textdating while muslim

now that i have a full head of hair again, my oldest is in college and my youngest can be home without a babysitter, i find my body longing for another person's touch. i miss the building anticipation of a date, the pleasure of the banter.

then i started reading bits of love, inshallah, an anthology about muslim women and love.

i'd been hesitant because i know how harshly we judge each other, how deep the scars from our childhood warnings, but i decided to be more open and date another muslim.

my last love story with a muslim man ended with me weeping into my goggles as i swam laps. he dumped me just as i was falling head over heels. and even before he dumped me, he was going on "arranged" dates with more suitable women. an ivy-educated young lawyer in his early thirties, he was arrogant and well-spoken and considered himself something of a catch. i was a fallen twice-married divorcee with three very young children. i had just separated, still raw and unsure of my prospects. i was convinced we would marry. he thought i was an easy fling.

it was over in a few months, but i fell hard off that bicycle. my heart and knees were still smarting from where they'd had all the skin scraped off. for years, i was terrified to try a second round.

but here it is, more than a decade later, and i meet a man who is a muslim "revert" as they are called. though his father was egyptian, he died when my man was just a boy. so he was brought up a christian somewhere in maryland and came to islam later in life.

my first bit of nervousness came from his online profile. he described his relationship with islam as "serious about it" and explained that he was going to stay "celibate until [he was] married." as much as i respected his decision and his wish to make it clear, i wondered if these were just the edge of the iceberg. i also wondered what he'd make of me and my muslimness.

we exchanged a few emails on the site and then he disappeared, his profile removed. a day later, he sent me an email from another profile. he told me he had to delete the last one because of "a stalker."

i've had my share of stalkers online so i didn't really think anything of it. in a strange series of coincidences, it turned out i was picking up a pair of glasses right across the street from his apartment. we met in the east village in a coffee shop i hadn't been to since 1987, when i used to stumble in to meet my best friend for a cappuccino after being out in clubs all night.

we had a pleasant conversation, not a crazy connection, but not a flat-out no way, either. he was bright and interesting and, like me, had lived multiple lives. he was a grown-up, polite, solvent, attractive, and liked dogs. i didn't want to leap across the table and jump him, but then he was waiting til he was married anyway.

what followed were a series of interesting conversations, a movie, dinner in a noisy restaurant, watching a basketball game. he seemed to be becoming increasingly interested in me. he was making future plans. i was being vague. he friended me on facebook and commented on my posts. sadly, my heart didn't skip a beat for him.

on valentine's day, i was thrilled to get texts and cards from several exes and flowers from my brother. i thought it would be polite to send him a text as well, so i sent, "happy valentine's day!"

he responded, "same to you... LOL"

the next day, i tried to work up my interest in him. he seemed like a good prospect, at least on paper, and i am making an effort not to be too hasty or critical. i sent him a text, "how was your day?"

he answered something vague, "time flies when you're having fun..."

i said, "what do you do all day?"

he answered, "whatever i want, that's the beauty of having my own business!"

me: "i'm self-employed, too. but i seem to spend all my time working. or stressing about money if i'm not working." i asked what he was really doing, not to be aggressive or provocative, but just because i was curious.

him: "curiosity killed the cat!"

then, since i was sitting around thinking about what i do all day, i sent a long text about going to the beach and swimming in the sunshine. i started thinking about what i would do if it was my last day on earth and i wrote that, too. it was still about going to the beach, but this time with my kids.

long, dreamy texts that wandered in and out of stories.

he didn't respond.

i didn't notice.

until this afternoon.

i sent him a text saying, "i'm sorry. i didn't mean to be adversarial. i'm just a writer. i like stories and i like to write them."

his text, "there is something wrong with you... i'm not a psychologist, i can't help you."

baffling.

just out of curiosity, i went on the dating site and discovered that he had taken down his profile. he had also unfriended me on facebook. god knows when since i don't check those things that often. maybe he had cut me off long before valentine's day?

