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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/27/f...on=top-stories-below&WT.nav=top-stories-below
A Pakistani-American Couple Opts for a Self-Arranged Marriage
Vows
By LOIS SMITH BRADY DEC. 25, 2015
Sana Naeem never dreamed about falling in love while growing up in Roseville, Calif. Ms. Naeem, 26, immigrated from Pakistan with her Muslim family when she was 6, and everyone understood that her mother and father would find a husband for her when the time came.
Love would not be about “falling” or anything accidental. “My parents had an arranged marriage,” she said. “All of my aunts had arranged marriages.” She added, “I never actually believed in love.”
When she was a young girl, assimilation was not easy. “I was this super-chubby butterball with glasses,” she said. “I didn’t understand English colloquialisms. I never felt truly accepted.” Following Muslim customs, she didn’t wear shorts, go to parties or spend time with boys. Mostly, she stayed home and read books, a lot of books.
She grew up to be a tall green-eyed beauty with a huge vocabulary and a determination to be successful and the opposite of a homebody.
“She’s really passionate about whatever she pursues, whether it’s education or a hobby or a different mind-set she wants to explore,” said Saba Naeem, her younger sister. “One time she told me she wanted to be a more worldly person. She wanted to be different. So she jumped out of an airplane. She went sky diving.”
After graduating from the University of California at Berkeley, Ms. Naeem worked as a high school teacher in Baltimore through the Teach for America program while simultaneously pursuing a master’s degree in Urban Studies at Johns Hopkins University.
At that point, her mother began the process of arranging a marriage for her. “My mom was like, ‘You are not going to be young forever,’” she said. “I said, ‘Mom, I’m 21!’”
Far more respectful than rebellious, she eventually complied. Whenever she flew home during breaks, her mother would arrange for her to meet prospects, along with their entire extended families. “It would be the son, his parents, his siblings and sometimes aunts,” Ms. Naeem said.
She received five marriage proposals, most of them after a single meeting. She turned them all down. “My mother would say, ‘What are you looking for?’” she said. “I was trying to articulate chemistry. You need to have chemistry, but that’s not in the equation for a Pakistani marriage.”
In 2014, soon after entering the Ph.D. program in social policy at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., she decided it was time to break out of her scholarly shell. Without telling her parents, she signed up for Coffee Meets Bagel, a matchmaking phone app that connects Facebook friends-of-friends.
By now, she had a better idea of what she was seeking: a Pakistani-American millennial like herself. “I was a hybrid looking for another hybrid,” she said.
One Bagel (match) she received, last January, was Rayhan Shaikh. “I remember looking at the picture and I thought, ‘Oh, my God, he’s gorgeous,’” she said.
Dr. Shaikh, 28, has a doctorate in pharmacy from the University of Connecticut and is now a pharmacist at Middlesex Hospital in Middletown, Conn. Coolheaded and gregarious, he often works in the emergency room, overseeing medicines given to patients.
When he was 4, he emigrated with his parents from Pakistan to Farmington, Conn., where he grew up admiring the good deeds of Superman. He is as idealistic and aspirational as Ms. Naeem, but much more excitable.
“He has an off-the-charts, vivacious personality,” said Yousuf Shaikh, a cousin. “He’s energetic, he’s intelligent, he’s a fan of hip-hop music. He’s going at a faster pace than almost everyone I know.”
Dr. Shaikh’s parents had also begun trying to arrange a marriage for him. “My mom hired a matchmaker, a lady to help me find potential people I could have a future with,” he said. “I was pretty upfront with my mom. I told her, ‘I’ll do this avenue, but I’m also going to try my own way.’”
He was introduced to two women by the matchmaker and went alone to meet them, rather than taking his family. He recalled telling his parents: “This is going to be awkward if you are shadowing me. Please don’t embarrass me.”
He also signed up for Coffee Meets Bagel. After he and Ms. Naeem were matched, they began conversing in the Bagel chat room and eventually transitioned to texting, then phone calls.
