The Love Match

Bangladeshi weddings can be brutal.

Sure, like most South Asian ceremonies, they seem magical. There’s a reason why everyone from Selena Gomez to Coldplay has attempted to cop our glamour. The vibrant clothes, plentiful food, and impromptu dance numbers will take the most average wedding and turn it into something straight out of a Bollywood blockbuster.

Or, in this case, a natok.

But the ugly truth is, in or out of the movies, weddings are as treacherous as a jungle-the prime hunting ground of matchmaking aunties and uncles, who herd together in the buffet line, dressed in their peacock-bright sharis and fanjabis, munching on somosas and zilafis as they set their sights on any Bengal tiger cubs foolish enough to stray from their streaks.

Enter me: Zahra Khan. I may be a cub, but I’m hardly a fool.

Usually, I’m smart enough to avoid weddings and busybodies.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not immune to the occasional fairy-tale wedding fantasy. It’s hard to be when all my favorite stories are romances. Pride and Prejudice, Crazy Rich Asians, When Dimple met Rishi, Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani… If it involves extended eye contact, an eventual kill, and hand holding, sign me up.

But a love story of my own is a fantasy for a future-Zahra. One with time to date and dream. Present-Zahra is only eighteen, graduated from high school less than a week ago, and has plenty on her plate already, thank-you-very-much.

Too bad i can’t get that through my mother’s stubborn skull.

Since senior year began, she’s been dropping less-than-suble hints that a proper-read: rich-match for me would be the end of all our woes. You see, since my father’s passing two years ago, Amma and I have had to work our butts off to keep food on the table for our family of five. A well-suited match, Jane Austen-style, would certainly help pay the bills.

So here we are at yet another ritzy banquet hall as Amma scopes out potential suitors, dragging me around like a show poodle on a leash. Her eyes flit towards a boy a couple of years older than me who sat in front of me in public speaking. He lifts a hand to wave. Before I can return the gesture, by best Good Bangladeshi Daughter smile glued in place, I’m yanked unceremoniously into the buffet line.

Jerking my wrist out of my mother’s grasp, I exclaim, “Amma, that was so rude! I thought you wanted me to mingle.”

“Rude?” She frowns between me and the table, laden with heaping platters of fragrant jasmine rice and vindaloo, before responding in exasperated Begali, “Hireh, rude is the earful I’d get from your aunties if you married Mahmud Miah’s bedisha son. Two years out of high school and what is he doing with his life? Last I hear, he’s waiting tables and planning to go to Hollywood to act.”

Disdain drips off every word.

“I’m a waitress too,” I bit back, swallowing a lump of rising hurt. “Besides, we went to school together, he was only saying hi, not declaring his undying love.”

Not to mention, he’s the only person I know here, if doing his share of hour group project on, ironically, dream careers counts as “knowing.” I catch glimpses of other people who live in our hometown, but it’s Amma who knows everyone who’s anyone in Paterson. I’ve always been too busy with work and school to socialize.

When I told her I was too tired to take a bus all the way to New York City for this dawath after my shift, she claimed we simply couldn’t skip my prio cousin Anika’s wedding, but i doubt I could pick Anika Afa out of a police lineup even though the romantic slideshow of her and her fiance flickering across the mounted television screens around us.

Oblivious to my misgivings, Amma continues darkly, “I’d let a boy like that steal my daughter across the county over my dead body. Your fufus in Bangladesh would happily finish the job for me if they found out.”