Loss. Love. Forgiveness. Love. In that order.

Hayah in Cape Town, 2009

July 3, 2009 – the day that I finally got the divorce papers in my hand. Walking away from the lawyer’s office, tears streaming down my face, heart overjoyed, arms wrapped for dear life around the precious file, I knew I was finally free.

The three years prior to that day had been difficult. I had consented to an arranged marriage, despite alarms going off like sirens inside my head, in spite of a very strong instinct telling me to run in the other direction. It’s strange, but I almost knew that divorce was inevitable even before the marriage ceremony occurred.

Yet despite the hours of debate between my hardcore feminist self working in the women’s rights field and my Islamic values and family ties, this good Muslim girl convinced herself that marriage was the right thing to do at that time. At 22, never even having had a boyfriend, I became a married woman. My notions of love up to that point were the stuff of dreams – a million infatuations with musicians, actors and the like, always believing that “the one” was out there for me.
 
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