They had great conversations, although they have very different speaking styles. She talks in long, beautifully constructed sentences while he uses slang, colloquialisms, sarcasm and exaggeration. “He’s funnier than I am,” she said. “He’s a bro and I have formal debate skills. It’s like worlds clash.”
He asked what kind of music she listened to (hip-hop) and whether she liked to travel (yes). “Oftentimes, men just talk about themselves and I just quietly listen, but Rayhan kept asking questions,” she said. “That was such a great quality.”
On Feb. 1, he drove to Boston to meet her. Both were extremely nervous. “Here’s this tall, beautiful girl that I’ve been talking to for weeks and 5 percent of her vocabulary I have to Google, so I’m kind of intimidated,” he said.
She said: “I had a crush on him and I hadn’t even met him. It made no sense.”
The two talked for nearly five hours. Remembering that date, she still sounds giddy, amazed to have actually experienced not just chemistry but love at first sight. “I was really attracted to him,” she said. “He looks like an actor. He’s 6-1 and very into physical fitness. He walks with confidence. He has these gorgeous dark eyes.”
In a way, their experience was not so different from that of an arranged marriage: After only a few meetings, both knew (but did not say) that they had found their spouses.
Even so, they continued to be formal and chaste in each other’s company. “Whenever we were ending our dates, she would almost put out her hand to shake mine,” he said. “One time, I just ignored it and opened up my arms and she hugged me.”
Dr. Shaikh introduced mischief and pranks into her very serious, organized life. Whenever they took walks around Boston, he would purposely lead her astray, for fun. “She has no sense of direction,” he said, laughing. “She’s oblivious to street signs. Even when she turns on the GPS on her phone, it causes more confusion.”
Ms. Naeem’s sister said, “Everything in her life has been very structured, and Rayhan is the one who disturbs that structure, in a good way.”
By March, they were still in a platonic relationship and Ms. Naeem found herself wondering: “Does he like me? Are we friends? Are we more?” One evening, she got up the courage to ask him, “What are we?”
He ventured, “We are human?”
Once he understood what she meant, he told her he absolutely intended marriage but wanted to spend a year getting to know her better. “This is the American in him coming out,” she said. “I remember in my head, red lights were flashing. I was like, ‘A year! A year is so long.’”
As it turned out, he proposed much earlier, in July. Like almost every other important event in the couple’s lives, the proposal was a communal, crowded, family experience. He and his family flew out to California to meet her family, and everyone watched as he asked her to marry him.
Weeks later, he proposed again, when it was just the two of them walking together on the Brandeis campus. He announced he had written a poem for her. (They have a tradition of writing poems to each other. His rarely rhyme; hers always do.)
This particular poem contained the line: “Will you be my Superwoman for the rest of my life?” Then he knelt down and held out a toy Superman ring, which she proudly wore until he gave her one with a diamond to replace it in October.
Their brief, businesslike wedding ceremony took place in the afternoon on Nov. 20 at the Salam center, a religious, educational and social services facility in Sacramento, Calif. The officiant, Imam Kashif Ahmed, sat cross-legged on the floor with the couple, their fathers — Ruknuddin Shaikh and Mohammed Naeem Asghar — and a few other male relatives. They talked quietly as they reviewed the wedding contract.
It looked more like a study group than anything else. “The imam speaks and we essentially acknowledge if we want to be with our partner,” Ms. Naeem said. “We just say ‘yes’ and we are married.”
The real celebration happened the next day at the Hilton Sacramento Arden West, in a ballroom filled with 210 guests. The groom stood on a stage in a white sherwani — a long coat and pants — as the bride walked toward him in a red, heavily brocaded and embroidered wedding lehenga that was closer to a piece of jewelry than a piece of clothing.
The bride said that although the room was full of people, she just stared straight ahead at the groom’s eyes. “My entire focus and energy was on him,” she said. “It was like, ‘You will always be my destination.’”