one of my exes advised me i should always call, not text. there's too much room for misunderstanding. i know, i know.

my brother told me i wasn't respecting the guy's boundaries. maybe he was seeing other people and didn't want to lie - though he had told me he met women rarely because he spoke to so many "psychos." he told me he had a great sense of it and could cut them off the minute they started to go crazy on him.

phew. like me, i guess.

i'm a psycho. who knew?

my obsession

in december 1992, i was seven months' pregnant and obsessed with a man - the one i believed was the father of my child. he, in his own way, was teaching me a lesson about attachment to other human beings. in other words, he was interested in absolutely everything (and everyone) else but me.

since i was obsessed, i spent all my time thinking of ways to get him to realize that we were meant to be together. we were living in london, a wide, spread-out city, where one's friends are farflung. trains take ages to arrive and it's difficult to do anything on the spur of the moment. it's very easy to feel isolated. add to that that it really wasn't my turf. i was most at home on the grafitti-ed pavements of lower east side and tribeca in new york city. london was a dark, dreary place in winter.

so i wandered those long, winding underground tunnels, in a raggedy old barbour riding jacket and took myself and the baby sasha inside to shrinks, tarot card readers, psychics. i was addicted to astrology pages. i used to stop in the corner shop every time a new issue of patrick walker's columns came out. i even called one of those 5-pounds-a-minute hotlines. what should have made me laugh was that every single one of those people told me i needed to get my life together and move on. but i kept searching for the one who would tell me what i wanted to hear.

on a trip home, i went to the witches' market in mexico city and bought a magic spell, a talisman, that i had to bury in the back garden along with some silly things, to win the man over.

i'd never been so taken by anyone before. i shopped and cooked dinner for him every night, did his laundry, packed and unpacked his suitcases, cleaned his house and single-handedly moved his entire apartment into a new one. without movers. i went alone to my prenatal classes and to buy what little baby gear i could afford. i read a story once in which an accomplished woman said she was so in love with a man that if he'd asked her to lie down and be a doormat, she would have done so.

i was like that.

i liked to believe that he was in love with me as well, just not able to deal with his feelings. now, looking back at his actions over the years, maybe i was right, his obsession just simmered longer and more angrily. i wasn't angry, just broken. i somehow believed that my life hinged on his. that everything would be perfect if we could just fix that parallex error - his mistaken perception.

since he didn't care what i did at christmas, i found myself wandering around new york city with an exboyfriend who had become a close friend. we spent our time eating all the stuff i missed in london. fresh green arugula, rich olive oil, sun dried tomatoes; just-baked bagels and smoked fish, pizza with the mozzarella still bubbling from the oven. in those days, london was not about food or sensuality and my friend, who was half-jewish and half-italian, was ALL about it. i am still grateful to him. i think his girlfriend at the time couldn't figure out what i was doing.

one afternoon, visiting our old haunts, we walked down prince street and ran into a man on the sidewalk. peter introduced him, he was the brother of a common friend. he took one look at me and said, "why aren't you writing?"

i was shocked. i said, "sorry?"

he said, "you're a writer, aren't you?"

i said, "i guess..."

he said, "i look at you and i see books and books full of empty pages. you NEED to write. you've always needed to write."

of course, since my priority was the man, the most useful information i gleaned from this was that he was a psychic and i promptly made an appointment for a session that i couldn't possibly afford.

not surprisingly, he told me the same thing the others had - though rather more roughly as was his style. "you need to get away from him. he's just using you for what he needs and he doesn't care about you."

however, i was still pregnant. i had to go through a few more months of feeling like i was eating broken glass before i emerged, along with a thin pale baby girl, stronger and ready for a new start.

oh and i started writing again.

i was reading my horoscope yesterday, it comes out monthly and it was the first of the month. since i find myself again in an unstable situation, i rushed to read it.

the woman said, "think back to where you were in december 1992, as you are likely to be living though some of that eclipse again."

and all of a sudden, everything made sense.

