Rishta in Phoenix

How to read a Phoenix profile properly

A community ten years old: searching where there is no network

Most Pakistani communities on this site have a history. Devon Avenue has sixty years, Coney Island Avenue has fifty, Edison has forty. Pakistani Phoenix has barely a decade of depth. The great majority of households here arrived recently — from California for a house, from Texas or the east coast for a job, or directly from Pakistan to a university or a chip plant — and that one fact changes how a rishta has to be done.

What is missing is the informal machinery everybody else relies on. There are no aunties here with thirty years of knowledge of who is who. The masjid committees are themselves recent, the families on them have often known each other only a few years, and there is no settled biradari network. So the usual sentence — somebody will know them — is simply not true in this city. A warm introduction here means a family has been liked for two years, which is not the same as being known.

Which means you do two things instead. First, do the verification in whichever city the family actually came from, not here: ask where they lived before, for how long, which masjid, and who there would speak for them, and then make that call. It is the same discipline we set out on our Atlanta page and it matters more here than anywhere. Second, lean on the structure rather than on gossip — the open fields on a profile, documents, a video call with both families present, references in the previous city, and the ordinary checks in our guide to verifying a proposal. A new community is exactly the situation this kind of service exists for: it puts the biodata and the family detail in front of you in a form you can actually examine, in a place where nobody has had time to build a reputation yet.

And the standing warning, which applies with particular force where nobody knows anybody: never send money to a family or an individual you have not met, for any reason, however the request is framed.

The mehr: how much, in what form, and when it is paid

This belongs on every page and we are putting it here, in full, because it is the part of the nikah that families treat most carelessly and that matters most to a woman later. The mehr is not a formality, a gift from the groom’s family to the bride’s family, or a number to be filled in at the last minute by whoever is holding the pen.

The essentials, stated plainly. The mehr is an obligation on the husband, owed to the wife herself. It is hers absolutely — not her father’s, not her mother’s, not the household’s. She may keep it, spend it, invest it or give it away, and nobody is entitled to take it from her or to hold it for her against her wishes. It must be specified: a nikah nama with the mehr left blank, or written as a token rupee, or recorded as to be decided later, has failed at the one point where the contract protects her. And it can be prompt or deferred — paid at the time of the nikah, or owed and payable later, usually on demand or at separation or death. Most families here record part prompt and part deferred, which is sensible provided both parts are written down.

How much is a question for the two families and there is no fixed figure, but there are two errors to avoid. One is the enormous number recorded for show, which everybody knows will never be paid: that is a lie written into a religious contract and it does nothing for the woman. The other is the dismissive token, agreed because the families are close and nobody wants to seem grasping: that leaves her with nothing precisely when she might need it. The honest test is whether the figure is both meaningful relative to the husband’s means and genuinely payable. If it is deferred, a family should be able to say how it would actually be paid.

On form and on record-keeping, since we are in America. Gold is the commonest form and is perfectly sound — but have it weighed, note the weight and purity on paper, and keep the receipt, because thirty years later nobody remembers. If the mehr is money, the amount and the currency should be written; if property, the property must be identified; if it is deferred, the terms should be written on the nikah nama rather than agreed in a room. Keep the original nikah nama with the government marriage certificate, in a place the wife can get to herself. And know that an unpaid deferred mehr is a debt — in Islamic terms it ranks as a debt on the husband’s estate before any inheritance is distributed, which is one of several reasons a properly drafted will matters in this country.

One last word to the bride’s side. Do not let anyone else negotiate the mehr past you, and do not accept a figure you have not heard and agreed yourself. And to the groom’s side: a family that treats the mehr seriously is telling the other family something good about itself, long before anyone talks about the hall or the menu.

Who stands as wali, and what consent actually means

The other part of the contract families get wrong, and it is worth being exact about because there is a great deal of confused folk practice around it.

Begin with the part that is not in dispute. A nikah requires the free consent of both parties. The bride must be asked, directly, and must agree, and her agreement is what makes the marriage valid. Two witnesses are present for precisely that reason — so that her consent and his are heard by people who can attest to them. Where a woman has been married before, she is expected to state her acceptance in words rather than by silence. None of this is a technicality. It is the structure of the thing.

