There was a time I used to pretend I had met my husband in a cafe, by chance, because it seemed more romantic than the truth, which was that we met online on a dating site. I never wanted to meet someone online, any more than I wanted to be introduced to someone suitable by my Asian parents.
I don’t think of myself as particularly rule-breaking. All I did was fall in love unexpectedly. Three months after meeting him, I married Richard, a non-Muslim, someone I wasn’t technically supposed to marry because he didn’t share my cultural or religious heritage.
Today, it is easy for me to think of it as not a big deal, as though telling my family about him wasn’t the most difficult thing I’d ever done.
We’re very normal. After nearly ten years of marriage, and as parents of three small boys, all we do is watch Netflix and eat dinner on the sofa once the children are in bed. But though there is plenty of the everyday in our story, it does not make it any less of a great love.
Huma Qureshi from Walsall in the West Midlands, married Richard, a non-Muslim (pictured together)
I’m a writer from Walsall, West Midlands, age 39, of Pakistani heritage; Richard is a 40-year-old software consultant from Shropshire.
Perhaps no one would know, to look at us, what it took for us to be together. When our engagement was announced, my mother told some of our family and family friends that I met Richard in Regent’s Park mosque, as if we both just happened to spend all our free time there.
She said this in order to stress that his conversion to Islam was authentic and, perhaps more importantly, to stress that my behaviour was beyond reproach, to dampen gossip in the conservative, relatively strict social circle that raised me.
If I met my husband-to-be in the mosque, it meant I was a good sort of Muslim woman and my character came out of this intact. But the truth is, before we met, Richard had never considered converting to Islam.
The first time I saw him was after work outside a Tube station. It was March 2011. I was 29, living in a flat I’d just bought in North London.
I arrived early because I was more nervous about meeting Richard than I had been about meeting any of the strangers I’d been set up with in the past through my mother, or the Muslim dating internet, or the women I called aunties, even though they were not related to me.
The couple (pictured) have three children together and have now been married for ten years
The idea I would be married some day was something I had understood ever since I was a girl. The knowledge that, one day, a family might come to visit, then ask my parents for my hand in marriage to their son over cups of tea and samosas was as much a fact of my life as watching Neighbours after school.
After I graduated from Warwick University, my parents suggested introducing me to suitable boys. But I said no. I was very romantic and went off to study in Paris for a year.
It was only in 2005, after my father had died, that I thought about marriage again. I realised that you need to follow your heart, but also make an active choice. I was living in London and working for a newspaper. On a visit home I awkwardly mumbled to my mother that I was ready to be introduced to suitors.
The trouble is, in the Muslim world, I was not in high demand. Almost 30, only 5ft 2in, I wasn’t a doctor and I couldn’t speak Urdu, at least not very well. I also tried Muslim-specific matrimonial and dating websites, but didn’t have much luck.
So I thought I might have a better chance of finding someone who was still Muslim but also just a little bit more like me on a more regular dating site. I created a profile on Love-struck, a dating site for Londoners, but not specifically for Muslims.
Her parents had suggested introducing her to suitable boys but she said no. The couple are pictured on their wedding day
I was happy in my life. The idea of making a suitable match didn’t occupy my every waking thought. Until, that is, I got that first email from Richard and I thought: ‘Oh. Well, isn’t he just lovely?’
By the time Richard and I met, we had been writing every single day for a month. Long, detailed emails which he composed perfectly, with an excellent command of grammar. As a writer, I appreciated the effort he made to share the details of his day.
But I was nervous because even though I’d been set up more times than I cared to remember in the previous seven years, I’d never met someone who wasn’t Asian. Someone who didn’t share my family heritage, skin colour, cultural background or faith.
I was only meeting boys who understood that these meetings were fast-track interviews to marriage and that there’d be no messing around.
I reminded myself that Richard had messaged me and my profile clearly said I was Muslim. Surely he must know what he was letting himself in for?
Huma created a profile on Love-struck, a dating site for Londoners, but not specifically for Muslims and then met Richard (pictured together)
On that first date, I watched people pour out of the Tube station. And there he was. I felt a little dizzy.
We talked in a cafe until closing time. Richard messaged me that night and suggested dinner in a Thai place. We met a few days later and it felt like we were the only two people there. I had tickets to a film festival and Richard accompanied me. He took my hand for the first time.
We didn’t talk about religion — who does when they’re first dating? — but we discussed our families and the farm where he grew up. Looking back, I didn’t talk about being Muslim for fear of being judged. Having worked in the media, I was aware of stereotypes around Muslim women.
A few days later, we went for dinner and Richard broached the elephant in the room. I think he knew I didn’t know how to have the conversation.
‘What would it mean for your family, if they were to know, if we were to be together?’
It was if I suddenly woke up. I realised that whatever I had been trying to pretend that this was, it had to end before it had even started.
Huma says she was only meeting boys who understood that these meetings were fast-track interviews to marriage and that there’d be no messing around before meeting Richard
I looked at him. There was something about him that was so steady, so sincere. All I wanted was for him to pull me to him, let me lay my head on his chest. The way he looked at me — I could tell him anything.
I took a deep breath and told him in a small voice that we couldn’t be together because my religion wouldn’t allow it, and my family wouldn’t either. I told him I was sorry to have wasted his time. He covered my hand with his. ‘We really can’t be together? Like, at all?’ he asked.