while i've been obsessed with another man - though not him, actually, the person i imagined he was, maybe the person he once was - he's been obsessed with himself, taking brief breaks to cannabalize and torture me. it's surprising how, when a person who's felt weak comes into a position of power, he takes such pleasure in trying to squelch others.

what's even funnier, he believes he's a writer now. he talks about how "great it is to be in the zone." and how he's writing "without a pen."

i guess it should make me laugh.

yet again, i need to stop obsessing about a person who really doesn't care about me and listen to the psychics and all the messages of the universe. i need to go back to what i've known since i was seven.

my love affair with words and their magic. that's satisfaction of telling rich, sensual stories.

no more empty pages.

keeping the blade sheathed

love, lust and sexuality are so unclear for muslim women.

in our best portrayal, we are serenely beautiful and sexless as a vase. we are unconditionally loving as a madonna. a muslim woman is most honorably portrayed as a mother. echoes of catholicism…

i've always wondered why it seems like we hobble our women.

my disclaimer - of course, there are exceptions and i am one. in my mind, so many things are cultural, not a fault of the faith but of the humans who practice it.

we keep our women uneducated. we marry them off young, cover their faces so they can barely see on the street. we teach them that their job is to support a man, not support themselves. we don't equip them for speed and strength. we limit their sensual world, we keep them confined to the home or behind curtains, we cut off their clitorises and cover their hair.

i once stood up and marched my daughters out of an eid khutbah (sermon) because the man speaking (not an imam, thank God for small mercies) said there are more women than men in hell. women are seduced by the material world, they can't control themselves, so they lead men astray, he explained. as an example, he told us that his daughter wanted to celebrate new year’s eve – what a sacrilege!

i muttered something about his deserving to go himself to test out his theories.

but i wondered if i was missing the subtext.

more recently, as i was involved in the building of a muslim community center, i listened to a muslim woman talk about why she wanted a physical wall built between the parallel men's and women's sections of the prayerspace.

she didn't like sitting so close to a man. she said could feel the heat of his presence, the scent of his clothes, his breath if he sat beside her. it was distracting.

perhaps, muslim women are more finely-tuned. perhaps our sensuality is so knife-blade sharp and sensitive, that even beneath our layers of fabric and behind our walls, we tremble with sensation. perhaps, unlike an ordinary person, the simplest physical interaction - the brush of shoulders or breath on our ears - is enough to shoot sparks through our spines.

there was a "modern love" essay in the nytimes in 2007 called “close enough to touch was too far apart.”
a young muslim woman went on a date with a young muslim man. as they sat in the cinema together, his hand creeped towards hers, and they, for a brief second, held hands.

we all know that morning after feeling. when one regrets the breach of one's honor or dignity with a slight nausea and a hollow in the stomach. feeling thus, she broke off with the young man.

in thinking back, i wonder if we muslim women aren't so perceptive that the warmth of the hand, the heat of the blood surging through its veins, the heightened sensitivity of the fingertips was too breathtakingly intimate in itself. it's too easy to dismiss her as prissy and over cautious. perhaps instead of being oversensitive, she was hypersensitive. her ordinary reaction was an overreaction.

i think of lush novels like “the almond” by nedjma. or my sheltered pakistani cousins who were addicted to jacqueline susann and v.c. andrews, books with torrid shiny covers.

even as a small child, i was frustratingly sensual. on a spring day, i liked to lie face down on the lawn and inhale the scent of the damp earth, occasionally chewing stems of grass. i loved the heat and the slight salt of sweat on the edge of my lips. i liked my body and the sensation of my skin. i can't imagine keeping my hair covered because i love the feel of sun in it, its softness and lushness. shiny bald during chemo, i loved running my fingers across my scalp. i loved the feeling of water pouring down on it.

i was fascinated by watching my body transform as I swelled rosy with pregnancy and equally fascinated watching the flesh fall away when I had cancer. i marveled at my strange sexless shape, pale blue like a francis bacon painting. preadolescent, my cousins and i sneaked into my uncles’ stash of playboy magazines and even then, i was enthralled by the shapeshifting beauty of the human form.

