“The groom is as handsome as a peacock, and the bride is prettier than a flower. God, receive and bless these two.”
Everyone sang, danced and placed sweets in my mouth. When I turned my head to try to refuse more, they stuffed them in anyway. As it was an informal ceremony, there was only one round of singing and dancing, and then everyone gathered around the tables to eat. Everyone kept calling for me to join them, so Ali lifted my veil and I rewrapped it around my hair as a hijab.
As the non-Muslim guests would have been disappointed if there was no alcohol, beer had been provided as well. Uncle Tan gave a short speech, and then Uncle Lou stood up and started to give a toast — but he suddenly choked up and had to turn around to wipe his tears. I knew without his having to say anything that he was thinking of the daughter he’d left behind.
The actual wedding ceremony was being held the very next day in Leeds, so we left early the next morning in a van borrowed from Ali’s workplace, accompanied by Uncle Tan, Luna, Ali’s sisters and Grandfather Abdul.
When we arrived, the front yard was already crowded with people. Ali’s siblings were there along with his parents, relatives, friends, neighbours and people from the mosque. There were close to a hundred guests altogether. Ali’s parents had obtained permission from their neighbours to put up an awning in their yard in order to accommodate the overflow of guests, and seats were prepared for friends and relatives up on the roof.
I went up first and sat down to wait for my groom. Ali was downstairs in the yard, greeting all the guests. His sisters and friends placed flower garlands around the necks of Ali’s parents and Grandfather Abdul. They placed another one around Ali’s neck as he was coming up the stairs. When he was finally next to me, we greeted the guests, who gave me gifts of money. We signed the marriage contract, which was officiated by an imam. Luna and a friend of Ali’s sister who lived in Bradford served as my witnesses. Two of Ali’s friends who’d gone to school with him in Leeds were his witnesses. Then we took dozens of photos, went downstairs to greet the guests from the neighbourhood as bride and groom and were given more wedding gifts of cash. We spent the next day resting in the comfort of close family. Then Grandfather Abdul, Luna, Ali and I returned to London. I was in a daze for the next few days from all that sensory overload.
Ali used the money that his father and grandfather had given him to purchase a used Volkswagen estate car that wasn’t too old. He signed a contract with the minicab company as an official driver and car owner. Now he only had to pay call fees to the company, but was his own boss otherwise.
Uncle Lou and Uncle Tan had spent a lot of money on our wedding. Uncle Tan not only gave us three hundred pounds as a wedding gift, he’d also given me a thousand-pound advance on my wages. Uncle Lou had gifted us two hundred pounds.
But he gave me an even bigger gift besides that.
A few days after the wedding, he came to the store and told me that my smuggling debt was nearly paid in full, and as I was now married to a British citizen, wouldn’t I like to apply for a real passport and obtain a residence visa? The passport I’d been given when I was smuggled into the country had been bought by the snakeheads from a forger, and would be detected immediately by immigration officials. Uncle Lou said he could get me the passport of a recently deceased Chinese woman who’d had a legal residency visa. He’d joked with me once that no matter how many people in Europe’s Chinatowns get sick and die or pass away of old age, the populations never get any smaller. When I thought about being able to register my marriage officially and receive a work permit, I decided it didn’t matter how much it would take to purchase the dead woman’s passport. It would probably cost me at least five thousand pounds, but Ali and I could find a way to earn money and pay down the debt.
I thought about the deal Princess Bari made with the totem pole in my grandmother’s stories: three by three is nine — nine years spent giving him a son and caring for his home in exchange for passage, firewood and water.
I realized that life means waiting, enduring the passage of time. Nothing ever quite meets our expectations, yet as long as we are alive, time flows on, and everything eventually comes to pass.
Ten
Ali and I moved into the flat the Nigerian couple had lived in, but we decided to use his grandfather’s kitchen upstairs to cook. That way, the three of us could eat together as a family. As soon as I got home from work in the evenings, I cooked dinner using whatever Grandfather Abdul had picked up at the market that afternoon based on the note that we’d left for him, but it was often just Grandfather Abdul and me. As the weekends kept Ali busy, he usually took a couple of days in the middle of the week to rest during the day and work the late shift after dinner.
With so much time for just the two of us, Grandfather Abdul and I talked much more often than we used to. He told me all about his family and his ancestors, about the One and Only God, Allah, and stories of the Prophet Muhammad. I couldn’t read the Qur’an, but I ended up memorizing the first verse of the Islamic creed: “La ilaha illallah, Muhammad rasulullah” (“There is no god but God, Muhammad is the Messenger of God”). But this wasn’t surprising to me: ever since I was little, Grandmother used to say there was a Lord in Heaven who presided over all of Creation. Whenever my father caught her talking that way, he would browbeat her and say it was just superstition. To me there wasn’t much difference between the being my grandmother had talked about and the being Grandfather Abdul described. I guess you could say it was like the difference between them eating naan and chapatti, and us eating rice.
Sometimes I talked about my grandmother. Grandfather Abdul said that because she was a good person, she would now be an angel in a Paradise filled with flowing rivers and flowers in full bloom. I pictured her mingling with the other good people somewhere in a field of flowers beyond the rainbow bridge that I saw in my visions.
I also told him about the other people in my life: Uncle Tan was a Buddhist, and Uncle Lou used his breaks from filling orders in the kitchen to recite endless prayers that sounded like magic spells. Many of the people who lived in Chinatown went to a Taoist temple to burn incense and pray. Luna was Bangladeshi and Auntie Sarah Sri Lankan, but as they were both born in Britain, they went to church and believed in Jesus. Nevertheless, they each skilfully balanced the etiquette and rules of their religion with their own cultural heritage. Grandfather Abdul smiled with satisfaction at my descriptions of everyone.
“Child, just as our clothes and food are a little different from each other’s, our lifestyles are also different. But that’s all. Providence converges into one.”
Though I knew nearly nothing about Islam, Ali’s family’s customs were not all that difficult for me. Later, Ramadan was a little tough to get through, but once the period of fasting was over, I realized anew the preciousness of family and daily meals. When I told Grandfather Abdul the story of Princess Bari and how I got my name, he smiled brightly and nodded.