My brother, Jehad, was uncomfortable in the role of man of the house, which tradition obliged him to accept, even though he was only eleven. “Whatever. I don’t care, Nanu. Just get it over with one way or another. I don’t think I can stand another one of these courtship formalities!” he said at first. Later, when he realized I would be moving out of our apartment, he tried to assert himself.

“As the man in this family, I insist that Nanu continue to live here. She can visit her husband, but she cannot live with him,” he declared on the eve of our engagement. Our guests were amused. “How sweet,” someone said. He had an asthma attack that evening and I slept in his bed through the night, letting him cry on my chest, promising I would never be far, and would always be there when he needed me.

Jehad wasn’t really the only man in the family. My mother’s brothers showed up to fulfill their social duties to represent me in the formal conversations about my dowry and other practicalities of marriage. My family didn’t believe in the excesses some people demanded, but they couldn’t just give me away for nothing. They didn’t want to break my young suitor, but I wasn’t some nobody who wasn’t worth a decent dowry. Mama said we had to consider what the young man could afford. “But we need to make sure you will be cared for. So his family must show us they’re serious,” she said.

Before the negotiations were settled, Mhammad’s aunt dropped a bombshell that almost unraveled everything. “We expect the wedding will cost at least eight thousand dinars, and we’re prepared to pay ten thousand. But we have to wait for a while.”

“A while?” Mama asked.

“His brother, Bilal, was just imprisoned, and his mother cannot travel to Kuwait for a wedding, because Israel might confiscate her home if she leaves. It would be wrong and disrespectful for the eldest son to hold a wedding celebration under these circumstances,” Mhammad’s aunt said.

It was hard to argue with her logic, but they also understood the humiliation I could suffer getting legally married but forgoing a wedding party. Mama suggested we postpone the marriage, but the ultimate decision was mine. In the end, I went for one thousand dinars, a gold shabka worth two thousand dinars, and a two-thousand-dinar mo’akhar. Mhammad’s family also rented and furnished the marital apartment, and set up a joint account with ten thousand dinars, to be spent on our wedding in a few months, when Hajjeh Um Mhammad, my mother-in-law, could travel to Kuwait, enshallah.

I was satisfied. He loved me. Forgoing an immediate wedding party was the price of marrying a national hero. Our job as women was to sacrifice, and I was a woman now. I imagined a beautiful life for us in Kuwait. We would make memories on the beaches and in the desert, on vacations in Cairo, Amman, Beirut, Damascus, and Baghdad. I would take our children to Palestine to visit our families there. “It’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make for the man I love,” I declared, and refused to let Mama talk me out of the marriage. Then I listened impatiently as she instructed me to call her if Mhammad was too rough on our first night together.