my poor mother tried constantly to keep a check on my intoxication with sensual pleasure. she found me in the backseat of the volkswagen enjoying the feel of the warm plastic against my skin. she warned me that touching the wrong parts of my body could make me very sick. that desire could be so overwhelming that if i didn’t learn to keep myself under control, i would come to a sad end. and i would most certainly go to hell. today, when i lie down on the pilates equipment that uses that old black volkswagen upholstery as a cover, i am still transported to a sense of contradiction. isn’t the body sacred too? i learned to respect its temple as i recovered from meningitis, liver disease and then cancer.

years ago, i went on a date, i think it was my second or third so we were not yet close enough to touch. we walked through central park and briefly sat on a bench. a ladybug landed perfectly on my friend’s hand. I laughed and he put his hand near mine, so the bug could dance from his fingertips to mine. as we touched, ever so gingerly, it felt like electricity bolted through my entire body. I lost my voice. my mouth went dry.

i sometimes wonder if my fellow muslimahs are as receptive. if the reason for the harsh seclusion is that we pulse with sensorial awareness. in the same way that native americans have a low tolerance for alcohol, we are innate hedonists.

are the limitations on us a way to guard the strength of our sensitivity? is the edge kept razor sharp and ready by staying sheathed?

is it that, if unleashed and acknowledged, our desire would rock the world?

wouldn't letting us loose would be better? releasing us to own our experience, to meld the material with the spiritual. would't the blade be of more value in use? as women, we are the closest to the divine in bringing forth life as well as living.

in my mind, our ability to fully live the body is what can take us to the soul.

i'm in love again

though as usual, i seem to do it the hard way.

my mother likes to repeat this saying that she attributes to my brother, "if there's a road straight through, ameena likes to walk off into the brush. she will always take the most difficult route."

i find myself sliding into the curve of his back, wrapping my arm around his waist and somehow fitting perfectly as if there aren't almost twenty years between us. or looking into his brown eyes, as margaret atwood writes, "intricate and easily bruised," and feeling like i can sink right in. immerse myself as if in a lake at the end of the summer.

his kisses and teasing remind me that i exist in a body, still woman, still hungry for a touch, an embrace. his passion ignites mine.

then we have conversations and i feel the vast divide between us splitting open still wider. the differences of age, economic backgrounds, social positions, opportunities. his quick mind, his spongey, evolving spirit let him make herculean leaps. i am sometimes knocked breathless by the romantic lyricism of his emails and text messages. he is an unconscious writer, social commentator and photographer. he can be frighteningly astute and genuinely caring about others.

but he is also young - with the hard-edged black-and-white idealism of his age, as broke as i am, still searching for his career path and beset with health issues. he's not in a position to offer much help sorting through my drama. our connection is as volatile and unpredictable as the circumstances of our lives.

at the same time, the amazons (the three teenaged daughters i live with) are melting down, paying work isn't coming in fast enough, my exhusbands offer intermittant help - when they are not an active hindrance.

i am not capable of juggling people and emergencies at my previous speed. in fact, when i feel even slightly anxious, i can't comprehend the words around me - spoken or written.

and it is an enormous effort to look after anyone. even the simplest task feels daunting to me.

as i said last week. let's see what happens next.

i only want what i can't have

i've seen it in myself.

the pain of those ego-based break-ups.

gradually allowing myself to fall in love with someone who initially i wouldn't have taken seriously. maybe someone who i would have walked away from immediately, someone whose dreams and aspirations seemed laughable to me, but circumstances, and possibly lust, dragged it out.

feeling like i was on safe, but much higher ground - he would never walk away from ME - i let myself sink into a relationship.

perhaps the lesson was in having a relationship and learning to appreciate someone unlikely, someone i might have just passed over if i hadn't been in a low moment. learning about a whole new perspective.

