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feeling” was absent. I had set myself the wrong litmus test to find a partner. The ease with which I rejected such a high-caliber suitor was naive. All that I had been looking for was “that feeling.” At nineteen I had high hopes of Finding the One. I look back and think that Ali probably would have made quite a good husband. In fact, he did go on to marry, and his wife always looks happy and radiant. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I had married him.
    My family took their Islamic responsibilities very seriously. I had to agree to my future partner willingly and happily. What they were offering was an arranged marriage—something very different from a forced marriage.
    As part of an arranged marriage, their job was to provide potential matches and offer advice, support, and wisdom in choosing one. If I didn’t like someone they presented to me, then so be it. My choice was the determining factor. In adhering to their faith as Muslims, it was quite clear to my parents that there was to be no coercion of any sort in my selection of a husband. Besides, they could never have forced me to do anything against my will: they were too respectful of me as a human being in my own right. On top of all this, if they had used force in sealing the marriage, then it would not be valid anyway. But there was nothing sinister in them helping to “arrange” men to come my way. Who would object to help in finding the love of one’s life? And they would also be on hand to help during the agreement process. Having someone to support the relationship as it became more serious was just as important as helping to find that special someone in the first place.
    My parents were also learning through this experience. I was their first marriage experience with a daughter, and the rules seemed to be completely different for girls. Had they also known the complexity of the path that I was choosing to pursue, they might have encouraged me more vigorously to consider Ali, but I think they, too, believed that the perfect prince existed. How would they settle for anything less for their princess?
    “Shelina should meet him again. It’s always so hard to tell the first time, the poor little thing. He must have been nervous, she was nervous. They weren’t really themselves,” twittered the matchmaker.
    My mother wanted what mothers always want for their daughters: happiness and love. Whatever the positive experiences of their own lives, mothers want something even better for their daughters. So my mum fell back on a thoroughly modern phrase: “She says that she just didn’t feel the ‘click.’”
    I looked at my mum with adoring respect. She believed in the “click.” This should have come as no surprise. One of her favorite stories from the Qur’an was that of Safura and Moses. Moses, a strong and handsome young man, has arrived in town and is watering his sheep at a well along with the local shepherds. Safura is waiting with her sister to water her flock but the other shepherds make it difficult for them because they are women. The chivalrous stranger intervenes and assists with their sheep. After Safura’s encounter with Moses she returns home and recounts this incident of the strange man to her father. Her father has a business and she advises him that Moses would make an excellent employee because of his strength and good character. As a result of their conversation, her father dispatches her to invite him to dinner.
    I often wonder if she tells her father of this Johnny-come-lately because she has taken a shine to him. It seems she was open with her family and that in such a setting there was no embarrassment in a daughter suggesting to a father that she has a special interest in a particular man. Perhaps Safura conveys her “click” to her father. Moses is invited around to meet her family so he can be properly evaluated. Fast forward, and Safura and Moses are married.
    My mother as well as my father had taken the