My First Proposal
I sat reading in the lounge at a Community College. The semester would be over in only one more week.
“Hello.”
I looked up. I recognized him from my speech class; a tall thin black man. “Hi,” I replied, and went back to my book.
“You and I are in the same speech class.”
“Yes,” I said, and turned to my book again.
“How old are you?” he asked.
I realized that reading was not going to be possible at the moment. I closed my book and looked at him. “Twenty-two,” I replied.
“Oh.” He looked a little surprised. “I’m twenty-four… but that’s ok.”
I didn’t know quite what to say to that, so I just said, “Ok.”
“Let me tell you some things about myself,” he went on. “My name is _________. I am from Saudi Arabia. I am a good student, and very responsible. I come from a wealthy family. My dad sent me to study here because I am so responsible. I have one brother who is younger than I am. He probably will not be sent here, since he is not as responsible as I. What can you tell me about yourself?”
Caught off guard, I grasped for information. “Well…” I began, “I have one brother…” I stopped there. Why should I tell anything about myself to this person? “Why do you want to know?” I asked him.
He looked a little embarrassed, but he did not look away. “I wanted to ask you if you would marry me.”
I almost laughed, but the look on his face stopped me. He was serious! I didn’t know how to respond, although he stood silently waiting for me to say something. Finally I said faintly, “I don’t know you.”
“Yes, that is a problem. We’ll have to get to know each other afterwards.”
I stared at him speechlessly. I had thought that sort of thing happened in books, not in real life in an American suburb.
After a while, he said, “I think you are a Christian, right?”
“Yes, I am.”
“So am I. I am the only Christian in my family. If I go back to my country, I will have to marry a Muslim. The only way for me to marry a Christian is to do it while I am still in America. Will you be my wife?”
Dumbly, I repeated “But I don’t know you.”
“I’m sorry about that. Perhaps I should have approached you sooner so you could have had more time to think about it. It’s just that I had to think carefully to be sure I was making the right decision. I think you would do well because you have experience with other cultures, and it would not be as hard for you to adjust to your life in Saudi Arabia. I have to go back in two weeks and I would like to take you with me. Otherwise my father will make me marry a Muslim woman.”
Something in my dazed brain responded to his “two weeks.” “My parents are coming to visit me in one month.” I offered.
He considered. “I think I could probably get an extension on my visa, so that you could say goodbye to your parents.”
The finality of his words hit me. He was asking me to do something that would result in never seeing my parents again!
I stared at him, aghast.
After a few moments of awkward silence, he said, “Look, I don’t know your culture and you don’t know mine. We are in America now, and we know that Americans are direct and honest. Let’s use that culture so we can be sure we understand each other. If you don’t want to marry me, say ‘no’. Then I will walk away, and I will never talk to you again.”
I looked him in the eye, took a deep breath, and said, “No.”
He held my eye contact for about one second more. Then he nodded his head and walked away. I watched him until he was out of sight.
He never spoke to me again.
I was born in the Andes of Ecuador and raised mostly in Central Mexico. I am American and lived for several years in Minnesota as an adult, but I live and work in Mexico again now.
Related Posts
36 Comments to “My First Proposal”
November 14th, 2007 at 2:40 pm
Wow… I am lost for words. That’s an incredible story, I thought this only happened in movies!
I love the part where he suggests extending his visa so you can say goodbye to your parents, and implying he’s actually doing you a favor.
Ever gotten a second proposal? I hope it wasn’t as weird as the first one. lol
(Is this spam?)
November 14th, 2007 at 3:05 pm
Nope, that has been my only proposal so far! It sure was an unforgettable one! lol
(Is this spam?)
November 15th, 2007 at 11:05 pm
Wow…lol I can’t believe that someone came over to you like that and proposed lol. Great story. He must *really* have not wanted to marry a Muslim woman. I wonder if he ever found anyone…lol
(Is this spam?)
November 16th, 2007 at 5:42 am
Ingrid, I bet you must really be gorgeous for this complete stranger to have proposed to you! Maybe he was looking for a trophy wife to bring back home?
Like Charm, I also wonder if he ever found anyone… and whether that woman is happy. (probably not)..
(Is this spam?)
November 16th, 2007 at 6:22 am
I wonder about that every once in a while, too.
(Is this spam?)
November 22nd, 2007 at 1:39 pm
Whaaa???!
Wow, that must have been an interesting experience. Although, I’ve seen documentaries on TV about marriage in the Middle-East. It is not uncommon for a male to pick a wife on first meeting.
I think a documentary I saw was about a 12 year old girl who snuck out to the market place one day hoping to get a marriage proposal.
(Is this spam?)
November 22nd, 2007 at 1:42 pm
Oh by the way. I remember walking down the street one time in London when I was 12, a middle-eastern man tried to get me to go with him. I was kinda surprised, after all, I was 12!!!
(Is this spam?)
