“No, Abba, wait,” I cried. All I wanted was to have some say in my future, but they had managed to turn this into stakes and cut noses. Any hope I once had was now seeping through my fingers like tiny grains of sand, and I could feel a sense of urgency roaring in my gut. I had to do something—anything—to regain some control over my life. I took a deep breath and tried to stay calm.

“Just hear me out.” I looked at them pleadingly. “I’m just asking for a little time to explore this process on my own and for you both to trust me. That is all. Just a little time.”

After a few moments of thought, my mother finally spoke up, her voice shaky and small. “Okay, Leila, we will let you try on your own. But listen carefully, you are at a very crucial point in your life.” She wagged her finger at me. “We have already waited too long; we cannot risk any more time. If you do not succeed in finding a suitable boy by our thirtieth anniversary, it is in our hands from there,” she said warningly, holding up the dreaded black portfolio. “No more excuses.”

I exhaled and nodded quickly, trying not to imagine the awful contents remaining in the folder. I had approximately three months before my parents’ anniversary in July, and based on what I had just promised, I knew the odds were already stacked against me. At the most basic level, my parents simply wanted someone who was South Asian and Muslim. A sudden flashback of Chad Edelstein quickly reminded me that I had already come to the same conclusion years ago. We were all in agreement on at least two of their requirements. The rest, I wasn’t so sure.

I needed to find not only someone whom they approved of, but someone who also checked off all forty-six items on my list. Sexy with a sense of humor; sensitive yet strong; American-born but also cultured—especially in his love of Bollywood. My exact counterpart. The type of person I could fall in love with. Although three months hardly seemed like a reasonable amount of time to accomplish this feat, I knew that if there was anything I was good at, it was a challenge. And this was one challenge I could not afford to lose.

Set in Motion

“What do you mean you have three months to find a husband?” squealed Hannah as she gawked at me with widened eyes. It was a typical Tuesday night, and my girlfriends and I were hanging out in Liv’s apartment eating junk food and watching high-quality reality television—in other words, anything playing on the Bravo network. I had been anxiously waiting all evening, trying to figure out the perfect time to tell them about my newfound predicament, and the best I could come up with was during a Real Housewives marathon—right after Ramona Singer downed her fifteenth glass of pinot grigio.