When my husband finally makes his way down the stairs, my frustration abates and he and I sit across from each other and share our early morning meal. We speak intermittently and keep one eye trained on the clock to ensure we finish our food by the time dawn prayers begin. Despite the sparse conversation and the hurried meal, I enjoy the feeling that we are both beginning our obligatory fasts together, as a unit.
Read MoreI was preparing to graduate from law school and move on to the next stage in my professional life. As I searched for employment, it seemed equally important that I search for a spouse. My friends and family had made several attempts at introducing me to potentials they deemed compatible but to no avail. There were only so many single men within my community, and I thought I had exhausted the local options. Short of taking a road trip across the country to scout out potentials at Friday prayers in new and remote areas, I needed a way to meet people.
Read MoreI remember the day that I first fell in love. I was thirteen, and the film Grease was playing on TV. And there he was. Cool, trendy, good looking and ready to do anything for his girl. He was of course John Travolta, and I had no doubt that he would turn up on my doorstep and ask me to marry him. Things didn’t quite work out like that – he went on to become a scientologist, and I set off on my own quest for love.
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Like Divine Love, love for your spouse requires some extent of extinguishment of your “self”. Indeed, the very search for a husband teaches Shelina Zahra Janmohamed in her new book, Love in a Headscarf, her smallness in the larger landscape of the world. Love – with a lower-case “l” – happens when you just know that your partner is the person who completes you.
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Author Shelina Zahra Janmohamed sits down with us to discuss the issues brought up in her new book Love in a Headscarf, which documents Janmohamed's search for a partner in a landscaped blurred by culture clashes, mixed identities, and double standards.
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