My Big Fat Muslim Wedding
Asra Nomani ditched the guy she loved and wed a man she hardly knew. What went on behind closed doors would change her life.Within three months, I’d had enough. Depressed, I retreated to my parents’ home to regain my equilibrium. I feared their wrath—after all, they’d had an arranged marriage and made it work—but they saw the gloom on my face, and understood. My father said, “We want to save you, not the marriage.”
After a couple of weeks, I returned to meet my husband at a Houlihan’s restaurant. When I began to talk with him about our problems, he literally bolted, jumping over the steel railing of the outdoor patio where we’d been sitting.
His father is the one who ended the relationship. He called me one day to announce, “It’s over.” Later at my office, I got a piece of mail, which my husband had signed with the three words “Talaq, talaq, talaq,” meaning “I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you.” According to traditional interpretation, a Muslim man has to simply utter this word three times