Nishat and Usman

Ok. So. I told y'all sometime back that I began 'The Great Husband Search' a couple weeks ago.

I met a couple people on muslimintro.com. Began emailing back and forth. Abeer sees enails back and forth 'cuz I send them to her, because I want to be as 'aboveboard' as possible with all this. This is gonna be my marriage, after all.

ANYhoo, I'm down to two people I really really want to know more about: Nishat and Usman. This is weird. I feel like I'm an HR rep trying to fill a SUPER important job position! Hmm.

Anyway, I started speaking to Nishat on the phone the other day. We talked for about an hour about random junk. I don't want to get too detailed. But since this blog is like an online memoir-in-process, I had to mention it. He sounds like an awesome person, and his family is similar to mine in lots of ways. He's (east)Indian by ethnicity and really tall. And he's my age, about to finish his degree. And he writes really well. That's attractive. But then, y'all know me, I'm a freak for a beautifully assembled piece of prose.

I think I should mention that most of the people on the marriage site come across to me as... well... unintelligent b/c of their writing level. And I'm sticking with sites for two reasons: height (I know my Mama told me that the man I marry will be short, but I'm still looking up. Literally.) and writing style. Does your site have a lot of description? Do you talk clearly about yourself? Do you show you're passionate about the deen and about changing the world? Good, then I'm interested. But WOW, so few men out there are like that, which is why my tidbit self is still single. (Astaghfirullah for my immodesty...)

Usman, on the other hand, was really bold and emailed me w/o my permission, during the day I had my email up on the site. Mad people started emailing me from nothing, so I took it off. Luckily for him, he wrote me such a lucid and engaging email that I kept it around, showed it to Abeer. She's much more impressed with Usman, partially b/c of his age (he's got about 10 years on me) and partially b/c he's so... I dunno. I understand why, though. He's just revealed that he's short, tho, and he says he found me when he put the word 'convert' into the search engine... OHHH no. Wanna know why I'm wary of that? See Umm Zaid's latest treatise on Muslimaats and Marriage. People who look for converts can tend to do so b/c we're more 'naiive' about the whole marriage process and Islam in general. I'm not saying Usman is like that, and in fact I find him attractive too, but. Hmm.

This is something my mama would talk me through, I think, were she Muslim and interested in doing so for me. She's not. She's totally Christian and secular and American when it comes to marriage, and so even tho she's guiding me by her traditional 3 questions (Is it Moral? Is it Ethical? Is it Legal?) that have been my principles for life, finding a husband for her daughter, the whole 'Great Husband Search' in general, is out of her realm of experience. She married my father b/c she loves him (and, lets admit, b/c lil miss twennytwo was on the way. we don't talk about that tho. Shh.) so is more open to dating and the like than I am. She thinks I won't find anyone unless I "Open up and go out with a few people". I feel like... wow, I'm more conservative than my mother, when on Earth did that happen?

Anyway. If someone else pops up on the 'TGHS' radar, well, y'all will hear about it.

ttyl.
TwennyTwo