This is the story of a mama’s boy who falls in love with a good girl and brings her home to meet his parents.
Except that I’m not a perfect mama’s boy and this is the fourth girl I’ve brought home in just over five years.
Postcollege life can be tough for a young Muslim in America, especially for a cross-country transplant coming out of a strong Muslim Student Association. It’s not easy to meet other twentysomethings. That’s why, as a new resident at the UCLA children’s hospital, I found MECA, a social group for Muslims in Southern California, like a group of friends waiting to pop out of a package shouting, “Tear here!”
It’s a cool autumn evening in 2007 at a gorgeous home in LA where about a hundred of us are gathered for our monthly potluck, this time celebrating the end of Ramadan. The kitchen is abuzz with conversation while children and adults grab their plates, mouths watering at the smells and sights of curry, shawarma, and stews, as well as the moist cookies and chocolate frosting.
I hand a plate to Taz before grabbing my own. It’s great to have a fellow punk rocker activist in our crew. We talk about upcoming shows in SoCal. And when she asks where we should sit, I suggest a table outside, where I spot some new faces.
At the end of the table three UC Davis friends are catching up. Sema and Aysha are both in grad school close by. Nadeah has just returned after traveling the world for a year and is living at home an hour away in Irvine, looking for jobs.
As people finish their food and mill around, Nadeah and I walk around the pool, side-stepping kids’ floaties as she tells me about visiting Pondicherry, India, where her mom grew up. We compare the crazy traffic of Egypt, where she lived for a few months with her best friend, with that in my parents’ native Libya, where I spent a handful of my childhood summers. Egypt definitely takes the cake.
My crew is ready for the postpotluck gathering. Sev—our Polish, Muslim-convert, hedge-fund-trader friend—offers up his swanky Brentwood apartment. I invite the Davis trio to join us, but they get lost. When they finally arrive, the evening is winding down, but I make sure to exchange numbers with the two women who live close by. It feels a bit forward to ask for Nadeah’s digits given that she lives an hour away. Besides, I sense that I’ll see her again, as she’ll be coming up to hang out with her friends.
Sure enough, we meet up a few more times that first month. At Knott’s Scary Farm, I ride one too many roller coasters in a row and lean on Nadeah for support. She tells me about her passion for international human rights and her desire to be an activist on behalf of the underserved. I mention my summers spent with Volunteers for Peace in Spain, Iceland, and Scotland, or surveying community health workers in Nicaragua.
It’s invigorating to meet a like-minded young Muslim. Someone not only willing to head to strange lands to serve God by helping the less fortunate, but motivated to make a career out of it. She shares my view of Islam—a faith that commands us to learn about cultures and languages different from our own, to gain knowledge and skills so we can put them to use for the benefit of humanity. Even if nothing romantic emerges, I find myself thinking, we can support each other in our endeavors as friends.
When my top-choice residency in San Francisco has an open spot and offers me an interview, it seems that friends is all we may ever be. I’m thrilled about the interview, but wonder about us. Although Nadeah and I met less than a month ago, I feel a mature connection to her. Beyond her striking beauty and comforting nature, our shared values point to the possibility of something real between us. I’ve dreamed of meeting a woman like her.
My best friends like to tease me that I fall hard and quick for girls. I’d wanted my previous long-term relationships to work out so much that I ignored obvious flaws: the Colombian convert who wanted to settle down while we were teenagers; the Syrian professor who didn’t want to live anywhere but Chicago; and the Italian psychologist who was unfaithful to me. It wasn’t until my parents brought up unrelated objections to each woman that I allowed myself to step back and see the problems.
I decide to tell Nadeah about my interview, but before I begin she says, “I got a job interview to be a field representative for a California assemblywoman! I’m so excited!”
“Congratulations! What area does this assemblywoman represent?” I ask.
“In the San Francisco Bay Area,” she replies.
“No way! I have an interview in San Francisco next week,” I tell her.
“Me too! How were you planning on going up there? I was thinking of driving up on Friday and making a weekend out of it,” she says.
“Me too! So, umm, maybe we could drive up together? Save the environment?” I ask, smiling as she agrees.
