Dear Aisha, I’m a mother of identical twin boys. They’re eligible young bachelors – tall, athletic, and finishing up medical school. I have heard of a great girl from a woman in my community. She is young, educated, religious, though she does not wear hijab. Her aunt says she is…
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This past Ramadan I attended a weekend-long Muslim social bonanza in New York City. I was away from my family for the summer, so it was wonderful to find a spirit of community in such a big city. But by the time the weekend was over, I felt like I…
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There are days when I wish I never stepped foot into Pakistan. The leers from strange men older than my grandfather and the constant electricity shortages in above 100 degree weather can compel anyone to consider fleeing the country. And yet, I can’t help but love it. I was born…
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Question #1 Dear Salma, I have a teenage daughter and am concerned about how to explain interfaith marriage to her. We have a growing number of Muslims in our community–both men and women–marrying outside of Islam. She and I will talk about these sorts of things and I’ve explained to…
Read MoreMy friends call it my “deer-in-headlights” look. Not all of them recognize it, but a select few know it when they see it. Until a few weeks ago, I couldn’t pinpoint exactly what brought on this feeling of unease in certain social settings. “I just feel….lost?” I tried helplessly to explain to one friend.
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A reader once told me in an offhand way, “Of course, you’ll do differently with your own daughter.” She’d just finished commenting on a draft of my memoir, and her remark caught me off guard. I’d written of my engagement at eighteen to the son of our closest family friends, but I hadn’t meant to criticize my traditional courtship. A critique would’ve implied that I had regrets, that I wished I had dated other men, that I’d now seen the light and wouldn’t do the same given the chance.
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Ask Salma addresses sibling interactions and interfaith relationships.
Dr. Farber bounced a black, leather whip in her palm when she said the ladies in our classroom would find Taoist sexual philosophy especially interesting. Taoist men, she explained, trained themselves to last.
“That’s why a Taoist man is hard to find.”
The room broke into an easy laughter. My lips went tight. Last at what?
After class the curly-haired blonde guy that sat two rows over motioned me to his desk. He introduced himself as Matt and the woman standing next to him as Jen and said, “We’re getting a study group together. Interested?”
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In today’s AskM column, M responds to one woman about how to deal with her mother-in-law, and another about her racially-conscious suitor.
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At 21 I married a man five years older than me. The second time around, at 31, I married a man five years younger than me.*
Eight years into our marriage, it still sends little shock waves through people when I mention this. There are sometimes oooohs and aaahhhs, eyes get bigger and rounder, and I can almost see folks wanting to high five me and slap my husband on the back for biting the bullet and marrying an older, divorced, single mom. I have, no joke, been asked at least a dozen times how I managed to pull this off.
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