Robert B. Gunnison contributed reporting from Sacramento.
A Pakistani-American Couple Opts for a Self-Arranged Marriage
Vows
By LOIS SMITH BRADY DEC. 25, 2015
Sana Naeem never dreamed about falling in love while growing up in Roseville, Calif. Ms. Naeem, 26, immigrated from Pakistan with her Muslim family when she was 6, and everyone understood that her mother and father would find a husband for her when the time came.
Love would not be about “falling” or anything accidental. “My parents had an arranged marriage,” she said. “All of my aunts had arranged marriages.” She added, “I never actually believed in love.”
When she was a young girl, assimilation was not easy. “I was this super-chubby butterball with glasses,” she said. “I didn’t understand English colloquialisms. I never felt truly accepted.” Following Muslim customs, she didn’t wear shorts, go to parties or spend time with boys. Mostly, she stayed home and read books, a lot of books.
She grew up to be a tall green-eyed beauty with a huge vocabulary and a determination to be successful and the opposite of a homebody.
“She’s really passionate about whatever she pursues, whether it’s education or a hobby or a different mind-set she wants to explore,” said Saba Naeem, her younger sister. “One time she told me she wanted to be a more worldly person. She wanted to be different. So she jumped out of an airplane. She went sky diving.”
After graduating from the University of California at Berkeley, Ms. Naeem worked as a high school teacher in Baltimore through the Teach for America program while simultaneously pursuing a master’s degree in Urban Studies at Johns Hopkins University.
At that point, her mother began the process of arranging a marriage for her. “My mom was like, ‘You are not going to be young forever,’” she said. “I said, ‘Mom, I’m 21!’”
Far more respectful than rebellious, she eventually complied. Whenever she flew home during breaks, her mother would arrange for her to meet prospects, along with their entire extended families. “It would be the son, his parents, his siblings and sometimes aunts,” Ms. Naeem said.
She received five marriage proposals, most of them after a single meeting. She turned them all down. “My mother would say, ‘What are you looking for?’” she said. “I was trying to articulate chemistry. You need to have chemistry, but that’s not in the equation for a Pakistani marriage.”
In 2014, soon after entering the Ph.D. program in social policy at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., she decided it was time to break out of her scholarly shell. Without telling her parents, she signed up for Coffee Meets Bagel, a matchmaking phone app that connects Facebook friends-of-friends.
By now, she had a better idea of what she was seeking: a Pakistani-American millennial like herself. “I was a hybrid looking for another hybrid,” she said.
One Bagel (match) she received, last January, was Rayhan Shaikh. “I remember looking at the picture and I thought, ‘Oh, my God, he’s gorgeous,’” she said.
Dr. Shaikh, 28, has a doctorate in pharmacy from the University of Connecticut and is now a pharmacist at Middlesex Hospital in Middletown, Conn. Coolheaded and gregarious, he often works in the emergency room, overseeing medicines given to patients.
When he was 4, he emigrated with his parents from Pakistan to Farmington, Conn., where he grew up admiring the good deeds of Superman. He is as idealistic and aspirational as Ms. Naeem, but much more excitable.
“He has an off-the-charts, vivacious personality,” said Yousuf Shaikh, a cousin. “He’s energetic, he’s intelligent, he’s a fan of hip-hop music. He’s going at a faster pace than almost everyone I know.”
Dr. Shaikh’s parents had also begun trying to arrange a marriage for him. “My mom hired a matchmaker, a lady to help me find potential people I could have a future with,” he said. “I was pretty upfront with my mom. I told her, ‘I’ll do this avenue, but I’m also going to try my own way.’”
He was introduced to two women by the matchmaker and went alone to meet them, rather than taking his family. He recalled telling his parents: “This is going to be awkward if you are shadowing me. Please don’t embarrass me.”
He also signed up for Coffee Meets Bagel. After he and Ms. Naeem were matched, they began conversing in the Bagel chat room and eventually transitioned to texting, then phone calls.