Our love blossoms over the next six months, as we commute most weekends to see each other on either side of the bay. During this time, she applies to law school. One day, while I’m boarding a plane to Italy to visit extended family, she calls to let me know she’s been accepted to a school in the Midwest.
“They offered me an international law fellowship. That is exactly why I want to go to law school! The catch is, I have to accept it within a week. Yousef, I know you’re about to leave for a couple of weeks so I’m glad I caught you. Do you have any thoughts?” Nadeah asks.
I take a deep breath, feeling the weight of this moment. It’s a major life decision and she’s reaching out to ask my opinion. It’ll be tough to be three time zones apart, especially while both of us are working and studying hard. But at the core of our relationship is the value of supporting each other’s dreams.
“Nadeah, I’m so happy for you! If this is the best decision for your future, go for it. We’ll figure things out.” The flight attendant asks me to turn off my phone, cutting off further discussion.
That summer Nadeah, her father, and I pack up her apartment and drive across the country in her overfilled Civic. In October, on the first anniversary of the day we met, she flies to San Francisco for a long weekend. I take her to a spot she’s never been—the top of Buena Vista Park. It’s a special place for me because, during the six months she lived in Hayward, I would climb up the hill to look across the bay, knowing she was working on the other side.
While she is taking in the view, her mother calls. I quickly hand my camera to a sunbathing stranger and reach into my pocket for the ring. After Nadeah hangs up the phone and turns toward me, I go down on bended knee and look into those eyes that I have so often found myself swimming in, not wanting to come up for a breath.
Tears begin rolling down her face as I ask her to marry me. We are elated to be engaged and have no clue of the looming challenges that will rip us apart.
My parents both grew up on the Mediterranean Sea, in Tripoli, Libya. My mom’s father was a fisherman. My mother and her siblings often went out on the boat with him on weekends. He’d cast a large net into the open sea and they’d eagerly jump into the deep blue, hoisting the day’s catch.
My dad was a jock who played two to three hours of soccer or basketball most afternoons. When close enough to the beach, he’d swim out into the ocean until his arms got tired and just float—face soaked by the sun, in saltwater so buoyant he could even fall asleep.
Their idyllic life was shattered during their teens by the revolution. By the time they married, ten years into Muammar Qaddafi’s crippling dictatorship, they knew their beloved homeland was not a suitable place to raise their children. My father whisked my mother—who had been beyond Libya’s borders only twice before, to visit neighboring Egypt—to the strange state of Kentucky. The language was odd, the winters bitter, and the food unpalatable—with the exception of her new favorite, KFC.
During my mother’s pregnancy, her beloved mother died unexpectedly. Fearing for my mother’s health, my father and her sisters decided it best to not tell her until after my birth. Yet she sensed that something was amiss back home. She began having dreams that her mother had died. In these dreams, her mother told her not to worry, for her child would soothe her sorrow.
Her intense attachment to me sustained her through the 1980s, when travel to see our extended family in Libya was impossible. As a senior in high school, I was a member of the varsity wrestling team. The one and only time she watched a match, I was thrown onto the mat by a stronger opponent. She instinctively got up, ran down the aisle of the gymnasium seeking to rip my opponent off of me. During my junior year in college, while studying abroad in England, I stored all my belongings at my parents’ house. When I returned, I saw that my mother had gone through everything and thrown out love letters and a picture of my then-girlfriend.
Whether the adversary was a wrestler or a girlfriend, she wanted no one to hurt me or take me away from her. It wasn’t until I started having serious relationships in college that I realized how dysfunctional her attachment was.
“Yousef, she’s just not right. We only want what’s best for you, you understand?” my mother said.
“What are you talking about?” I retorted, furious. “We had the engagement party a month ago and you seemed happy with Nadeah, her parents, and the arrangements.”
“They are very nice; they took good care of us, habibi. But something is just too different. They may be too traditional for us. They want to do things like in India at the wedding, but we are not from there. How are your kids going to be raised? Are they even going to speak Arabic?”
She went on to demand that I end the relationship, saying they’d never accept Nadeah as their daughter.
