I’m Crushin’ on you!!

Throughout my life, I have had many crushes on girls. Usually, girls who i regularly see, or work with, or go to school/college/uni with. Crushes developed on girls like Charlize Theron, Beyonce and Jennifer Love-Hewitt don’t count. That’s just too superficial.

But when discussing these crushes with other brothers (cos that’s what we do over sheesha, apparently) we always come up with the same answer; that these girls are not marriage material. Oh this reminds me of a game we used to play when we were immature: “sex, marry or kill?”. Highly obvious rules to the game – name a girl, and the other has to declare whether they would have sex with, marry, or kill that girl. Lol. What a stupid game.

Anyway, that game has no relevance to my post. So let me get back to my point.

Where was I? Oh yes, these girls are not marriage material. As I explained in a previous post, I have always lived in remote areas, where there are no masaajid, no halal butchers, and most certainly barely any Muslims. So naturally, I was not seriously interested in any of these local girls.

When I started college, I was amazed to firstly see so many Muslim girls, but to also see that so many Muslim girls don’t cover up or abide by Islamic morals kinda struck me.

When I started uni, I was even more amazed that there were so many sisters in uni, and that they covered up well, but was shocked that a lot of them were kinda flirty. I guess at least they are studying hard and not wasting their life away.

In fact, I remember sitting in a brother’s apartment and explaining to him why, of all the girls that were in uni, I had not started chasing any of them (in all Islamic manners, obviously). It was then, that I made the realisation that all good Islamic girls hide.

I am even more confused, after many of my friends started to get married, and after meeting their respective wives, discovered that they were all very decent women. Even the ones who didn’t wear hijab. Where have all the good women gone??! They are either married or in hiding!!

Guys like me have no chance then!

I started to lose hope due to these ideas, until i met these two sisters. Their real identities shall be hidden, so we shall call them Abidah and Anisah (these names rhyme, just like their real ones!)

Anyway, I met these lovely young ladies at work. They happen to visit my store all the time and I still remember the first time they graced the store with their visit.

Abidah walked in and all I could do was to stop and stare. A few moments later, I realised what I was doing and turned away. But found myself approaching her to greet her with the Islamic greeting of ‘Assalamualaikum’. Instantly, she responded, then explained to me what she was looking for. I went to the stockroom to look for it and came back to tell her we didn’t stock it.

“Sorry, sister. We don’t have it”, I told her. She gave me a confused look, then said “ok, then” and walked away. I was quite struck by that response, so I decided to forget about it by checking up on my staff. A few moments passed, and Abidah approached me again telling me “thanks for looking for me; you told my twin sister though, so she got a bit confused!”

I was dumbfounded! “There’s two of you?” I exclaimed!

“Yes, there she is, we are wearing different coloured hijabs!” and she pointed.

I looked across and started waving like a bafoon. Way to make a first impression, Geetar Hiro! Nevertheless, she must’ve thought it was funny, cos they both laughed.

They both continued visiting my store once every while – and on one instance, I actually managed to get Abidah’s number! Success? Not quite. She gave me that number because she was waiting for a particular item to be in stock; ie, she gave me her number on professional terms. Now, if I were to abuse that professional customer relationship by calling her up on personal terms, surely that would violate some sort of company regulation? So I used to just call her purely on professional terms.

That is, until mid-Ramadhan! They both came in and by this time, I found myself crushing on Abidah. So every time they came in, I found myself talking mainly to Abidah, while Anisah just walked around browsing.

Anyway, Abidah and Anisah came to my store during Ramadhan, and it was obvious they were not shopping. Instead, when they came into the store, they walked around until they found me and naturally, we started chatting. Just generally, about Ramadhan and how easy it was this year.

Then Anisah dropped a bombshell on me. She told me that Abidah and her would be going back home to celebrate Eid... because “here, we have nobody”.

Did you hear that?? ‘Nobody’, which blatantly means that they are not married! They’re going back home to see the rest of their family, ie their siblings and parents! They are not here with their husbands! They’re not here with their boyfriends! They’re here on their own! I’m sorry to be excited about how sad and alone they were, but that kinda works in my favour! Lol!

So I spent the next couple days devising a way to subtly let Abidah know that I am interested in her. After hours and hours of thinking how to approach this issue (you guessed it, I’m not good with things like this), I finally settled on sending her a text to invite her and her sister to my parents’ open house Eid party. Many of my friends and their wives were coming, my sisters would be there, and many of my parents’ friends on top of that. In fact, most people come to my parents’ open house invitations because they want to meet other families. It was the perfect venue – purely neutral.

Now, I secretly knew that they may not even be able to make it because they told me they were going to go back home for Eid, but I forgot to ask them when they will be back (I guess subconsciously, I didn’t want to pry too much into their lives). However, my parents’ open house Eid party would be exactly one week after Eid.

I made sure the delivery report on my phone was turned on when I sent the texts. Abidah’s text got through, but for some reason, Anisah’s delivery report came back with “sending failed”. No biggie. One out of two ain’t bad!

Hands started sweating, but after some thought, she can either reply or ignore. Here’s me hoping it’s the former rather than the latter!

--

Bad news... I write this update a week after the Eid party is over, and still no reply back from my text. Looks like Abidah chose the latter rather than the former.

Oh well.

The search continues...

But my earlier theory that good islamic girls hide (or at least are too shy to put themselves in the limelight) still holds true until someone proves me otherwise...