Muslim, Christian, Jew – “I Do”: A Memoir

By Hazel Wise

For centuries the planet has witnessed episodic mistrust between Islam, Christianity and Judaism. But the planet is shrinking and many people, in their selection of a mate, will consider someone from another religion. This memoir sheds light on the level of awareness and communication needed to make such marriages viable, and scrutinizes the all too common scenario of young girls marrying for an identity.
It provides, through lived experience, a fish-bowl view of one woman's journey through three interfaith marriages, told conversationally—right down to the sharing of recipes. Blended family dynamics and childhood cancer throw in further grist for the mill. A final, stormy divorce provides the catalyst for a much-needed character arc, discernment about women's identities, and the embrace of marriage as an endeavor more human than religious. And finally, it offers brief informational segments on marriage in Islam, Christianity and Judaism, along with some beautiful legends—all of which illustrate the commonality of marriage rather than the differences of dogma.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Aug 31, 2019
• ISBN: 9781982233815

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Copyright © 2019 Hazel Wise.

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The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

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ISBN: 978-1-9822-3380-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-3381-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019912660

Balboa Press rev. date:  03/06/2020

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are taken from the King James Version.

Scripture quotations marked RSV are taken from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1946, 1952, and 1971 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

CONTENTS

Introduction

Prologue

Nuns

Muslim

My Version of Fatima’s Ramadan Lassi

Marriage in Islam

Christian (Catholic)

My Version of Sophia’s Balachow

Family Raisin Custard Pie

South African Fudge

Marriage in the Catholic Church

Jew

Hazel’s Latkes

Marriage in Judaism

Dissolving A Marriage

My Peach Chutney

Epilogue

Endnotes

For Daddy. And for Mum. Shores of my river.

INTRODUCTION

I t started in the kitchen. To be precise, it started on the brocade loveseat I had placed in the heart of our home. David thought I was bonkers, putting sitting room furniture in the kitchen, but it wasn’t long till its cozy magnetism lured him onto its cushions. You could stretch out in comfort right there in command central, close to sustenance. It was arguably the most popular spot in the house. Now I was curled up on it, sipping my tea while David chopped vegetables for his weekly batch of soup. The cadence of his knife stilled my mind much like a metronome, and into that space slipped an idea. Hey, I exclaimed. He turned to face me and I chuckled and said "I should write a book called I was Married to a Muslim, a Christian and a Jew . My husband considered this for a moment and a half-smile registered on his face. I knew that look well. It was a look that supposed I had as much wherewithal to grow a prostate as to meet this unlikely goal. But he humored me and said Why not?"

I haven’t grown a prostate but I have penned this account of my three marriages to men representing the world’s three major religions—Islam, Christianity and Judaism. It’s all true.

To protect the privacy of the people who shared their lives with me, names, occupations and places have been changed. While this creates a degree of inaccuracy, turning truth into fiction, the heart of the story remains uncompromisingly factual.

PROLOGUE

1968

M aybe I should have married Festus. But I was six years old, and he was a grown man with a wife and a candy store. The fact is, that dear man had won my heart. At my tender young age, after much deliberation, I had selected a mate—unbeknownst to him and the rest of the world. What was unbeknownst to me, along with the whole birds-and-bees curriculum, was that my heart was standing in for my sweet tooth. But what other criteria for choosing a mate could there be for a chubby little girl who loved candy?

I lived, with my my four siblings and parents, on a remote sandy mission in India’s Nagaland, an equally remote area to most of the world. In that haven of flora and fauna, head hunting had long been a meaningful Naga ritual and yet, surprisingly, Christianity prevailed as a religion. Nagaland was a region under conflict. It writhed about under aggressive tribal in-fighting and rebellion, resisting assimilation into the country of India. But while the province at large struggled for its identity, my siblings and I led a fairly idyllic existence in the countryside, running about barefoot in deep Indian sand and leading our poor nanny in several different directions at once.

There on the mission, we often endured our own childish struggles, not for armistice, but to escape the various boogie men that seem to populate childhood, no matter which continent. The first of these boogie men was not actually a man, or men, but snakes. Sitting on my nanny’s knee, the seeds of a full blown snake phobia took root as I listened to her colourful but cautionary tales. Squeezers, biters, all of them slitherers: descendants of that noteworthy villain in the Garden of Eden. Only the hapless Kaa, in The Jungle Book fails to terrify me—who could fear his cartoon appearance, reedy voice or comedic ineptitude? Perhaps he would be a good start to desensitizing this phobia. Any real life encounter, or even image, of God’s creeping creatures elicits a full blown flight reflex as I run. Or shriek.

After snakes was boogie man number two, and the deathly fear we had of its source, Abba, the woodcutter. Many years later, I learned he was as gentle as a lamb but when we were small his ax was skillfully employed by nanny Julia to bring us five boisterous children into line. No, she did not chop off our digits but she did the next best thing, weaving frightening stories of how said ax might behead each and every one of us if we didn’t come take our bath when told. Consequently, we gave Abba and his ax a wide berth, and his name came to be the stuff of scary childhood legends.

