Fatty Fatty Boom Boom by Rabia Chaudry

Author:Rabia Chaudry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2022-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Eight

Gosht Khor: Meat Eaters

There’s something to be said about the fitness motivation a budding romance can propel, though I use the word fitness loosely. Okay, maybe completely inaccurately.

AK, which is how I’ll refer to my future ex-husband, wasn’t completely alone in America as a student. His two younger brothers were also here, studying at university, and he had a cousin and his cousin’s family, who in fact were the people who came with him when he unsuccessfully asked for my hand in marriage.

Ami and Abu did not reject AK out of hand. They kept open the possibility of a yes, hoping perhaps in the next couple of years a better proposal would show up or that things would fizzle out between us. Maybe AK would move on, find another girl, and get tired of waiting for me. But he didn’t. He remained firm in wanting to marry the only virgin left in the United States, and we continued to meet surreptitiously every so often, and now he wanted me to meet his brothers.

This was a previously unknown stress to me, the stress of wondering if the family of the man you had fallen head over heels for would approve of you. All signs up until now indicated this was unlikely. There was an awkward situation in the proposal department in our home. It was rude to both send, and entertain, proposals for a younger child when an older one was still unmarried, which meant Lilly was kind of stuck until I got out of the way. The problem was the grapevine only brought inquiries about Lilly to my mother, skipping directly over me. People would send messages of their interest in Lilly, poking around without sending a direct proposal, knowing I was as yet unmarried, but hoping maybe something was already in the works for me.

Nothing ever was. No one, said Ami, asked about me.

And if no mother, sister, cousin, or aunt was interested in me for their son, brother, or nephew, that meant meeting AK’s family was risky. They could do the entire thing in. I had to lose weight.

By that point I had developed what was likely an actual addiction to Coca-Cola. My body was otherwise a temple, undefiled by drugs and alcohol, so maybe it was particularly susceptible to sugar and caffeine. I didn’t know at the time I may as well have been snorting coke. I could skip meals if compelled to, but I couldn’t give up my cola, and my addiction grew from a few cans a day, to a liter a day, to a few liters a day. Diet Coke didn’t cut it, I had to have the real thing. I hadn’t been raised drinking soda, it almost never came into our house, with a few exceptions: parties, holidays, and during Ramadan, when we made a drink that I’m reticent to divulge but is too delicious not to: Coke-doodh. Coca-Cola mixed with milk.

In case you’re having an unpleasant visceral reaction to this idea, stay with me here.

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