Dodgeball, divorce and the blingtastic wedding: Playwright Wajahat Ali talks modern Muslim love

Publish date: 2024-08-22

At first blush, you do not want to hear about Wajahat Ali’s sex life. The playwright and co-host of Al Jazeera America’s “The Stream” describes himself as an neurotic dork still fixated into his 30s on the fact that he was a “former fatty” as a kid. But then he keeps going, and you realize Ali’s writings about dating and marriage are a window into a slice of American Islam and other immigrant-heavy communities. They are also hilarious and kinda romantic.

“This is the story of a how an awkward, sick, overweight, dorky son of Pakistani American immigrants – who spoke only three words of English in Preschool – ended up marrying the hot captain of the junior high cheerleading squad,” begins “Valentine’s Day Story.” I’ll let it unfold below but first set the stage with a bit of my recent conversation with Ali, 34, a prominent writer and advocate on the Muslim American experience.

Q: This piece tells the story of how you, a very visible, seemingly pretty secular-living kind of guy and Sarah Kureshi, a successful physician who had been divorced twice, went super-traditional and married without dating in your 30s. After playing dodgeball together, that is. Why did you write it?

A: In the story I’m open about being at the time a poor guy and she was older, wealthier and twice divorced – and in our [South Asian Muslim American] communities those are big scarlet letters…I wanted to own the story and give people hope who feel they are in a hopeless situation.. there is this immigrant mindset, if you are lucky enough to come here there is this checklist of success, that you will have a good degree from a good school and be married by 30, have a beautiful wife, a big house, making six figures and white shiny teeth and you will smile even if you are suffering.

People promote a narrative of fiction: Even though you are miserable, you have to present yourself as an avatar of perfection and that is amplified in our religious communities.

Q: Are you saying you think religion has an impact on this?

A: Religion emphasizes it – challenges are ‘moral defects,’ or you’re supposed to pray harder. We don’t air our dirty laundry. We obscure our real-world messiness, we don’t discuss it.

Q: You two were acquaintances but never dated before you proposed and were married within a month. Where did that come from, considering both of you had dated – and she’d been married before?

A: Sarah is a straight-edged girl….I was more working a lot, jaded, I wore [emotional] armor to protect myself. I’m also very monogamous, traditional, puritanically conservative in some ways.

Q: Is what constitutes “traditional” among American Muslim families like yours changing?

A: It is. Today it means you are engaged in a relationship with the intention of getting married, but it’s understood people might go out together alone. Speed dating is now the norm in Muslim circles, and Muslim dating apps [a fifth launched last night, called Minder – the Muslim Tinder]. Modern love has become the norm.

Valentine’s Day Story

This is the story of a how an awkward, sick, overweight, dorky son of Pakistani American immigrants – who spoke only three words of English in Preschool – ended up marrying the hot captain of the junior high cheerleading squad.

When some Americans hear of South Asian Muslim hookup stories, they assume it’s a stereotypical “arranged marriage” where the boy and girl were betrothed as zygotes and elephants are imported from the Motherland for the grand celebration. (That’s only partially true).

In the time of love and Tinder, South Asian Muslims share the same awkward dysfunctions as lustful, lonely singletons in search of “the one.” For example, while writing this essay, there are at least four matchmaking apps designed by young Muslims to act as digital cupids.

Like any origin story worth retelling, my unconventional path towards “true love” was fraught with plot twists, dodgeball trampoline, Pakistani melodrama, an elopement, Shalimar Restaurant, lotas, a game called Pronus, a 5 ft Syrian American, and a Hello Kitty Skype avatar.

Love in the Time of Dodgeball Trampoline

The ubiquitous actor Kevin Bacon has six degrees of separation. If he was a Pakistani Muslim, it would just be one. We are a rather incestuous tribal lot resembling a Venn diagram with at least one cousin in each social circle.

As such, Sarah Kureshi and I were platonic acquaintances in the Bay Area randomly bumping into each other over the years at friends’ social events and community functions.

