt that my sister and I should marry within our culture. And I could see why he said this. In many ways, I agreed. But as time went on, he had softened his stance. By the time I hit thirty, he said that okay, maybe a non-Muslim boy would be fine.
“As long as he’s not Indian,” he added, to my outrage.
Then, as thirty-five inched closer, I was starting to get these “accha bas, quickly now, anyone will do” vibes off him, so I sensed some relief along with the expected wariness when I told him about Adam.
“What do his parents do?” he asked.
“Abba, please.”
Adam, too, was nervous.
“Are you sure you want me to meet them?”
“Of course. I mean, you kind of have to, right? If we’re talking about marriage? Um, not that I’m saying—”
“No, I know. But … what if they don’t like me?”
“Of course they’ll like you. Why wouldn’t they?”
“Maybe they’ll feel like you could do better.”
I had learned by then that Adam carried within himself a wholly unsubstantiated sense of inferiority that was often powerful and relentless. I don’t know where it came from—maybe growing up without much money or being bullied at school （he said the two were related）。 Even though he’d jumped from one success to the next in his career, somewhere in his core he’d held on to the belief that he wasn’t enough.
“It’s weird for me when you get like this,” I said. “I just wish you could see how amazing you are.”
“I just … I feel like they’ll see through me, that’s all.”