Finding Mr Perfectly Fine

The more people that enter the building, interrupting the stillness of the morning, the more I decide that our ‘moment’ was merely a result of our Friday night flirtations. Things were bound to be weird after we spent most of the night physically glued to each other’s side. In fact, by the time Kevin and Francesca get in, Adam’s back to his usual sarcastic self and I’ve never been so relieved. I have enough on my mind with trying to figure out if Hamza is the one, without throwing Adam into the spice mix. If Adam was a spice, he would be paprika. A little smoky, a little spicy, the perfect spice to give a curry a depth of colour. Hamza, on the other hand, is more like turmeric. Plain but dependable. You need it in every curry, but you don’t really know why.

As soon as it hits five o’clock, Adam’s out the door like a flash, with Francesca right behind him.

I loiter. I can’t bear to go home right away and face my mum’s accusations. And besides, it’s been a while seen I’ve seen Hamza, and I can’t exactly decide if he’s the one if I barely see him. I bet if I worked with him every day, and rode on his motorbike, and went for shisha with him, then I’d start fancying him too.

Free for a catch up? I send the text while I’m still at my desk. Luckily, he replies immediately and, with relief, I grab my bag and head out into the hot, summer’s evening.

*

Hamza’s already waiting for me outside Nike at Oxford Circus and greets me with the biggest bear hug of my life and I lean into it and let him wrap his arms around me. His embrace feels so safe and comforting that I’m almost disappointed when he finally lets go to grin down at me.

‘Salaams, habibti,’ he says, his eyes full of warmth. ‘How are you?’

‘Better now that you’re here,’ I reply truthfully. ‘It’s been mad.’

‘Tell me about it over dinner?’ He takes my hand and, once again, I don’t resist.

The days are long and warm now and we stroll hand in hand through the cobbled Soho streets while he fills me in on his weekend and day at work. Everywhere I look I see happy couples stuck to each other like conjoined twins in their flirty summer outfits and sunglasses, and I realise with a start that we must look exactly like them. Hamza’s in aviators and because he’s come straight from work, he’s had to make do with unbuttoning his shirt collar and rolling his sleeves up. I look at his pale arm next to my brown one and the strangest thought enters my head. I wonder what our kids would look like.

We go to a little Malaysian restaurant that serves fully halal meat, and while we wait for our food to arrive, I casually mention that I bumped into Adam on Friday night whilst out with my cousins.

‘Hmm,’ he replies noncommittally. ‘Is that why you had a bad weekend? Did you guys have a fight?’

‘No. My tiff was with my mum,’ I say miserably. ‘She’s getting really stressed out about me still being unmarried with my thirtieth birthday coming up.’

‘If you need me to save you from spinsterhood, say the word,’ he responds, wiggling his eyebrows. I must look alarmed because he sighs and rolls his eyes.

‘Relax, I was joking.’

‘I know you were!’ I say brightly. ‘Obviously we’re not about to get married when we barely know each other.’

‘Well, “barely” is an underestimation, wouldn’t you say?’

‘OK, maybe not “barely” but not enough to decide that we want to live with each other forever. I don’t even know how many kids you want,’ I add as an afterthought.

Our food arrives; a sticky barbecue platter for two, ho fun noodles with beef, sambal morning glory, chilli prawns and a beef rendang, and I hope it’s enough of a distraction that Hamza will forget that we’re talking about marriage, and start talking about food instead.

‘I don’t care how many kids I have, so long as there’s at least one,’ he says between bites of the deliciously sweet and spicy barbecue lamb, not forgetting our line of conversation at all. ‘What about you?’

‘Three,’ I admit, deciding to go with it. The whole point of us meeting today was for me to try and suss out our compatibility. ‘I’ve always wanted three, like me and my sisters. You guys are three siblings too, right?’

‘Yeah. It’s a good number.’ He smiles, reaching for the king prawns.

The conversation moves on to work, and Hamza starts talking about some new financial project thingie. I tune out and I think about how there’s so much more to maintaining a marriage than how many kids we want. According to Sabina, the beauty of an arranged marriage is that you get to find out all the important stuff before your judgement is clouded with love. We’ve all heard too many stories of women who haven’t done their due diligence, only to be in for a massive shock after marriage.

I somehow need to find out exactly what Hamza wants from me, without making it too obvious. Does he want me to wear hijab? Live with his parents? Stop working? I have no bloody idea, and I need to find out ASAP, before things get more complicated than they already are.

When he finally stops talking about work, I gesture over to his chin. ‘You’ve got some sauce on your chin,’ I begin casually. As he wipes it, I continue, ‘Good thing you don’t have a beard, huh? Imagine how much food would get stuck in it!’

He laughs and takes the bait immediately. ‘I might grow one, one day. Do you like beards?’

‘They can be pretty sexy sometimes. Would you do it for religious reasons or fashion reasons?’

‘Uh, a bit of both maybe?’

‘What about hijab?’ I quickly ask, thrilled that the conversation is going the way I want it to.

He looks up from his food, a little taken aback. ‘What about it?’