In the summer of 2010, Sarah and I met at Sky High Sports where several mutual friends – all grown adults – convened to exorcize life’s frustrations by dominating young children and teenagers with nerf balls in competitive dodgeball trampoline.

Sarah, a former NCAA track and field star, displayed precocious talent and evaded the projectiles with nimble quickness. Her 5 ft Syrian American friend, Lena, however, did not fare so well, often retiring to the corner and attempting to hide behind sacrificial human shields. As usual, I surprised many with my aggressive abilities, relentlessly eliminating opponents without mercy or prejudice. As a former fatty, I am the Pakistani Punisher for “healthy” children worldwide, extracting vengeance and justice against bullies who exploit our voluminous, soft flesh as targets due to our inability to dodge.

After the game, Sarah admitted she was impressed by my dodgeball talent.

The Fortuitous Bladder of the 5ft Syrian American

Later that night, Sarah and Lena decided to join my cousin and me for obligatory pilgrimage to Shalimar Restaurant in Fremont, California. This popular South Asian joint is a time-space portal to Lahore, Pakistan adorned with White wallpaper turned musky yellow due to turmeric, lentil and Tandoori steam. Its colorful menu descriptions speak volumes about its endearing character: “Bhuna Ghost: Relished by Punjabi stalwart soldiers!” and “Daal Masala: The love of every Indian and Pakistani. Considered a poor man’s food but found on every table!”

After an evening of mirth, chai and spicy food, the restaurant closed and we had to depart. However, hell hath no fury like Shalimar’s chai, especially towards a fragile but lovable 5 ft Syrian American. Considering Fremont goes to sleep at 10 p.m., there were no available public restrooms. Naturally, I invited Sarah and Lena to my family home, 5 minutes away, to save the Syrian’s exploding bladder.

“Won’t your parents be sleeping? Won’t they think it’s weird that you’re with two random women and one of them says ‘Salaams’ and then quickly runs to the restroom?” asked the 5 ft Syrian.

“Nah, they’re Pakistani parents. They sleep like at 2 am. They know all my friends are weird. They won’t care,” I responded.

Once at home, the Syrian said ‘Salams’ and quickly ran to the restroom, leaving my mother with Sarah. They both enjoyed a long, engaging conversation.

After the ladies left, my mom turned to me and said, “This Sarah…she is a good girl. You should consider marrying someone like her… Just saying.”

Who knew a 5 ft Syrian American’s sensitive bladder could be so fortuitous?

GCHAT Flattery

Shortly thereafter, Sarah and I engaged in the modern version of letter-writing: late-night gchat conversations, where flowery prose and detailed descriptions devolve into acronyms and emoticons.

I assumed they were platonic conversations without a romantic future, because Sarah, having finished her medical residency at UCSF, was about leave to start work at a family clinic serving low income families in D.C.

One night, out of the blue, she hit me with the, “So, I usually don’t talk to guys like this…”

In hindsight, I remain convinced she initiated interest due to my masculine scent, rippling muscles, Adonis good looks and rapier wit. Although humbled, flattered and taken aback by her bold forthrightness and panther aggressiveness, I could not pursue because my life at the time was unable to accommodate a relationship.

(For the record, Sarah says she has saved all the gchat conversations that prove I actually initiated interest. Furthermore, she believes my rendition of this part of history is “total crap.”)

The Slumdog Hundredaire

At the time, I was about to turn 30, having moved back to my family home after law school, living in my college bedroom, without assets, and running around like a headless chicken having left a potentially lucrative solo law practice to recklessly invest in a chaotic but fulfilling writing career.

The line, “Hey, I have my own room!” works wonders with women when you’re 16, but not so much when you’re a grown adult.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, in South Asian immigrant communities there is a Holy Trinity of Professions ranked as the following:

1) The Doctor

2) The Engineer

3) The Dubious Businessman who somehow makes money, buys a suburban home, purchases a Mercedes and/or BMW, marries a woman who is at least 6 or 7 on the “hotness” scale, pops out 2.3 kids, and finally –

4) The Failure (everything not above.)

