Finding Mr Perfectly Fine

Brothers:None

Sisters:Amina, 25, MSc in International Relations, London School of Economics. Yasmin, 20, Brunel University, Marketing.

The CV had details about my maternal and paternal grandparents, what they did, the village and district they were from in Bangladesh, my aunts and uncles, what they do .?.?. It was my entire family history on a screen and in a couple of hundred words.

‘What about my interests? What I’m looking for in a husband?’ I implored when Mum finally stopped dictating and smiled at herself, pleased with her efforts.

‘Oh, none of that’s important. You don’t want to give away too much. Plus, you’re the girl, so you can’t look like you’re too keen. Now we need to choose a couple of pictures. Thank God you’re photogenic.’

By that point I’d given up on feeling like a human being. The fastest way to get this entire ordeal over with was to oblige with minimal fuss, so I opened up my photo gallery, handed my laptop over to Mum and collapsed on the bed next to Nani who gave me a reassuring smile.

‘Gosh, you have a lot of selfies here, don’t you?’ Mum mumbled, adjusting her reading glasses and squinting in concentration.

‘I take one before I go anywhere to make sure I look presentable,’ I explained through gritted teeth.

‘But why are they on your laptop? Do you know how long this is going to take? There are thousands of pictures here!’

‘It automatically syncs with my phone when I connect it!’ I exclaimed in irritation, resisting the urge to snatch my laptop back. Everyone knows that looking through a woman’s photo gallery is akin to rummaging through her underwear drawer.

‘All right, calm down.’

I closed my eyes and practised the deep breathing techniques I saw on a mindfulness TikTok the other day. Not that I could remember how to do it properly, so I winged it and focused on getting my heartbeat to slow down. As Mum muttered to herself while browsing through my 7,489 photos, Nani stroked my hair and whispered to me to be patient, it would all be worth it in the end. I stifled a snort and continued with my deep breathing but I was secretly pleased to have Nani in my corner. OK, so she agreed with this biodata malarkey but I knew she would never pressure me into marrying someone I didn’t want to.

‘Here, this is a good one.’ Mum’s voice startled me out of my thoughts and I opened my eyes, still breathing slowly to calm my nerves.

‘Mum, that’s from my graduation.’

‘So? You look sensible. Not like all these silly, pouty—’

‘So, it was eight years ago. I look nothing like that now!’ I felt my pulse racing again. So much for the deep breathing. Nani squeezed my arm and I lowered my voice. ‘I can’t use that.’

‘You look exactly the same.’

I didn’t. I looked young in that picture. My complexion was fresh, plump and there wasn’t a pore in sight. My black hair was still silky and shiny, yet to be abused by GHDs and hair dye. I have better eyebrows now, though. The thin arches from my youth looked positively anorexic.

‘And here’s the second picture. This one from Nasima’s wedding. You look lovely in that saree.’ She was right. I looked happy in the photo and peach always complemented my colouring. But I didn’t feel right sending a picture of me in a saree when I didn’t even know how to wrap one. The last time I wore one it unravelled as I ran up a flight of stairs and I had to ask a random woman to fix it for me before I exposed my modesty.

‘Mum, I only ever wear sarees at weddings. Isn’t that deceptive?’

‘No more than an eight-year-old picture. And what do you propose then? Sending one of you in jeans and trainers like some sort of, what do you girls call them? A “roadman”?’ Mum did the whole exaggerated air quote thing, and I stifled a giggle at the look of confusion on Nani’s face.

‘What have the road cleaners got to do with it?’ she asked in Bengali.

Mum ignored her and carried on. ‘I don’t think so. Right, email it all over to me, OK? And copy your dad in. He’s got three people waiting to receive this.’

With that, she clambered out of the chair and waltzed out of my bedroom before I could even process what had happened. Nani got up from the bed as fast as her arthritic knees would permit and planted a kiss on top of my head.

‘Don’t get cross with your mum, moni,’ she said in Bengali, using the same term of endearment she’s used for me since I was a baby. As she slowly made her way to the open bedroom door, she added, ‘She’s worried about you. As soon as you turn thirty, the proposals will stop coming. You’ll be old. We don’t want you to be all alone forever.’

Letting out a big sigh, I fell backwards onto the duvet and stared up at the ceiling, my eyes filling with tears I begged not to spill over. Because that would have been really pathetic.

I thought back to uni days and how my best friend Layla and I would talk about the guys we fancied. The prospects were endless. There was tall Mohammed, blue-eyed Mohammed, Omar, Rafiq, Jamal .?.?. So many to choose from. We really thought we would have our pick. And then she met Hasan, fell in love and got married. And me? Well, I met someone but that obviously didn’t work out. So here I was, five years after we broke up, putting together a bloody marriage CV with the help of my mother.

I honestly never thought I would find myself in this predicament. According to Mum it’s because my expectations are too high. Well, excuse me for wanting someone who respects me, makes me laugh, challenges me, looks after me – and who I happen to fancy. Is that really too much to ask? Is it my fault that the few proposals that have passed my mum and nani’s stringent criteria have been a foot shorter than me, fifteen years older than me, or still living with their parents and ten siblings?

As I sat there, pondering where the hell I went wrong, I suddenly had a vision of me still living with my parents and grandmother at forty, while my younger sisters’ kids wreaked havoc around me. I imagined my mum moaning at me for shopping too much and wasting my money. I heard her hypothetical voice screech, ‘You’ve got no husband to look out for you so you can’t afford to throw your money around!’ I saw my dad looking pityingly at me and my bedridden nani wailing to God to have mercy on her and find me a husband. Any husband. Even a divorced, balding father of six would have been fine.

I worked myself up into a bit of a tizzy, looking into the future like that.

I can’t become the moral of a ‘look what happens if you reject all your proposals’ cautionary tale. I can’t become the spinster aunt who dedicates her life to her nieces and nephews because her eggs have dried up. I can’t live with my overbearing parents forever. I won’t!

I’m not going to rely on my mum and her limited network of aunties and uncles from a certain part of Sylhet to find me a husband. I’m twenty-nine, not sixty-nine. I have an entire year to find someone and if I put enough energy into finding a husband as I did in finding the latest celebrity lipstick, I’m sure I can be engaged in six months and married in twelve. I’m taking matters into my own hands: I’ve already signed up to MuslimMate, I’ll attend a bunch of Islamic conferences, attend a speed-marriage event or two, and basically walk around with a MARRY ME henna tattoo on my forehead, if that’s what it takes.