then comes the incredible painful shock. he drops ME. after all the sacrifices i made for him. all the humoring and patronizing and babying. i pretended to take all his stupid ideas seriously. i complimented his bad writing or out-of-shape body. i run it over and over in my head. i flail and grasp at straws. i try desperately to do everything to fix it. i'm sinking fast.

why do those rejections that hurt your ego hurt so much more?

i've been watching a friend go through the pain and contortions of being dumped by a girlfriend.

she was someone he'd had always been dismissive of. he'd entered into the relationship as if he was the "settler" and she was the "reacher." (as defined in "how i met your mother.")

when she dumped him, the tables turned.

suddenly, the power play that underlies most relationships as they ease out of the initial glow and into the day-to-day balance shifts drastically.

as a lawyer friend of mine says, the girlfriend's holding all the cards. he is just going to take whatever she offers. if she offers anything. and even if she doesn't, my friend is going to run around after her like an abused child. and then she will dump him again. because now she knows she can.

i know, i've done it before. sent my paramour emails and presents and flowers. showed up with chicken soup and tea when he was sick. bought him rich, chocolate-colored italian cashmere sweaters. interestingly, he returned everything i gave him when we split up. he left it (in one of the shopping bags i brought over) downstairs with the doorman.

it's like all the weight in the boat sliding to one side. the side you're on is filling up with water and you're bailing it out as fast as you can. there's a part of you that knows it was inevitable and a part of you who's sold yourself the dream.

at the moment, i am so glad it's my friend going through it and not me. not sure i am evolved enough to feel like i'm drowning and know i'm not.

when the storm is finally over, it all calms and you're stable again.

that's when the question should arise, am i capable of being with someone who's floating right alongside me?

bad date post-chemo

ok, i am really not ready for public consumption yet.

i got out of bed and reluctantly met a guy for a cup of tea this afternoon. someone i'd "met" on a social networking site.

back when i was pretty and actually resembled like the picture posted there.

ostensibly, it was a conversation about a project he was working on.

he looked totally taken aback when i arrived even though i was wearing a dress and had applied some kajal on my red-rimmed eyes and matching (but totally inappropriate for a saturday afternoon) bright red lipstick (on my lips).

our conversation therefore was all about me and my stupid health labyrinth rather than anything interesting to a normal, unrelated person.

tragically, i am still obsessed with the fact that i look like a 100 year-old turtle and my memory/brain still has huge lapses, so instead of making leaps in logic, i fall into the abyss. as he spoke, i had a chemo-induced hot flash that made my eyes and scalp burn and my face damp.

so he rushed off to meet someone he thought "sounded lovely" online and i dragged myself back home. i wasn't hurt, i wasn't feeling it either.

then i called a friend and went out to see "it's complicated" which made me laugh like crazy but felt a bit too much like my real life as a middle-aged, single mum with three teenaged kids, except of course, my exhusbands are not nearly as funny (or self-aware or articulate) as alec baldwin (the way the scriptwriter made him).

my current advice, don't suffer the dating world - or the critical gaze of a total stranger until you're really comfortable in your own skin. again. trying to give myself a break.

love and cancer, part 1

my favorite psychic asked me if i've met anyone, "you know, a man who's kind and a bit sexy?"

i started laughing and she did, too.

my answer: "i am bald, i have no eyelashes and very little eyebrows, i weigh about 104 pounds, i am perpetually nauseated and exhausted... i spend half my week in the hospital and the rest too tired to get out of bed, who do i meet apart from irish nurses brandishing chemo needles?"

i should add to that list of endearing qualities, i have 2 out-of-control teenaged daughters and a very clingy almost-11 year-old one.

my mental answer: how could anyone be interested in a repulsive and sexless bag of bones? even my ability to make intelligent conversation is hobbled by shrinking short-term memory. how could someone love me if i grossed myself out?

this particular blog is about dating across cultural and racial divides.