I fulfilled the fourth category in spades. I was the embodiment of The Slumdog Hundredaire. I served as the cautionary tale used by South Asian parents to warn their rebellious children against venturing outside the Trinity. My poverty and unorthodox career choice was like being afflicted with social herpes.

My only assets included a ’97 Toyota Camry without a driver’s side door handle requiring one to transform their fingers into a hook to open the door. I had a HP laptop on life support that made wheezing sounds – this replaced the Fujitsu laptop on life support that made wheezing sounds. I also retained my beloved PS3, which has since been upgraded to my beloved PS4 (bought by my wife, of course).

Fear of the DAP

Like any proud, melodramatic writer, I convinced myself early in life that I would settle for a lifetime of resigned, repressed misery and marry a safe, materialistic DAP – the Desi American Princess. Like their male counterpart, they are born into a life of privilege, nurtured in a suburban cocoon of entitlement and raised with unhealthy and unrealistic bling-tastic expectations.

By age 35, I imagined I’d take a corporate job I’d hate to pay for a upper-middle class, suburban lifestyle I could not afford to impress people who would never like me, only to perish by the age of 67 having suffered a lifetime of a thousand passive aggressive cuts strategically unleashed by my DAP wife, who would then proceed to pour cyanide in my mother’s chai with the malicious intent of slowly poisoning her.

I would learn to embrace suffering like the Irish or Russians by reading O’Neil and Tolstoy and eventually martyr myself to attain Sufi asceticism.

PRONUS: Or, the Awesomeness of Sarah Kureshi

On the other hand, Sarah is a perpetual optimist, sunny, bleeding-heart cheerleader. She’s also a freak of nature whose CV is nearly 12 pages long. She is a medical doctor and a scholar on global and women’s health. She’s a former NCAA runner, honored by the State Department as a Muslim American athlete. During undergrad, she was ignorant about the prestigious Mayo Medical College and asked why it was named after Mayonnaise (seriously). She followed her four years at Mayo with grad work at Harvard and UCSF.

Despite her impressive credentials and education, her ideal wardrobe is a ponytail, workout pants and a t-shirt, and her preferred meal includes pizza, Smarties candy and McDonald’s Sweet Iced Tea.

Cynical, jaded, afraid of vulnerability, and displaying the hallmarks traits of a dumbass, I did not pursue her and remained platonic friends.

Meanwhile, Sarah had moved to Virginia/Washington D.C.: a bachelor’s playground where ovaries go to die and are imprisoned in a brutal social environment of numerous first-dates and zero long term commitments.

However, Sarah broke free of these shackles by playing the New York game known as PRONUS. To this day no one knows the rules of PRONUS but from appearances it involves Sarah running around a pool table being chased by 12 men. The game was an apt metaphor for her social life. Sarah thrived and was “courted” by many suitors even though “divorcee” is often a paralyzing Scarlett Letter for most South Asian women due to cultural misogyny masquerading as tradition. She employed the “everyone deserves at least one coffee” dating strategy and immersed herself in many, many “processes” with men eager to put a ring on it.

Again, this is a testament to her awesomeness. Meanwhile, I drove my mother to South Asian weddings like a social leper where random aunties used to forcefully grab me by the hand and tell me, “I have to introduce you to someone!” Naively, I assumed they were leading me to single, smart, attractive females. I was, of course, mistaken. Instead, I always met a jirga of middle-aged South Asian uncles excited to discuss my latest article, the malaise of Muslim communities or the latest dysfunction of Pakistani politics. And, no, the men never introduced me to their eligible daughters who were often standing beside them.

The “Immaculate Fatwa” and the Beginning of the Fellowship

Coincidentally, over the next two years, I began traveling to D.C. for work, research and speaking engagements. Convinced I was losing my soul in a political ecosystem populated by Gollums and Smiegels, I reached out to Sarah and a few other friends and built a loyal “fellowship.” This included D.C. socialite and event planner Uzma, a Punjabi American institution of the community and best friend to Sarah.

Meanwhile, back at home, my mom dropped the “immaculate fatwa” that every Pakistani boy dreamt of hearing as a teenager: the permission to marry outside the tribe.