But most frightening to me were thunderstorms, booming electric rampages that lit up the sky and mountains for miles around. I would curl up under my bed lest the same fate befall me as that of the unfortunate farm-boys, who were literally struck down when storms came quickly and cover was not available. One such stormy night my father sought me out and coaxed me from under my bed, then carried me to a rocker on the porch. He sat with me there on his lap, and as each lightning bolt hit, commented See how pretty it is? God’s painting the sky. The colourful display continued and nobody was struck down. This evidence, coupled with my father’s soothing words, dissipated my fears into the night sky. I was safe, and it was pretty. I still love thunderstorms. And fireworks.

My parents’ conveniently planned life had been uprooted shortly before my father finished Anglican seminary in London. Hearing an Indian delegation’s pleas for missionaries, the comfortable salary and future in the English countryside lost their allure, and the die was cast. Months later they found themselves and their small baby (my older sister) on a boat to India. Our childhood home had bamboo walls and a thatched roof, a wood stove and no running water or electricity. We bathed, all five children—two or three at a time—in a single bath, in a detached bathhouse. Christmas fell in the rainy season, and over the years we had to make do with all manner of Christmas trees, some of which included thorn trees, milkweed bushes and a palm frond cut into the shape of a Christmas tree and taped to the wall. But they were all magical to our eyes, and Santa’s sleigh always made it to the far reaches where our mission household lay. It may not have been an average childhood but at the end of day, I was a little girl, no different than any other little girls, with fears of the boogie man and core little girl needs: to be loved and cared for. And I was.

In our faraway corner of the world, on the happiest of days, my mother would give us each five cents to spend at Festus’ Store. It was the only store on the mission, a shack really, that stocked the barest essentials such as tins of pilchards, candles, soap and (the biggest essential) candy. I would hold the coin tightly in my sweaty little hand and walk with my big sister, Lee, to Festus’ Store, from which wafted the smell of bread as it baked in recycled pilchard tins. The store lay at the very top of the mission grounds, probably no more than a five-minute walk but to me it felt like a trek into the wilderness. We had to pass the bathhouse (which housed the mission’s one bath), the hospital, the single mess (a dining hall for the single missionaries), old McPeak’s workshop, various homes and of course, the church. Morning and evening its bells would peal out, calling people to Matins or Evensong, where they would sit on the earth-packed floor or on homemade kneelers if they were lucky. My father was an Anglican missionary, and I must make the distinction here that while he was occasionally guilty of the usual arrogance common to a profession in which one is practically worshipped, he was a far cry from Nathan Price (that mercifully fictional character in The Poisonwood Bible). Decades later, he (my father, not Nathan Price) still received affectionate communication from Nagas he taught and with whom he worked.

Daddy also had a wicked sense of humor, which was a source of great delight to his young brood—but, on one occasion in particular, the humor was lost on our childish innocence. On the night in question, the mission’s generator had not been fired up and thus the buildings were still in darkness as the dinner hour approached. (During the day, we went about our business without power, but enjoyed the luxury of it for a few hours each night, starting around 6:00 p.m. Not tonight though—at least not yet.) As we sat down to dinner, five small faces looked around, and five small voices piped up. It’s dark. Where’s the light? Mama, how will we eat in the dark? My father, hearing the generator’s engine start up, knew that any second power would reach the light fixture. He played his mischievous role to the hilt—arms out, palms up, he commanded Let there be light! As the room lit up, ten little eyes grew wide with awe—and I suspect none of us made a peep that night when we were told it was bedtime.

But I digress, and must return to our candy quest and the dear man at its culmination. As we trekked, we would discuss our prospective purchases, and this was serious business. Lee’s favorite was always the milk toffee, a square candy wrapped in paper, from which she seldom deviated. And truly, her taste was impeccable—milk toffee was chewy, milky, creamy and sweet. What more could one want than a mouth full of the stuff, and the sweet drool it provoked? I loved the milk toffee too, but the variety of other sweets would seduce me and the world of sugar plum fairies would beckon. Most often, I would find myself bewitched by all the possibilities (of which I doubt there were more than a dozen) and stand there growing more anxious by the minute. Invariably Festus would kindly solve my dilemma by giving me an extra piece or two. My angst would slip away as I anticipated the sweet treat in my mouth. And then, invariably, Lee would chide me for being so greedy. Which I knew I was. But I also knew she was jealous—after all, Festus didn’t give her extra candy.

And so that dear man won my heart. I decided my lot in life was to be his chubby wife, and have all the candy a girl could want. I was very happy with my fantasy, and the world was good.

Until I told Lee. God bless her, my sister was the driving force of so many traumatic moments in my young life. Rather than holding my precious secret in the palm of her heart, that wicked girl gleefully ran about spreading the news: Hazel wants to marry Festus! I was mortified and ashamed. I could no longer shop at Festus’ Store. A whole chapter of my life had come to an abrupt and unwanted end, and I had lost my candy supplier to boot. I hung my head in shame and sadness, vowing never to trust Lee with another secret.

As luck would have it, I did not have to bear my shame for long. That same year our family moved away, leaving the mission which had been the only home I remembered. Politics, both church and secular, had necessitated my father’s departure. It was a painful exodus for all, and I still recall the heartfelt and lengthy farewell ceremonies. Sitting under the big shulusa tree in front of our thatched house, I listened to endless speeches that lasted five full days, not comprehending the words of sad farewell from local parishioners, many of whom had walked miles to bless us on our way. I fidgeted, enjoying the dregs of my zutho, that heavenly, thick local