What made me said "Yes"...

… was a combination of a few factors - family, readiness and trust in istikharah. I get to know my fiancé through my parents. And it came with a stern warning from both Mak and Ayah – don’t mess up this time around. Well, I have turned down a few of my parents’ choices for all kind of ‘reasons’… One was way 'too old' (really! 23 years gap *gasps*), one was 'not confident' enough, another was 'not trustworthy' enough, yet another was 'too short', and so on and so forth… My fiancé was introduced to my Ayah through one Ustaz who’s checking Ayah’s and Mak’s Quran recital. This particular Ustaz has a bachelor’s degree from Al-Azhar, a hafeez Quran and has a certificate certifying him as somebody who learned the Quran from a long list of teachers starting from Rasulullah – in other words, “ada sanad Rasulullah”. It goes without saying that both Ayah and Mak have high respect for this Ustaz, despite his young age and all. And the respect is also extended to this Ustaz’s seemingly similar friends… and that includes my fiancé. When the Ustaz one day told Ayah that he might have found a suitable candidate to fit Ayah’s requirement for a son-in-law, Ayah was really excited. So was Mak. Apparently, this guy is of the right age, the right family background (turned out that Ayah and my uncles have known his uncles a long while ago and have remained friends till today), the right academic qualification (a Masters degree from Al-Azhar), the right height with an added bonus – like this Ustaz, he’s also a hafeez. To cut a long story short – I agreed to get to know him better, with some view towards matrimonial. Like Mak said – I don’t have much to say against him. I have no ‘reasons’ left up my sleeve to say ‘no’ based on his on-paper ‘qualifications’. Besides, Mak and Ayah were really ecstatic about the prospect of adding a hafeez into the family, so much so that I had no heart to remind them then that he could be the one who said ‘no’. He did no such thing though. As unreal as it sounds in this day and time, four days after he had dinner (prepared and served by yours truly of course) with Ayah, he called Ayah, to let Ayah know that he believed that the result of his istikharah prayer was positive, hence he seeked Ayah’s permission to get to know me better and even acquired my number from Ayah. After getting to know him better via phone, after spending some time together, after the date of our engagement day, the time (high tea), other details on how many hantaran to be exchanged on that day and what-nots were agreed by both sides of family, plus me rushing to Ampang to get a loan of a nice cream-with-pink-and–yellow-embroidery jubah from a friend (her wedding jubah, actually), we finally were formally engaged on 19 September 2004. Oh dear, it’s been almost three weeks and I just realised that I haven’t send the jubah for drycleaning yet!