Wow…..it’s been a long time since I last wrote. So much has happened since, and things just got bad to worse that I don’t know where to start and most of all I’m dreading my critics telling me “I told you so!”
I’ve been procrastinating over writing for weeks now and every time I have attempted in the past it was just too hard.
The good news is that my sister got married soon after Ramadan last year. It was a quiet ceremony, she really didn’t want either my parents or her husband’s family to spend so lavishly as people do at weddings. My mum wasn’t too happy about that especially because, we reckon, that she wanted to show off to her friends, in fact my sister didn’t really want that many people at the wedding either, in the end there were about 300 guests who enjoyed the quiet and simple ceremony. She’s now moved to London and is blissfully happy, her husband is great and her-in-laws treat her well.
As for me, well my dad has not spoken to me since last month and my mum, well she talks to me but it’s not the same and I’ll explain in a bit.
Things between Dante and me have not been good, well he thinks it’s good, but I can’t help being suspicious ever since I found those text messages in his phone.
I found condoms in his car, which he claimed was left there by some friends and then I found a pic of a woman who looked like she was on top of him while he took the pic. She looked Eastern European, and I went mad cos the girl the text messages were from had a eastern European name. His explanation was that he was trying to sell the camera to his friends who took it away to check it out and one of his friends must have taken it.
Dante always has an explanation for everything and when he’s finished, I feel really bad about doubting him in the first place. Sometimes things were so good I was even trying to work up the courage to tell my parents, especially after seeing my sister so happy in her marriage.
But that time never came.
Just after Eid last year, one of my neighbours, who I always thought was Indian – but turned out to be Bengali and knew my uncle, told on me and the “black” guy I was seeing. When my uncle told my dad, dad told him we were just friends and wouldn’t hear of it, but my uncle kept on banging on about it and told the neighbour to ring him when Dante was around.
My uncle was so excited to show me up to my parents, he apparently had a smile on his face for weeks, so my cousins told me. Just after New Years, Dante was over one weekend, we’d been decorating the house as he slowly moved all his gear in – which made me think he can’t be cheating, why would he want to move in, if he had?
But anyway, as he was over a lot more, the neighbour spotted this. He must have noticed the times of Dante’s comings and going and was reporting back to my uncle who after collating all the evidence went to tell my dad!
My dad, who was still in denial, just wouldn’t listen. Mum was ringing me at all times to ask me, but I kept avoiding the subject, I didn’t want to lie that I had a boyfriend but it felt like the wrong time to say anything especially with the uncle around, but I didn’t want to entirely deny it either.
I wish I’d just told them there and then and it would’ve saved me the embarrassment when my dad decided to knock on my door at 5am in the morning only to catch Dante lingering in the background in his boxers.
I just wanted to die. Dad never said anything and just walked off. Uncle, who was stood next to him gave me the dirtiest look and told me if I were his daughter he would’ve killed me. But it was the pain in my dad’s face that I couldn’t bear and I still can’t. I don’t think he cares what race Dante is, what hurt him was that I was unmarried and living with my boyfriend that he could not bear.
My mum had a screaming match with me, and I had to call my sister and my brother-in-law to come up north to speak to them.
Dante felt bad about the whole situation and had agreed to move out until things calmed down at home, but my mum decided that since I’d been caught I had to have my nikah done. Dante didn’t mind, and in front of a mullah and my brother, my cousin brother, brother-in-law and my sister. I married Islamically, in my living room, wearing my jeans and covering my head with a shawl for the mullah’s sake and we fed the guests with tea and biscuits.
He converted on the day we had our nikah and chose Mohammed Dawuud as his Muslim name. Since then he’s got much more street cred and many more Asian friends!
Mum and dad were not there during the nikah, and all I could think about at them time was them. I really wanted my dad there, even called him but his phone was switched off. They are both planning to go to Bangladesh in two weeks, all the gossiping has really hurt my parents and they just want to get away. Of course my ex and his family found out and have been ridiculing me ever since. The ex husband has been telling people that I was with Dante while I was married to him and that on many occasions he caught Dante leaving the house just as he was coming home from work. Of course people have been lapping all the gossip up since then.
I really can’t look at my dad in the face, so I avoid going to their house. A few days after he caught Dante and me, I decided to go over and ask for forgiveness for lying to him and going behind his back. He always gave me so much freedom, but always trusted me, I guess if I had gone to him and told him about Dante in the first place he would have been happy for me and would have given me away like any other parent, but it was the living together that he could not handle. Dad never said anything, picked up his tea, took it to the kitchen and then went upstairs. Mum only communicated with me when she had something to scream about, but that soon ended after the nikah.
I’ve been married Islamically for over a month. Dante as usual gets along with all my brothers and sisters and things would’ve been great between us if it wasn’t for the fact that I am so suspicious, but I am really trying to put that behind me.
Every time I go into a Bangladeshi shop I can hear the men talking about me and telling each other I’m the girl who is married to a black man. Once I went in with Dante and they didn’t say anything, Dante even went to the counter and asked for some Bangla paan. They chatted to him quite fine, told him he must go round more often, but when I’m on my own, I don’t even get a smile.
The whispering does bother me, but my mum hates it the most. The women in the area make jibes at her all the time and she’ll take it out on by not asking me to stay for dinner, or when she makes a cup of tea for dad, she never asks me anymore and that hurts.
But she realises when she does that, and sometimes she’ll send my brother around with some rice and curry. Dad has always put money into my account every month, just a little something for shopping, well he still does that, so he still cares, he must, he would’ve stopped the payment straightaway if he hated me. When my brother was caught with weed when he was 17, my dad didn’t give him pocket money for a year!
My uncle pretends to be supportive. He’s banned his kids from talking to me, of course they still do and I hate for the day when his daughter come home with her white boyfriend……..she tells me they want to get married in the summer. I told her to tell her parents before someone else does.
But this is what I wanted, to be married, right? But it doesn’t feel all that good; I want things to be the same again with my parents and I really miss them, I miss hanging out at my mums, I was spending a lot more time there when my sister got married, we use to sit around in the kitchen gossiping about other people and mum was always making new dishes, I just want to go back to how it was. I miss my dad ringing me every morning without fail to ask if I had got to work OK. He’s stopped ringing.
When I was married to my ex, I could always go running home to tell my parents if he did something wrong, I can’t do that now, so I keep things to myself, instead of being over the moon, I feel even more stressed out now than ever before.
I also think if things were great with me and Dante, everything would be easier to deal with, but that’s not the case either!
As for the neighbour, Dante almost knocked him out and now he stays well away from us. In fact, we heard the other day, he maybe moving cos he doesn’t want kids to live in a street with such a besharam (shameless) woman! We were thinking of moving ourselves, but we’re gonna stick it out here for a while, if the neighbours want to move then they can go ahead!