He told me that he’d been reading up on it; I wondered what he’d been Googling. ‘Well, sure we could,’ I said coolly. ‘You could convert and marry me, but that’s never going to happen. I’m not even supposed to date. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t really be here.’
Strangely, he didn’t bat an eyelid. ‘Yeah, that’s what I read. About converting. I’ve been reading up on Islam . . . a lot of similarities to other faiths, as far as I can see.’
He later told me his grandparents were strict Methodists and while his parents would call themselves Christian, they weren’t a church-going family, but that he believed strongly in the qualities of goodness, kindness and compassion.
I told him once more that our being together was out of the question.
‘I gave up drinking a while ago!’ he said in an optimistic way, trying to lighten the mood.
I smiled weakly because I knew it was nowhere near enough.
As we walked through the London streets, I realised this would probably be the last time I saw him.
Richard and Huma are pictured with their three children. They met through a dating website for Londoners
But something had already started. We were inching closer to one another. Every day my head was full of him. Though my self-belief had been run down to the ground by rejections I’d received, and the ugly feeling I was not good enough to be loved, I was struck by an unusual sense of certainty that he cared for me.
Richard asked if we could talk again, and we met later that month, March 2011.
‘Are you OK?’ he said sitting opposite me. He was frowning, concerned. He stretched his hands out towards me, but my hands stayed firmly in my lap.
‘Yeah. I think I know what you’re going to say and I get it.’
‘What am I going to say?’
‘That I should have been more honest with you and told you straight away about my family and the Muslim stuff.’
He looked at me with a directness that was so steady, it was disarming. ‘Well, it’s not like I didn’t know. It was right there on your profile. I mean, I might not know all the details but, yeah, I figured there might be something to . . . talk about. All I know is that I don’t want this to end without even trying and I don’t think you do either.
‘So if there are things we need to talk about, things we need to work out, let’s do that and just see where we are. Unless you don’t want to?’
I did want to, very much, but I had no idea where or how to begin. I wanted to tell him that I had never felt this before.
How We Met by Huma Qureshi (pictured) tells the story of meeting her husband and how her family reacted to it
‘What I’m trying to say is,’ he stopped, sighing. ‘I like being with you. You make me happy. And I don’t just go around telling girls that. I don’t think it’s worth giving up just because you think it might be too difficult. We could figure it out.’ I nodded. ‘I really, really like you,’ he said softly. I allowed myself to smile, because I really, really liked him, too.
I told him about the arranged marriage suitors, the matrimonial agency. I waited for him to laugh, to back away. But, instead, when he walked me to the station, I tilted my head up towards him and he said: ‘I want you to know, I won’t hurt you.’
Richard found a beginner’s class on Islam at Regent’s Park mosque. I went along, too. The imam talked passionately about the rights of women, the power of prayer, the message of peace.
Adapted from How We Met by Huma Qureshi (£12.99, Elliott & Thompson) © Huma Qureshi 2021
On Good Friday, we visited the mosque for Friday prayers. I stood side by side with Richard, a white man who was not Muslim. I was wearing jeans not a traditional shalwar kameez, and no one cared. All people did was smile at us.
I emailed my mother to tell her about Richard and was summoned for a family meeting that April. There were weeks of painful questions, almost impossible to answer. Had I given any thought to what our family in Pakistan would think?
Eventually, Richard and I decided we needed to talk face-to-face with my mother. In May, we caught the train to Walsall.
He bought her an orchid and when she opened the door, he said: ‘Assalam-o-alaikum’ (Arabic for hello). A dreadful feeling came over me. Mum gestured to us to sit down.
‘Is she OK?’ Richard mouthed. ‘I have no idea,’ I said quietly.
Then she called us into the dining room and the table was overflowing with rich homemade curries. She had done all of this to say: ‘Please be patient with me. I am trying. This is just not something I was prepared for.’
Richard tried to make small talk, but she raised her hand. ‘No, that’s not why you are here. I need to know what’s been going on. What your intentions are.’
He told my mum he understood her concerns and that he’d been reading about Islam and taken classes and that it made sense to him, the values, the similarities with other Abrahamic faiths.
He clarified that he didn’t drink, or eat haram meat (no pork). He talked about the respect he had for those who fast. He told her he was learning Arabic prayers and would be converting in the next few weeks and he’d like her to be there, if she wanted to, that is.
‘I see,’ she said. ‘And then what?’ ‘And then I’d like to ask for permission to marry your daughter, if you’ll let me.’
I burned up. My mother took a sip of water. ‘Why did you contact her on this ‘website’? Why her?’
I thought: please don’t say you just fancied me. But, of course, that’s not what he said. ‘Because I wanted to settle down with someone who shared my views on life, the world. There was just … something about Huma.
‘It sounded like … we might have a lot in common, and then we started writing to each other, and we met and it just felt right.’
My mum nodded her head indiscernibly and said: ‘Huma, pass him the pilau. Don’t leave him with an empty plate.’
Then she looked straight at Richard and said: ‘Come now, you must try a bit of everything.’
- Adapted from How We Met by Huma Qureshi (£12.99, Elliott & Thompson) © Huma Qureshi 2021. To order a copy for £11.43 (offer valid till 15/2/21; UK P&P free on orders over £15), go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3308 9193.