November 22nd, 2007 at 2:18 pm
My father was asked by a chief in Nigeria if I would marry one of his 6 daughters. I could have the pick of any of them. He never told me what he said back. Lol.
(Is this spam?)
November 24th, 2007 at 2:40 pm
This is funny.
Reminds me of my own mirror experiences, actually. In yours, you get propositioned by a person from a patriarchal and repressed society. In mine, I get propositioned by all sorts in a perhaps overly sexually open society. We both shared the same sort of culture shock.
(Is this spam?)
November 24th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
Imaduddin, you do have a good point there.
I’m voting your comment up lol
(Is this spam?)
November 24th, 2007 at 2:48 pm
[…] funny post on her first proposal (http://www.tckid.com/group/my-first-proposal/) from a person from a patriarchal and repressed society reminded me of my first mirror culture […]
(Is this spam?)
November 30th, 2007 at 4:57 am
I’m not sure about other cultures, but I find Asians are always setting each other up, including their kids.
We know a few of the richer families in Indonesia, through friends of friends, and once the children of two families were getting married. At the wedding, the son of one took the daughter of another to dance… and just because of that, they were set to be married.
But my funny stories come from the random things I get from my mother every now and then. The funniest thing came from one week that I went back to Zürich for a term break. My parents have a few Vietnamese friends there, and like all other Asian parents, they’re always trying to set their kids up. So my mother told me “Hey, you know Bac ___. I went to meet her daughter. She’s kind of sombong, so she’s not the girl for you.”
That all happened while I was away in uni, and I hadn’t even met the girl when she went through the whole process of “Ah, my daughter should meet your son” “Really? I should meet her” “Hm, I don’t like her” “She’s not for you.”
(Is this spam?)
November 30th, 2007 at 11:54 am
That’s an amazing story. I can’t imagine. Wow.
When I was seventeen, just a few weeks after my family repatriated, I went to San Antonio to watch an ex boyfriend from Germany graduate from Air Force basic training. His girlfriend was there, too, and there was no question of us getting back together or anything. (We hadn’t seen each other since he’d repatriated two years earlier.) But one of his friends from basic training was pretty interested in me. He’d spent his early childhood in Haiti, and apparently had suffered a lot of abuse before being adopted by an American family. He fixated on me, and in the few hours that we all spent hanging out together on an Air Force base in Texas, he decided that we were meant to be together. It didn’t matter that I was seventeen and he was twenty-four. It didn’t matter that he was a reverend in a Christian church and I didn’t much believe in God. He wrote me long letters for weeks afterwards, and didn’t listen when I tried to explain that I was thinking more about starting college in the fall than about getting married to anyone. He told me all about our life together and the children we’d have. It was scary and mesmerizing. When I left for school I didn’t give him my new address, and I asked my parents not to forward his letters. Finally, he stopped writing. I have no idea what became of him.
I didn’t want to co-opt your story - it just reminded me.
I hope your suitor found himself a Christian woman. That’s so beautiful and sad.
(Is this spam?)
December 1st, 2007 at 4:06 pm
[…] My First Proposal +16 rating […]
(Is this spam?)
December 18th, 2007 at 4:15 pm
I was just reading through the comments and thought yours was funny. My parents got set up like that! lol. I was talking with my mother not too long ago on the phone and she was talking about how there were a group of girls I went to JIS with went back to Jakarta and had their “debutante” balls after they graduated so they could find a rich husband. I was flabbergasted that this kind of stuff still existed. I vowed at a very young age never to be set up by my parents or parents’ friends. I also don’t want to be rushed into marriage and family when I’m not ready. I guess its the feminist side of me feels completely against lifestyles like this.
(Is this spam?)
December 27th, 2007 at 7:54 pm
Thats amusing. Reminds me of living in Kuwait some of the weird proposals we got there as 13 year old girls. Also traveling to other Islamic countries….it never seemed weird at the time but looking back at it. Wow.
(Is this spam?)
March 8th, 2008 at 10:07 am
wooooooooooooooooow
crazy story.
i wonder what happened to the guy..whether he found a christian wife, and if he didn’t i wonder if he’s still a christian…and if his wife is happy…and if he’s happy…
dang.
crazy.
(Is this spam?)
March 8th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
I think the closest I came to anything like this was when the lady at the Soba shop where I always ate lunch asked me if I was married. Apparently some guy saw me there and wanted to marry me lol :p
I was wearing a company uniform so on my best behavior (overly polite and cheerful to everyone so as not to ruin the reputation of my company) so not a good indicator of what kind of person I really am.
Ingrid’s experiences is pretty far out because he actually walked up to her and asked her himself!
(Is this spam?)
March 9th, 2008 at 3:21 am
I was 14 when I got my first proposal. It wasn’t very flattering. A chap on a bus in Hong Kong asked me to marry him: “Just for a couple of years, to get a passport.”