standing in the shower today, after the perpetual shock of seeing myself naked in the mirror, both muscles and fat reduced to stringy flesh and papery skin infused with the strange chemical fragrance of my chemo drugs, i am less a woman and more a feeble asexual alien.

race, religion and economic class are not the only insurmountable rifts that separate human beings - now that i have cancer - illness can be one of the biggest divides there is.

my cousin was on the arranged marriage circuit. he was briefly interested in a beautiful, eligible young woman who was also going blind. "is he crazy?" shouted his mother. "he'll have to drive her everywhere, look after her - what kind of life does he want? and on top of that, she's going bald." thus, no proposal was registered. the poor guy went back on the meeting track.

what shocks me is that it's perfectly reasonable and completely acceptable - and everyone seems to agree with his mum - to dismiss someone sick (god knows what other virtues and qualities she had) on the spot. in fact, there is no taboo at all in dropping someone because she or he is sick. which i am.

have i met anyone? i have vague flirtations online. i smile at people in shops and they often smile back. but am i or anyone else willing to the leap the abyss?

and if someone did cross over, what would be there?

a stick figure.

i find myself thinking i need to wear false eyelashes and make-up and push-up bras and bright colors. all those loud, overstatements of femininity. because there is so little else.

i wonder if i create a garish outer "woman," if the inner one will follow suit?

i used to be married to a man who was a cross-dresser. he longed to be a woman. when he dressed up, he said, "we can be sisters.." in a soft, simpering voice.

i used to be horrified by his over-the-top drag. the bright lipstick, the mascara, the earrings, the scarf, bra and "chicken cutlets" - even the hyper-feminine gestures and the voice - along with the sexy dress, hose and pumps. his costumes and act turned us women into caricatures. jokes.

my femininity was based on confidence. i didn't need frilly polyester underwear or blue eyeshadow or stilletto heels because my being a woman was undeniable. i was petite, pretty, i had breasts, glossy long hair, i could have babies. too many accoutrements would be overkill. like putting a huge painted sign HOUSE on the side of a house. if it wasn't obvious to you, you weren't very smart.

but now that - like my exhusband - i am trying desperately to conjure up my inner woman, that part of me who was pretty and fun and alluring, i wonder if i shouldn't go out and tart myself up. i am wondering if putting on the dog (pun intended, i suppose), wouldn't be part of my healing.

would making the effort to make myself pretty be part of being nice to myself?

the thing about being sick is, you do it alone.

i've been blown away by my family. my brother and my sister-in-law have been my constant companions in the hospital. my mother and father have been back and forth to new york city every other week for seven weeks. my friends have been visiting, holding my hand in hospital, bringing food, cooking food, bringing presents and flowers.

but in the end, they get up and walk out of the hospital and you are still there, hooked up to the i.v. and wearing a dead-ugly blue flower-printed gown and fuzzy socks and bedroom slippers.

they get to go back to real life. have a nap and feel almost normal again.

and you get to live there.

when you're in the midst of cancer treatment, you live there in a big way.

even if i dressed up as a woman, i don't think i could take it on the road.

all the time, i'd be thinking of the tragic moment when i peeled off those false eyelashes and the wig, when the push-up bar came off and the acrid perfume of chemicals seeped through the flowery deodorant, when my the lipstick clung in pieces to my chapped lips and i turned back into a stick figure.

can you fall in love when you have cancer? yes. yes, i'm sure you can. you could fall desperately in love with someone who stood by you. someone who loved and cared for you all along. your wife or husband or long-term partner.

but if you're on your own, "meeting someone" while you're in treatment, while you still believe you're sick, is impossible.

this is the moment to learn to love yourself. all bald, scrawny 100 pounds of you.

i ate lunch alone in a japanese restaurant the other day and, like a teenaged girl, i marveled at how i had become a woman (again). my voice is melodious, my fingers are long and poised, i move gracefully. i was pleased with my company.

my date with myself was a success. i found myself charming. i might even try for a second one.