On the wali: a bride’s guardian is normally her father, and the role is to represent her interests and to be party to the agreement — it is not a power to dispose of her. Where the father has died, the role passes through the male relatives in a recognised order, commonly the paternal grandfather, then a brother, then a paternal uncle. Where there is no suitable relative, or where the family is withholding consent unreasonably, the function falls in practice to an imam or a recognised authority, and in America a woman in that position should speak to the imam of an established centre, who will have dealt with it before. The schools of law differ on how necessary the wali’s participation is for an adult woman, and any family should take its own scholar’s view rather than ours. What every school agrees on is that her consent cannot be dispensed with.

Which brings us to the thing that has to be said once, clearly, on a site like this. A marriage into which a woman — or a man — has been pressured is not a sound marriage in Islam, whatever was signed. And in the United States it is also a matter for the law: coercing someone into marriage is a criminal offence, taking a person abroad for that purpose is treated with great seriousness, and there are organisations in this country, including ones run by Muslims, that help in exactly these situations confidentially and without involving the community. If you are a young person reading this page under pressure, talk to somebody outside your household before anything is signed. And if you are a parent: a daughter who is persuaded will give you grandchildren who love you, and a daughter who is pressured will give you twenty years of something else.

Four months indoors: what summer here actually means

Everyone arriving from Pakistan knows heat. Nobody arriving from Pakistan knows this. From late May into September, Phoenix runs above forty degrees Celsius for weeks at a stretch and sometimes above forty-five, and the nights frequently do not drop below thirty. It is not the heat of a Lahore summer with a monsoon at the end of it. It is a desert heat in which the outdoors is simply closed for four months, and a bride should hear that described honestly before she agrees to live here.

The practical consequences are specific. You do not walk anywhere between May and September — not to the shops, not to the masjid, not with a pushchair — so a car and a licence are not a convenience here, they are the condition of having a life. A car whose air conditioning does not work is genuinely dangerous rather than uncomfortable, and so is a car left standing with a child or an elderly person in it, which is the single most important sentence on this page for a new arrival. Electricity bills in summer are large, and worth budgeting for rather than being shocked by; Arizona has rules restricting disconnection during the hottest months, which is worth knowing if a household ever gets into difficulty. And the social life moves indoors entirely — the masjid, the Islamic centre, people’s houses, the shopping malls — which is actually a help to somebody newly arrived, because that is where she will meet people.

Two groups need particular thought. Anyone working outdoors — construction, landscaping, delivery, warehouse yards — is in a job with a real physical risk in July, and a family should know whether that is the work. And elderly parents: if the plan involves bringing a mother or father from Pakistan, summer here is a medical consideration and not a minor one, particularly for anyone with heart or kidney conditions. Ask the question before the tickets are bought.

The compensation is real and worth saying too. From October to April this is one of the most pleasant places in America to live, the community is outdoors constantly, and a family that arranges its year around that does perfectly well.

Arizona is a corner, so the pool is California, Nevada and Texas

Phoenix is the most isolated large city on this site, and treating Arizona as the search area will not work. Tucson is under two hours and has a small community with a university around it. Beyond that the state is empty, so you have to leave it.

The natural extensions are closer than they look. Las Vegas is four and a half hours by road and full of families who left California for the same reasons Phoenix families did. San Diego is five and a half, Los Angeles and the Inland Empire six — and the Inland Empire in particular, being itself a destination for Californians priced out of the coast, has a great deal in common with the East Valley. By air, Phoenix is a major hub: an hour to Los Angeles and San Diego, two to the Bay Area, Dallas, Houston and Seattle, and direct service to most of the country. Families here fly for a sitting in a way that families in the north-east drive, and it is no stranger.

So set the filter wide from the beginning. California first, because it holds one of the largest Pakistani populations in the country and is a short flight; then Texas, then Las Vegas, then Seattle and Denver if the work is in technology. And read the practical note on the time difference if you are searching back into Pakistan — Arizona is twelve hours behind for most of the year and does not change its clocks, so fix a workable hour early and keep to it.