Lubna Ahmed understandably was nervous on the flight to India from her home in California. The 20-year-old college junior knew that waiting for her at the airport would be her fiance, a man she had not met.
”I really didn`t understand then how two people could get married without knowing each other,” she acknowledged recently. She had been reared in the United States and was attending UCLA at the time. ”But I thought my parents were the best judge. I put all of my trust in them.” A few weeks later she and Azhar Muttalib were married.
Across the country, thousands of young couples presumably would agree with her decision. Despite Americans` preoccupation with romance, the traditional practice of arranging marriages is flourishing, from the Berkeley hills in California to Chicago`s suburbs to Brooklyn`s ethnic enclaves. Though thoroughly Westernized and well-educated, the children of Indian immigrants, Iranians and Hasidic Jews, among others, quietly continue to embrace tradition and turn to their parents, extended families and community matchmakers to find a mate.
As the number of Indian and Pakistani immigrants has grown-they now number more than 400,000-so too have matrimonial ads in Indian newspapers published here.
At the same time, matchmakers report, others from less traditional backgrounds also have begun to seek their services. Stung by failed relationships, worried by the high divorce rate and fearful of AIDS and other sexual diseases, they want some screening of prospective mates. Others who are pouring long hours into careers say they simply can`t find ”the right one” on their own.
”We see all religions, all ages and all races,” said Dan Field, whose family has operated a matrimonial agency in New York for 65 years. Field said his agency now arranges more than 1,000 marriages a year.
”People are very insecure when they go out (on dates),” said Rabbi Dov Hillel Klein, a sometime matchmaker who directs the Tannenbaum Chabad House, a center for Jewish students at Northwestern University, and serves as Jewish chaplain for the Evanston Police Department. ”There`s more security this way, Klein said. ”You know the person you are going out with will be a possibility. And here you can rely on somebody who is attuned to what you need. There`s a return to tradition, and this is part of it.”
”I used to think this would die out by the second generation (of immigrants), but now I think it will continue to exist in one form or another,” said Ramdas Menon, a Texas A & M University sociologist who tracks matrimonial trends among Indian immigrants in this country. He noted that the Indian weekly India Abroad typically will carry more than 150 matrimonial ads an issue, compared to perhaps a dozen several years ago.
”If people choose to come to this country, it doesn`t automatically follow that they will choose Western methods of finding spouses,” Menon said. Although his marriage was not arranged, he said, those of most of his fellow Indian academics in Texas were.
Lubna Ahmed Muttalib had a fairly typical suburban upbringing on the East Coast and in California: public school, tennis, swimming lessons, the high school volleyball team, hamburgers and pizza, watching baseball and television shows such as ”Gilligan`s Island.” Yet she was not permitted to date, and there was no question that tradition would rule when it was time to choose her spouse.
”I knew whoever they chose would be right for me,” she said.
Muttalib agreed to the marriage based on a photograph of her prospective husband and her uncle`s report to her parents in the United States. He knew the groom`s family and conveyed the proposal after thoroughly investigating the young man, a doctor.
Three weeks after their 30-minute airport encounter, the couple married-the wedding was the third time they had seen each other-and soon came to the United States.
Six years and two children later, Muttalib said she has no regrets. Now living in Chicago, where her husband, 31, is completing a residency at Illinois Masonic Hospital, she said, ”It`s been wonderful. Our love is growing with each year.”
Arranged marriages are still the accepted custom in much of the world. Benazir Bhutto, the 34-year-old Pakistani opposition leader who was educated at Harvard and Oxford, last December married a millionaire businessman in a match arranged by their families.
”I don`t think anyone in the West could understand it,” she was quoted as saying at the time.
Even in Europe, Menon said, marriages traditionally were arranged to cement a family`s financial stability. Only in the last 150 years, after the industrial revolution loosened family ties by taking workers away from their families and the land, did marriages spurred by romance come into vogue.
Unlike their ancestors and many of their parents, couples whose marriages are being arranged now stress that they retain veto power over the selection, as did Lubna Muttalib.
Muttalib noted that despite the expense of the trip to India, she could have refused the proposal after the initial meeting. The groom also could have changed his mind and, in fact, stood where he could catch a glimpse of her as she came off the plane. He told his mother if he didn`t like her looks, he would make excuses and avoid the meeting.
”We were both apprehensive,” Muttalib said. ”I didn`t know if he would live up to his pictures. He didn`t know if I would be too ultramodern, coming from America.” But their first look at each other relieved some of those fears.
”When I saw him, physically I was attracted to him, and I thought to myself it was nice that he`s tall, over 6 feet.”
It was awkward because members of both families were there. Several days later the two met, as family members chaperoned, and chatted about commonplace things, his job as a doctor, her education and hobbies.
”Afterwards, I felt this was someone I could live with,” Muttalib said. ”He seemed like a gentleman and very sincere.”
Nonetheless, she admitted, ”I had some sleepless nights before the marriage. There was the stress of the long journey and marrying a total stranger.”
Other young couples will agree to an arrangement but insist on playing a more active role.
Rabbi Klein, whose own marriage was arranged three years ago, likens the practice to ”sophisticated blind dates” with the caveat that marriage, not just a good time, is the immediate object. There is virtually no sex-in most cases not even any hand-holding-until after the nuptials.
But things don`t always go smoothly. In Klein`s case, his wife was the second woman the matchmaker suggested. The first, a South African, told him as soon as she met him that she hated American culture.