They had great conversations, although they have very different speaking styles. She talks in long, beautifully constructed sentences while he uses slang, colloquialisms, sarcasm and exaggeration. “He’s funnier than I am,” she said. “He’s a bro and I have formal debate skills. It’s like worlds clash.”
He asked what kind of music she listened to (hip-hop) and whether she liked to travel (yes). “Oftentimes, men just talk about themselves and I just quietly listen, but Rayhan kept asking questions,” she said. “That was such a great quality.”
On Feb. 1, he drove to Boston to meet her. Both were extremely nervous. “Here’s this tall, beautiful girl that I’ve been talking to for weeks and 5 percent of her vocabulary I have to Google, so I’m kind of intimidated,” he said.
She said: “I had a crush on him and I hadn’t even met him. It made no sense.”
The two talked for nearly five hours. Remembering that date, she still sounds giddy, amazed to have actually experienced not just chemistry but love at first sight. “I was really attracted to him,” she said. “He looks like an actor. He’s 6-1 and very into physical fitness. He walks with confidence. He has these gorgeous dark eyes.”
In a way, their experience was not so different from that of an arranged marriage: After only a few meetings, both knew (but did not say) that they had found their spouses.
Even so, they continued to be formal and chaste in each other’s company. “Whenever we were ending our dates, she would almost put out her hand to shake mine,” he said. “One time, I just ignored it and opened up my arms and she hugged me.”
Dr. Shaikh introduced mischief and pranks into her very serious, organized life. Whenever they took walks around Boston, he would purposely lead her astray, for fun. “She has no sense of direction,” he said, laughing. “She’s oblivious to street signs. Even when she turns on the GPS on her phone, it causes more confusion.”
Ms. Naeem’s sister said, “Everything in her life has been very structured, and Rayhan is the one who disturbs that structure, in a good way.”
By March, they were still in a platonic relationship and Ms. Naeem found herself wondering: “Does he like me? Are we friends? Are we more?” One evening, she got up the courage to ask him, “What are we?”
He ventured, “We are human?”
Once he understood what she meant, he told her he absolutely intended marriage but wanted to spend a year getting to know her better. “This is the American in him coming out,” she said. “I remember in my head, red lights were flashing. I was like, ‘A year! A year is so long.’”
As it turned out, he proposed much earlier, in July. Like almost every other important event in the couple’s lives, the proposal was a communal, crowded, family experience. He and his family flew out to California to meet her family, and everyone watched as he asked her to marry him.
Weeks later, he proposed again, when it was just the two of them walking together on the Brandeis campus. He announced he had written a poem for her. (They have a tradition of writing poems to each other. His rarely rhyme; hers always do.)
This particular poem contained the line: “Will you be my Superwoman for the rest of my life?” Then he knelt down and held out a toy Superman ring, which she proudly wore until he gave her one with a diamond to replace it in October.
Their brief, businesslike wedding ceremony took place in the afternoon on Nov. 20 at the Salam center, a religious, educational and social services facility in Sacramento, Calif. The officiant, Imam Kashif Ahmed, sat cross-legged on the floor with the couple, their fathers — Ruknuddin Shaikh and Mohammed Naeem Asghar — and a few other male relatives. They talked quietly as they reviewed the wedding contract.
It looked more like a study group than anything else. “The imam speaks and we essentially acknowledge if we want to be with our partner,” Ms. Naeem said. “We just say ‘yes’ and we are married.”
The real celebration happened the next day at the Hilton Sacramento Arden West, in a ballroom filled with 210 guests. The groom stood on a stage in a white sherwani — a long coat and pants — as the bride walked toward him in a red, heavily brocaded and embroidered wedding lehenga that was closer to a piece of jewelry than a piece of clothing.
The bride said that although the room was full of people, she just stared straight ahead at the groom’s eyes. “My entire focus and energy was on him,” she said. “It was like, ‘You will always be my destination.’”
Robert B. Gunnison contributed reporting from Sacramento.
