Arranged or love?

How do you feel so alone in a crowd full of people? How do you feel like you don’t belong? What is you identity if you don’t belong, if you’re alone?

 Zubaida sat at the table while her father give a speech about an ideal child-her. She was hearing him but for some reason she couldn’t listen. Her brothers sat on the table besides her smiling and nodding to all the things said by her father, it felt as if she had achieved all her life ambitions by making her family proud. He had told them that he was going to throw a party for her in the community hall, she deserved it after all she had achieved a first class degree in business management. Zubaida was the first female in her family to go to university and graduate and was described by the women in her large, extended family as an inspiration. She smiled to her self and tried to focus on her father.

“I know a lot of you have been asking lately what Zubaida is going to do now that she has graduated,” her father said, smiling broadly at the guests in the room. Those who were chattering suddenly quieted down and tuned in on what her father was saying. They looked at Zubaida and then back on the stage to her father. Zubaida gave her dazzling smile and nodded to her father to continue. Now this had definitely caught her attention!

“I’m not exaggerating but I swear these women have got nothing better to do than to keep tabs on what everyone is doing in life, I bet that they even have a chart to mark how many times we go to the bloody toilet,” her brother Rahim whispered loudly. Zubaida snickered putting her hand in front of her mouth to muffle her laugh. Adnan who was sat next to her on her left, coughed loudly to cover his laughter and then put his finger to his lips to warn his smaller siblings to stay quiet. Rahim snickered as a few women raised their perfectly plucked eyebrows at him, as if daring him to make another remark. Rahim lowered his eyes as the women burned holes into him.

Her father, after a pause cleared his throat, he looked at Zubaida who smiled back at him, nodding for him to tell everyone. This is it, he’s going to tell everyone that I’m going to open my own beauty salon, she thought. Rahim leaned back and poked Adnan, he had a funny feeling about this, the old women were smiling smugly and for some reason, he couldn’t put his finger on it he knew something wasn’t right. Adnan nodded at Rahim as he looked back at his father; the long pause he so very well knew and the hesitation that was apparent on his father’s face meant that things weren’t going to go Zubaida’s way. Oh dear.

“As you all know my dear daughter has now turned twenty two,” he said, his voice beginning to catch, he blinked rapidly as his eyes began to water, Rahim watched him, tensing as he realized his father was trying not to cry, Adnan shook his head.  Their father never cried. Ever.

“Girls who are a lot younger than her have married and have settled down, but we felt Zubaida was to young to get married and also she wanted to get a degree and as a father it was my duty to fulfil her wish. But now she is ready, like I said she is twenty two, she is a lot older and mature and therefore I believe that she is now ready to marry” he said to the room full of family and friends.

“Like she has made me proud today, she will continue to. Zubaida is seen as the role model, an example for other girls her age, and as a good role model she will do what society asks of her. She will get married!” he said, all traces of hesitation and nervousness the three siblings had witnessed a couple of minutes ago had disappeared.

Zubaida gasped and whispered no. She looked at her father too shocked to speak, she sat at the table frozen, how could he do this? It was not possible. She shook her head and tried to grasp what this meant. She opened and closed her mouth like a goldfish, she tried to speak but couldn’t. Around them the women cheered and clapped and laughed, another wedding for their community, it was a chance to show off, to bring their young daughters and show them off to the community hoping that someone would ask for their daughters’ hand in marriage.