Gee, thanks!
(Is this spam?)
March 9th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Once a Middle Eastern man tried to buy me from my parents when they where on holidays in Greece, I was only 8 months old…
My father got various proposals when I still lived in Nigeria: “if I do this for you….will you give me your daughter in marriage?” sort of thing
(Is this spam?)
April 11th, 2008 at 10:38 am
Nika, that sure sounds like a scary thing to hear him talk about children you’d have. I mean after all, you are not even at the stage of thinking of marriage!
(Is this spam?)
April 11th, 2008 at 10:44 am
That reminds me of the illegal marriages in Japan. Some immigrants to Japan would sign legal documents of marriage to the citizens just to get residency and citizenship. Those citizens agreed to do this would be paid by the immigrants but live a separate lifestyle from one another.
(Is this spam?)
April 11th, 2008 at 10:45 am
These are usually those workers who sneaked in without visas though.
(Is this spam?)
April 11th, 2008 at 10:49 am
IngridGiles, my first reaction was a big “WOW” as well. =) I could vividly imagine in mind as I was reading your narration.
(Is this spam?)
May 15th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
Sounds like he’s trying to be marry American?
(Is this spam?)
June 16th, 2008 at 8:14 pm
Wow, I feel really bad for that guy. You had me rolling on the floor laughing, because it reminded me of a few similar situations I’ve been in! Not such an uncommon experience, I guess… I wish we could all take a class before entering a new culture, so we could know ahead of time how to not make a fool of ourselves like this young man did… Oh, the pain of being in a cross-cultural world…
Not that you said the wrong thing; I’m glad you were so straightforward, it sounds like he needed it. But it sounds like he was caught in a very tricky cross-cultural situation, where, according to his culture, he was making a very good decision, but according to yours he was totally off the wall and inappropriate. I don’t doubt that he was telling the truth about having to marry a muslim woman, which was probably a devastating idea to him.
(Is this spam?)
June 17th, 2008 at 12:11 am
Haha, I had a couple in morocco…one guy in particular just walked up to me and said “I want a french wife so that I can go to france…….(brief pause)….will you marry me?” and a couple here in Madagascar (and the family I live with keeps trying to set me up with their cousins…) but nothing on that level
Stephanie, I think the guy was right in the fact that she’s multicultural, so she “gets” it….so in a way he was maybe just taking a chance knowing that it was a cultural “norm” in the US. but yeah…it’s pretty funny.
(Is this spam?)
July 5th, 2008 at 6:31 am
Hahaha! I loved that story! I grew up in Saudi Arabia, I can totally understand both sides of that story…!
It reminds me of the time a guy in a souq in Egypt tried to buy me for 10 camels from my parents for his wife, when I was 15!!!
(Is this spam?)
August 9th, 2008 at 3:44 am
Isn´t it normal in southern countries to get married in this way? I remember when we where spending our holidays in Djerba with my mother some guy came along and wanted to by me, when I was about the age of 14. And my sister overheard what he was proposing for me and just said:
“Nah… forget about it. So many… she just aint worth it…”
And what I particulary recall is, that they all loved my sister a lot, cause she was blond with blue eyes. But she was only 6 or 7, so quiet too young for marriege.
(Is this spam?)
August 9th, 2008 at 6:11 am
Wow, some crazyyyy stories. Thankfully I haven’t had such crazy experiences. XD But what an eye opener, I feel rather sorry for the Saudi because of his situation.
(Is this spam?)
August 9th, 2008 at 7:49 am
Yeah, I felt sorry for him too, and often wondered if he found someone — probably not. Of course I had to say no, but still, I sympathized with his situation.
(Is this spam?)
August 9th, 2008 at 7:50 am
Yeah, I felt sorry for him too, and often wondered if he found someone — probably not. Of course I had to say no, but still, I sympathized with his situation. (Even though the proposal was a bit of a shock to me!)
(Is this spam?)
October 25th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
Awesome story! Like Jemila, my parents got proposals for me when we lived in Nigeria, even when I was six… a bit of a shock at first.
But nothing like this! It would be freaky if you met him some day, and found out what happened to him!
(Is this spam?)
December 8th, 2008 at 7:25 pm
Wow, what a great story! Thanks for sharing
(Is this spam?)
December 23rd, 2008 at 3:39 pm
Once I hit puberty (in Nigeria) my Dad started to have men asking him what my bride price was. They wouldn’t take “no” as an answer, so he set my bride price impossibly high. 100 cows.
We tease my husband that he hasn’t paid up yet and that Dad may take me back if he doesn’t.
When I was in college I often had men from Africa test the waters for me as a wife since they often wanted to stay in the US and not have to go home. Or wanted to go home with a “rich” wife. I was always negotiating those relationships very delicately.
(Is this spam?)
December 28th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
Hi K-eM, I like your anecdote about the bride price!
(Is this spam?)