While buying cilantro, Lactaid milk and tomatoes at Safeway, my mother randomly turned to me and said, “You know what? It’s OK if you don’t marry a Desi (South Asian) girl. Desis have too much drama. You’re a simple guy. We won’t care if you marry a White girl or whomever. But, it’d be nice if she was Muslim…just saying.”

The “…you can marry a White person or whomever” fatwa usually drops when South Asian parents have given up hope their 30 year-old child will ever settle down.

Now, as a grown man, I did not need their permission to pursue romantic interests outside the tribe, nor did my parents ever explicitly state their displeasure with such an arrangement, but there’s an implicit understanding that marrying within the tribe is usually “preferred.”

In fact, most Pakistani men succumb to death by maternal emotional guilt which is why an overwhelming majority of us do what “the mother” tells us. It reminds me of what Amos Oz once explained to me as the difference between Italian mothers and Jewish mothers: “When an Italian boy doesn’t eat his food, the Italian mother threatens to kill him. When a Jewish boy doesn’t eat his food, the Jewish mother threatens to kill herself!

It seems Pakistani and Jewish mothers have shared melodramatic playbooks over the centuries.

Freed from this self-imposed limitation of seeking a DAP and having just emerged from a heart procedure last May, I experienced a premature mid-life crisis. After several “moments of clarity,” I decided to expose myself to the emotional hand grenade of finding love in the modern age.

The Unsubtle Propaganda of The Socialite Punjabi

Around this same time, Uzma, the socialite Punjabi of D.C. and Sarah’s best friend, initiated her subtle propaganda campaign: “You know, Waj, there’s this girl who wouldn’t mind a poor artist with bad hair who shops at Gap outlet stores. Her name rhymes with Mara. Just saying.”

She played the Pakistani Cupid and well-intentioned Iago simultaneously whispering flattering insinuations to Sarah about me throughout the summer.

After begging us to at least “consider” each other, I decided to take a bold step.

I told Uzma to “ask Sarah if it’s ok for me to approach her with the intention of ‘talking to her.’”

Uzma laughed for three minutes and then said, “You’re such an idiot. Why are you such a fool? My God, man, of course she’ll be ok with it! You’re such duffers! Both of you! Oh, my God! I can’t believe I have to tolerate both of you morons!”

Uzma informed me that Sarah agreed to “talk,” so I gave her a call that same night.

Now, the transition from “platonic friend” to “potential love interest” deserves its own twitter hashtag: #awkward. However, our conversations were fluid and organic without a trace of forced sentiment or uncomfortable pauses. The first night we talked for 5 hours, then the next night for another 5 hours, and the following night for about 6 hours. After the third conversation, I knew she was the “one” and I displayed my romantic flair by bluntly asking, “Hey, so, you wanna’ get married or what?”

Since Sarah’s been married 823 times before, she was naturally apprehensive. First, she made me engage in male emotional root canal by answering 1000 questions from several pre-marital questionnaires. This included several of her original, ridiculous hypothetical questions such as:

“So, suppose, like, I went insane after my marriage and totally had a different personality, what would you do?” To which I very logically replied, “Well, I guess I would have to leave you then.” This shocked her beyond belief – “What?! You’d divorce me. You say it so calmly!”

“Well, that is the only appropriate response to your ridiculous hypothetical rooted in nonsense,” I replied.

The Treasure in the Golden Lota Throne

I told my parents about my long-term intentions, and my mom immediately offered her wedding ring as the engagement ring. She said tell Sarah to hold on to it until I made enough money to buy her a “big diamond.” As part of the agreement, I also have to apparently buy my mom a Marc Jacobs purse in the future.

I went to my local Bahrat Bazaar Indian grocery store and bought an old-school, traditional, copper lota.

I placed the ring box in the lota. I also purchased a stuffed bear holding a giant heart. I placed the bear on top of the lota, as if he was an honorable king seated on his golden lota throne.

I gave Sarah this mature, classy, romantic present and said, “I think the bear dropped something.” She reached down in the lota, found the box, opened it, saw the ring, and laughed.