Her grasping-at-straws excuses were becoming all too familiar. As a teen, I’d fiercely created my own identity as an American Muslim. I was a straightedge punk before I knew the term existed. Despite being surrounded by friends who smoked weed or drank alcohol, I felt no need to indulge. By high school, I was crowd-surfing and starting mosh pits at punk shows. I was invigorated by the energy of the crowd and by the lyrics exhorting listeners to speak up against abusive authority and for oppressed minorities. The punk ethic of social justice was rooted in my understanding of Islam.
Also rooted in my understanding of Islam: the tenet of obeying and seeking the advice of one’s mother.
Each time I’d been in a serious relationship, I wanted to include my parents. They accepted that I wasn’t eager to be “set up” with a family friend, as is the norm in Libya. They didn’t want to show up on the wedding day to accept complete strangers into our family either. Yet, each time I introduced them to a woman, they had complaints about her that seemed arbitrary or unfounded.
Nadeah and I transformed from giddy fiancés into a bickering couple. She’d descended into the never-ending winter of her Cleveland law school; I had eighty-hour weeks of pediatric intensive care in San Francisco. This didn’t leave much time for listening to each other’s woes, let alone dealing with two increasingly disillusioned sets of parents living in different parts of the country.
I was in the on-call room during a twenty-four-hour shift when I got Nadeah’s phone call.
“Yousef, I just can’t do this anymore. I can’t marry into a family that rejects me with a husband who won’t stand up for me. I love you so much and wanted this to work, but I can’t even think straight anymore. I’ll always love you, but unless something changes, I have to focus on law school. I feel so sad already,” she trailed off before hanging up.
The on-call room suddenly resembled a prison cell—even more than it usually did. I felt as though I’d been sentenced to a life of arduous around-the-clock shifts and repeated heartbreaks. My fiancée was being ripped away from me and all I could do was cry. I was numb and lost without her in my life. It took a few weeks of wallowing in self-pity before I could take the initiative to win her back.
The following month, Nadeah was flying home to Irvine for spring break. I had only one weekend off that month and made sure it coincided with her visit. My intention was to fly down and somehow win over not only Nadeah, but also her parents. Without a definite plan, I boarded the plane and began scrawling notes on the back of a pediatric journal.
Ringing her doorbell after my arrival, I tried to calm my shaking hands. Her father led me to the living room. I took a deep breath and shared my plan with Nadeah and her parents. A few nods and stipulations later, we agreed that my parents could not disrespect Nadeah again and that they needed to openly accept her before we moved forward.
This hurdle cleared, I had a more stubborn challenge ahead. I had to cut the psychological umbilical cord between my mother and me for good.
My mom still called each week, but I remained distant, reiterating my wish that she accept Nadeah. These were the most strained months I have ever experienced with my parents, our conversations often descending into yelling and hang-ups.
It would take a dream to finally soften her heart.
It was my first time home to Florida, where my parents now lived, in a year. We sat on the couch, looking out onto the inlet watching the dolphins jump.
She looked into my eyes and, with tears glistening on her cheeks, said, “Yousef, you’re my only son. You and your sister, Sara, are my everything—the air I breathe. I only wanted what’s best for you. I don’t want to fight with you anymore. Nadeah came to me in a dream; she held my hand and we walked together to a brightly lit field. I felt such a peace with her.”
She paused to reach for tissues.
“I now know that Nadeah will be good for you and for us as a family. I know I’m going to love her like I do my own daughter.”
It was Ramadan—a time for forgiveness and mending broken relationships. The month of fasting had given her the chance to realize that she’d been selfish. We stood up and hugged, both wiping away tears. In that moment I understood that I’d gone from being an adolescent to becoming a man. A man who stood up for the woman he loved to the most stubborn and unusual of foes—his own mother.
Nadeah and I married with the blessings of our families a year later. We stood on a naked bluff in Malibu overlooking the Pacific Ocean and said our vows, knowing we’d soon be parted again. Nadeah had landed a prestigious externship at The Hague. She was going to join the first team to prosecute an African head of state for crimes against humanity for the mining of “blood diamonds.” Simultaneously, I’d enlisted in Doctors Without Borders for a year, as part of the team managing the largest pediatric HIV center in Zimbabwe.
We were going to continue living our core values of supporting each other’s ambitions and aspiring to serve humanity, apart, for now. But, on our wedding night, we danced until late with our parents and our friends, embracing each other—eager for the adventures that lay ahead.