When I fell in love with a man who was a different religion to my own, I never knew the heartache and pain I would have to face just so we could be together.

You read the story of star-crossed lovers and sigh sadly at what they would have had to sacrifice for their love. You just never think it will happen to you. I don’t understand why we as human beings always assume it, whatever it is, will never happen to any one of us. We gloss over the word ‘never’, irrevocably holding it out to the world as our torch. But I’ve learned the hard way that like a burning match thrust into sand, ‘never’ can quickly mean very little.

Star-crossed Lovers Meeting for the First Time

I fell in love with my husband Aandaleeb Bharadwaj* when I was 16 years old. He was of Hindi origin and I was Muslim. He was also 16. We attended the same high school in Durban.  My name is Safiyah Kassim*. As head boy and head girl respectively our paths crossed often. At first it was a working relationship, but that soon gave way to shy, tentative feelings of attraction that quickly blossomed to romance.

His hand would reach out for something and accidentally brush the hairs on my arm as I reached out for the same thing and the electricity seemed to fill the air. As clichéd as it may sound now, when I was teenager, reaching out to him with my heart and spirit seemed like the most natural thing to do. As an awkward, skinny girl, despite my authority as prefect, I gave myself completely to the emotions that overwhelmed me. It was so easy because he gave himself over to the feelings too.

Giving into Love Despite our Differences

Very soon we were making excuses to spend every waking moment to be together – at school, before school, after school. We were inseparable and for a while, because it was only our world we shared together, it was so beautifully simple to be together. As is the natural order of things, someone had to find out.

What friends we had before soon fell to the wayside the more time we spent together. It seems almost arrogantly dangerous to say it now, but we really were all we needed and wanted for and from each other. The truth is at 16 we were in love.

My siblings soon noticed my waning attention from the normal things that had once occupied my mind. I didn’t want to come home so quickly anymore. I found excuses to stay extra hours at school or I would use the bus instead of the taxi. Or my once close friends would whisper to my sisters that I had spent my recess time away from them.

My Parents Find Out He is Hindu

When my elder sister found a notebook with Aandaleeb’s name scribbled on the inside of the back cover, she told my mother. She was furious. When she told my father, he was equally distraught. That night I was subjected to an interrogation that lasted until midnight. They wanted to know who he was, the state and meaning of our relationship, why we spent so much time together and if I understood the extent to which I was disgracing the family.

How could I know? Love is an irrational thing and I was young. When they banned me from having a relationship other than a working relationship with him, it seemed as though my world had stopped rotating. The sun was no longer there. I went to bed without supper that night and I cried myself to sleep, waking with eyes swollen and red.

The problem was I was Muslim, brought up to respect the religion of Islam, expected to finish school and one day find a Muslim husband with whom I could fall in love and share a family. My parents are exceptionally religious, particularly my father.

I Was Muslim

We were encouraged to attend Madrassa, a form of educational instruction in the ways of Islam, we read the Koran and prayed a number of times a day. We observed all religious holidays even taking part in the holy month of Ramadaan. Aandaleeb was everything my life was not and my parents made sure to tell me.

That they disagreed with our relationship and tried to end it did not turn me away from him. If anything I was more determined to be with him. We were just forced to go underground with it. He would wait for me every morning at the corner from my home so that we could catch the taxi to go to school and, when he left me in the afternoon, I would quickly eat lunch, do my homework and rush to the payphones just under our flat to talk to him for hours.

Fighting for Our Relationship and Love

Looking back, I believe my parents thought our relationship would naturally falter because we were so young. But it didn’t.  It felt right just being with him and despite the fact that I was shouted at or grounded and through my tears I fought to be with him. If you meet me now and if you get to know me, you would be surprised at my ferocity for I am a gentle being, soft-spoken and generally don’t air my opinions openly. I don’t drink or smoke and I have never broken any laws or been rebellious, but I fought for the right to be with the man I loved.

I guess it’s true when they say when you have something worth fighting for, you will fight to the death as was the case for Romeo and Juliet, but I didn’t want to die for this love. I wanted it and us to live together in harmony. I remember one time when I had come late from school yet again and my father scolded me and in his anger, slapped me hard because our love was not just disappearing and it had been over a year.

Scared and angry I rushed down to the payphones to call Aandaleeb, begging him to take me away, anywhere we could be together. Being the equally gentle soul that he is, he calmed me and asked me to return home. He promised me that evening that we would get married and finally be together.

Talk of a Marriage

When we matriculated, we attended the same university and still we loved each other, despite growing up and learning of the heartache that was being experienced by my family. In a moment of fervor my parents uprooted the entire family, moving house to the other end of Durban hoping we wouldn’t see each other. It broke my heart, but it only meant further to walk and more taxis to catch in order to see each other.

Once we started working, we began planning our wedding. We weren’t making much money, but we shared everything. What money we both made we put together and used for taxi fare, lunches, payphones and our wedding. I look back now and realise we were long married to each other way before we actually signed the register.

At this time, my mother had started coming around to the idea. She wasn’t entirely convinced, but at the mention of impending marriage she realised there was little more they could do. My father, on the other hand, stood steadfast in his disagreement.

The Question of Religion

How would we share our religions? It didn’t matter to me whether we would be in an Islamic or Hindi household as long as we were together. Knowing how important Aandaleeb’s religion was to him, I offered wholeheartedly to convert to Hinduism. You may, at this point, wonder how I could sacrifice so much of myself to be with him, but I don’t see it as a sacrifice.

Aandaleeb has made many sacrifices to be with me too. He faced the wrath of my father when he told him about our coming wedding. And yet, to this day, he is the gentlest, most loving man I have ever known.

A Hindi Wedding

The wedding was a small affair held in the Bharadwaj home. My father refused to attend. My mother had to lie to him to show her face, if only for a little while. On my wedding day I was the happiest and saddest bride.

After Aandaleeb and I were betrothed we left Durban and moved to Johannesburg to start our life together, without the emotional excitement we had experienced for a long time. We’ve been married five years now, going on six, and I just gave birth to our first child.

Marriage

Make no mistake, marriage has not been an easy ride. Like any couple, Aandaleeb and I argue and disagree, but our hearts are in this and always will be. We’re both old-fashioned idealists in many ways. I prepare lunch for him each morning and when I get home I cook dinner, but he drives me to and from work everyday without question or argument because I refuse to drive and, when I’m ill, he’s there at my side taking care of all my needs.

Friends I have talked to always want to know how, in this day and age, I could be so…they call it submissive, but I call it love. We have our roles and we play them equally and perfectly.

Life Beyond Religion, in Love

We love a lot, we laugh just as much, we talk and we share as if we only met this morning. My father still has not come around to the idea of our relationship and everyday I am saddened by his choices, but I have stopped mourning for what could have been.

This is my life now. It is a life that I am joyous to live. Aandaleeb once asked me what I would do if he died and I told him that I would die too. We’re soulmates and, yet, the birth of our son has forced me to reevaluate love because if I thought I loved before, I had no idea.

I have no anger towards my family. How can I? As much as I made my choices I know they made theirs and the truth is they’re allowed to just as I am.

*Not their real names