The ring fit perfectly. I assumed her answer was “Yes.”

A few days later, I called up her father and said, “Listen, I’m leaving for an overseas, month long work trip in August and I’m first stopping in D.C. We are thinking about getting married, but I will only proceed after I receive your blessing. Do I have your permission?”

He said, “Sure.”

My parents said I was a “loser” and an “idiot” for not proposing to her earlier. My father – with a South Asian, Morgan Freeman-accented, wise, old man voice – said, “You have chosen…wisely.”

Our mutual families deserve massive props. Never once did my parents hold her divorcee status as a negative against her, and likewise her parents never demeaned me for being a struggling writer with a ’97 Camry as his only asset.

The $182 Question: To Elope or To Host a South Asian Wedding in a McDonald’s Parking Lot?

With our parents’ blessings, we decided to elope whenever our schedules aligned, because she’s been married 9324 times before and I was too broke to pay for a South Asian wedding. My $182 budget only allowed for a reception in the local McDonald’s parking lot with 40 Happy Meals and toys.

South Asian weddings are a week-long affair with three pre-marriage parties and a post marriage reception usually involving 700 sweaty people, henna, loads of bling, dramatic fights over the dinner menus, Bollywood dance routines, and heated discussions over what designers to wear: Gul Ahmed or Sana Safinaz.

Neither of us cared for that type of drama.

Marriage and The Hello Kitty Skype Avatar

I brought the ring along with me to D.C. during my one day stop-over that somehow fortuitously extended to three days. With the extra time, I called Imam Magid of ADAMS Center, one of the most respected and busy imams in the nation, to see if he could officiate the marriage under such tight circumstances. On August 16th, a Thursday, he returned my call saying he had a sudden vacancy in his packed schedule and urged us to “Come to Adams Center before Asr afternoon prayer on Juma’a (the Friday before Eid), and we’ll get this done!”

Sarah and I decided we’d get married the next day. I brought the ring, Sarah, and Uzma to ADAMS Center. We grabbed a kind, random Uncle wandering around the mosque and an ADAMS center employee and asked them to be our witnesses. We all convened in the conference room.

Sarah’s parents were able to SKYPE in and witness the proceedings. However, their default SKYPE avatar was a giant, animated Hello Kitty that moved its lips and spoke every time they spoke. Also, the cat had tears in its eyes.

So, imagine a giant, talking cat with the voice of Pakistani American parents on a large plasma screen overlooking the conference room. This was our marriage audience.

Imam Magid said congratulations to the screen, and an animated cat replied, “Mubarak baad to all of you! (‘Congratulations’ in the Urdu language)”

We went from platonic friends to married couple in less than 45 days. Two days after our shotgun marriage, I left for my month long work trip. Since it was so sudden, unplanned and surreal, we had no time to tell most family members and close friends, and our marriage remained a secret for nearly a month until I returned.

Currently, the wife and I are in a heated debate over who is the more selfless, kindhearted Sufi. I make a compelling case that I married an older, wealthier woman, who has been married twice before. She says she married a poor, broke, jobless, starving artist with zero fashion sense.

I tell her straight up, “Dude, I married my future rent, insurance and retirement plan!” My nickname for her is “Rent in a Ponytail.” I also say, “I’m the Gavin Rossdale to your Gwen Stefani.” Some days, she appreciates the analogy – some days.

And so the cautious cynic, perpetual bachelor, marriage-phobe Wajahat Ali is pleasantly surprised to confess that marriage has been a tremendous unburdening of the soul. I highly recommend it especially if you are lucky enough to find a selfless, kind-hearted, non-materialistic, goofy, spiritually aware “rent in a ponytail” woman that won’t pour cyanide in your mother’s chai with the malicious intent of slowly poisoning her.

For all the geeks, dweebs, dorks, Fobs and social lepers, let this be a story of hope and love in the dysfunctional digital age.

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Dodgeball, divorce and the blingtastic wedding: Playwright Wajahat Ali talks modern Muslim love