”That was it with her,” he said with a smile.
Then he and the second woman were introduced. After several meetings they decided to get married.
”But she got cold feet,” Klein said, ”and we decided to wait awhile.” It took several months apart before they got together again and ultimately married.
Klein and the other matchmakers stress that tremendous efforts are made to make sure that the couple is compatible educationally, economically, socially.
”You have to have a keen understanding about people and what their needs are,” said Klein, who said he is ”on the lookout” for about a dozen people. ”It`s a big responsibility.”
The matchmaker, who may or may not receive payment for the service, spends considerable time searching for appropriate partners, Klein said.
They discuss with the individuals what each wants in a mate. They consider temperament, education, hobbies, family backgrounds, religious values and goals, even where they want to live.
Distance certainly isn`t a deterrent, though. In one case, Rabbi Klein said, he was convinced that a young woman in New York who was ”looking”
would be perfect for a man he knew here.
”So he flew to New York to meet her, and it worked. They went out six or eight times and got engaged.”
In Indian families, horoscopes also must be considered. Nor is it unusual for young Indian professionals working in the U.S. to get calls from relatives in India asking to check out a certain prospect.
”It`s like a reference check,” an Indian engineer explained.
In some cases the matchmakers also may serve as a sounding board and give prospective mates a chance to voice concerns and doubts.
”You can go back to the person who fixed you up and discuss what happened,” Rabbi Klein said. ”You can give them encouragement. People put up defenses, and this is a way for me to help break them down.”
Some people, he observed, want to marry but may need a gentle push to take that walk up the aisle.
Despite the methodical way these cases are handled, physical attraction does play a significant role in the matches.
”Definitely the hearts have to touch,” Klein said. ”But that means different things for different people.”
Rama Shanker, for example, said when she first met her husband, who had come to India from the U.S. for the arranged marriage, ”he seemed honest and kind, so I said yes.” An engineer, she had turned down two other proposals.
”You form your impressions in the first 15 seconds, kind of like a job interview,” observed her husband, T.S. Shanker, also an engineer, who works for a Skokie firm. His parents had chosen Rama for him, and they married a week after they met.
The couple explained that the system works just the opposite from American courtship.
”Here you marry your best friend,” Shanker said. ”I married a stranger who became my best friend.”
Shanker noted that because the families have arranged the match, there is no problem with their approval. And because he did not have to worry about finding a wife for himself, he was able to concentrate on finishing graduate school and getting his career started in the U.S.
”There`s very little emotion involved,” he said. ”It`s very rational.”
Shanker and others suggest that in marriages arranged this way, couples are not overcome by passion and romance and are better able to consider factors that are important in the long term: values and goals, for example.
It is not uncommon, in fact, for Jewish couples who have been matched to go out and talk for several hours at a stretch in an effort to determine their compatibility rather than simply doing something together they might enjoy.
One matchmaker noted that the traditional American date-a movie and a bite to eat-are not popular because the couple wouldn`t be able to talk much. ”Just because you have a good time doesn`t mean you are compatible,”
Klein said.
”I find these marriages have fewer problems,” said Morris Lieberman, a Brooklyn family therapist and psychology professor whose practice includes many couples whose marriages had been arranged. He said he sees far fewer divorces among these couples than among others.
”It`s the nature of the expectations,” he said.
”Americans expect the cannons will be roaring forever, and it can`t be like that. Then you have terrible disappointment.
”In these (arranged) marriages, couples don`t expect fireworks. They learn to love each other. It`s a gradual development.”
Added Shanker, ”All of my collegues got married the American way, and our marriage has outlasted all of them.”
That is not to say that these couples don`t have problems. In some cases, Lieberman said, they simply were ”mismatched” in the first place and never should have married.
The Shankers know of cases in which a new wife has arrived from India only to learn that her husband already is married. He likely was afraid to tell his family of his American marriage, they said.
Yet even for couples who ultimately are happy, there can be severe adjustment problems, particularly if one spouse was reared in India and the other in a more liberal environment here.
The process itself also can be difficult and at times even degrading.
For Lubna Muttalib, the proposals started coming to her parents when she was 16.
”I was very uncomfortable,” she said. ”I felt I was on parade. But it`s just the way it`s done. I know a lot of people who rebel, but then they agree.”
There also are those who refuse to take part in the process.
”It`s an old country way, and I wasn`t brought up there,” one college-educated young woman whose parents are from Iran and who now works for a Chicago newspaper said with a shrug. ”It`s a totally different mindset.”
Muttalib agreed that the concept is difficult for Americans to understand.
”My friends thought it was weird,” she said. ”A lot of boys would ask for dates, and I would have to explain that I was different from them (that I couldn`t go on a date).”
Some whose marriages have been arranged talk wistfully about missing out on the excitement romance brings.
”You see romantic movies, and you think you`ve missed all the fun,”
Shanker said.
”The thrill of the chase and winning her is missing,” agreed Veliyath, who is married to a physician.
It has become a family joke that when his mother called to tell him a marriage had been arranged, he had to ask which girl because he had met several.
And while he and his wife readily admit that they had difficulty adjusting to each other, they are very happy, the parents of a year-old daughter.
”After a while,” said Veliyath, ”it`s as if you`re one person.”
Lubna Muttalib`s family, meanwhile, is actively looking for a bride for her brother, 28, a banker in California.
”I admit getting married this way is a gamble,” she said. ”But not as much of a gamble as the way marriages are done in this country.”
