Dreaming in English by Laura Fitzgerald Read Free Book Online Page B

want to do in my life, I want to do with you by my side. That’s my new dream. You’re my dream.”
    “Ike.”
    My eyes fill with tears, my heart with wonder. I’m twenty-seven years old, which I realize is a little late in life to have fallen in love for the first time, but that’s the situation I’m in. When I’ve imagined going back to Iran, part of me has thought I’d feel as if Ike were still with me, like an angel on my shoulder, whispering love into my ear, and another part of me—the more realistic part—has thought that I’d mourn his absence every day for the rest of my life. This love—it’s overpowering. I’m so glad to know I’m not alone in it.
    But still.
    “I know how much your parents mean to you,” I say. “And they’re right that we hardly know each other.”
    “We know enough.” He touches his finger to my lips to silence me. “We know we belong together.”
    I kiss the finger he has pressed against my lips and then with my hand move it aside. “Let’s at least live together to show them our marriage is for real. Let’s at least do that.”
    “Taking things slow was the one condition you had when it came to marrying me,” he says. “You can’t just drop it now.”
    One of my dreams is to live alone. All by myself. I know this may not seem like such a big dream, and maybe it’s only a silly little dream, but there it is. I want to live alone.
    These words popped out of my mouth in the hotel room in Las Vegas. I had no idea how badly I wanted it, until Ike proposed and I found myself saying it to him. It seemed right at the time.
    He was confused at first, thinking I meant I didn’t want to marry him, but that wasn’t the situation at all. There’s no one in the world I’d rather be married to than him.
    I want for us to date , I’d said. Really, truly date. Go to dinner. See a movie. Maybe even dinner and a movie.
    That last part was a joke from a conversation we’d once had, but otherwise I was serious—because Ike had been forbidden to me. All we’d had were stolen moments between the time my English class let out and the time my sister got home from work. Maryam was afraid Persian men would think I was immoral for spending time unsupervised with an American man, or not serious about marriage. And so seeing Ike—loving him—was my secret. And as thankful as I now am to be his wife, the fact remains that we skipped over the whole boyfriend-girlfriend part. The fact remains that we have yet to go on one official date together.
    For three months, we met for coffee after my English class and day by day, we’d flirt. We’d tease. We’d look at each other with yearning in our eyes. But we never dated. Ike asked, but I couldn’t say yes. I was looking for a husband, not a boyfriend, and dating—an American man, no less—was a luxury I couldn’t afford. Instead, I’d leave him and go home to meet one Persian man after another, trying to find one suitable for marriage, all the while dreaming of Ike.
    I want to hold your hand and walk down the street with you and not be afraid of showing the world how I feel . To treasure every moment of falling in love. To learn to kiss you without fear. . . . And I want to live with you someday, when we’re ready. When I’m ready.
    I’d said all this, just yesterday. And I’d meant it. It seemed like a good idea at the time. But now, with Ike’s parents against our marriage, thinking I have somehow tricked him, I realize that living alone is not only wrong, but selfish, too.
    “I have no idea where that all came from,” I say. “The words just came out of me.”
    “They came from that place in the soul that knows you best,” Ike says. “That place you’re never supposed to ignore.”
    “But, Ike—your parents love you,” I say. “And if there’s anything we can do to help them not be so upset, we should do it.”
    He shakes his head. “Our marriage is between you and me. What we do and how we do it is nobody’s