half past nomad

Originally written on Thursday Sept. 14 on facebook:

Aight everyone wants to know…so here’s the hap’s.  I’m engaged to be enganged to be engaged. Baat paki hogay is the step before engaged, and officially that’s happening on Sunday.  Soooooo….I’m engaged to be baat paki hogay. For those of you who don’t know Hindi/Urdu, baat paki hogay means, “The talks are done”.Her names Sheema, and she’s from the Chicago suburbs.

We got ISNA’d. Yes, yes…the ISNA lobby worked. We’ve all heard the jokes, and the stories about how everyone goes to ISNA to get married, and find their spouse.  I’m the living example of this working.  Most of the people who go to ISNA go with good intentions and use halaal methods of finding someone (Matrimonial room, using family/friends to introduce them, etc.).  The friends introduction is usually done in the evening in the Lobby.  Some of the events in the lobby arn’t always the most halaal, but generally most of them are.  Everyone just assumes the worse (remember the 70 excuses) about most of what goes on.  As such…the ISNA lobby becomes one of the running jokes of the conference.
We were setup by her Mamu (mothers brother), who’s known me for years. We didn’t know what was happening, we were totally ambushed in the lobby of ISNA, and taken by surprise. Her parents just told her that they were going to ISNA. I was told that we were just meeting some friends.

We talk…and things clicked…and on Monday we go to her house and meet…and things work out…and we do a lot of istikara and things work out…and we do a lot of emails and talk to each other and things work out…so now we’re engaged to be baat paki hogay on Sunday, so hopefully things work out.

I love how our desi culture makes this entire process much more complex then it needs to be. So I’m engaged to be engaged to be engaged.