How We Met
How We Met: A Memoir of Love and Other Misadventures by Huma Qureshi
Reviewed by Mimi
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Being the first to break the status quo in your family is hard. It involves so many moments of emotional stress especially when the pattern you are interrupting relates to your life partner. Huma has gifted us an incredibly personal, honest, romantic and thoughtful account of how she came to be with her husband Richard, a man not born a Muslim or into the Asian community.
It is sensitive and very clearly a story shared to help others not to create drama which I fully appreciated. Coming from a Pakistani family the expectation was to pick a husband from a few choices made via introductions. For a lot of people, that is entirely successful.
This cultural expectation is part of the challenge for Huma. She spent time studying abroad and built a level of independence which made her "unattractive".
Something that sticks out for me is that Huma wanted her family and her children to be raised in the faith. It was obvious that her faith and culture were and are important to her so this slightly clichéd story of girl rebelling from her family is not at all what happens here.
It was clear to me that Huma also had ambitions and elements of her character that were in conflict to a successful relationship with the potential suitors put in front of her. In the circumstances the easy route would have been to settle and there were occasions where she nearly did. That was also very real.
The process of meeting Richard, getting through the hurdles with her family, dealing with the loss of her father as well all provide a memoir that I can't believe we haven't seen before. We have this perception of romance where it’s all grand gestures and never compromising. In the end, to find someone who not only hears but understands is the most romantic thing.
