Ayesha at Last

Set in the Muslim community of east Toronto, the novel follows Ayesha Shamsi, a 27-year-old aspiring poet, and Khalid Mirza, a 26-year-old observant Muslim man, as they fall in love across a tangle of family obligations, mistaken identity, and cultural expectations.

Khalid lives with his mother, Farzana, and watches a young woman in a purple hijab, a Muslim headscarf, rush to her car each morning. His father died six months earlier, and Farzana has begun searching for a wife for her son, a prospect Khalid accepts as comforting tradition. Across the street, the woman he admires is Ayesha, who has set aside her poetry for a substitute teaching career to repay her uncle Sulaiman for her tuition. Ayesha lives with her mother, Saleha; her teenage brother, Idris; and her grandparents. The family emigrated from Hyderabad, India, 17 years ago after the death of Ayesha's father, Syed, whose cause of death the family keeps secret.

Khalid works as an e-commerce project manager at Livetech Solutions, where he shares a basement office with Amir, a coworker with an alcohol addiction. Khalid faces hostility from his new boss, Sheila Watts, who is contemptuous of his white robe, skullcap, and refusal to shake women's hands. Sheila instructs Clara, the new human resources manager, to build a case to fire him. Clara, also Ayesha's best friend, recognizes the bias and invites both Khalid and Ayesha to an open mic poetry night at Bella's lounge. There, Khalid tells Clara he wants nothing to do with her friend, calling her "the type of Muslim who frequents bars" (40). Ayesha overhears and takes the stage to perform a defiant poem about hijab and identity, directing the final lines at Khalid, who is transfixed but leaves immediately.

Sulaiman asks Ayesha to accompany her younger cousin Hafsa, a bubbly 20-year-old collecting marriage proposals, to planning meetings for a youth conference at the Toronto Muslim Assembly, the local mosque. When Hafsa skips the first meeting, she texts Ayesha to impersonate her. The imam, the mosque's prayer leader, mistakes Ayesha for Hafsa, and Ayesha plays along, partly out of spite toward Khalid, who is on the committee. Over several meetings, they clash over arranged marriage and conference logistics, but a mutual attraction builds. The imam reveals the mosque is nearly bankrupt; the conference is their best hope for raising funds.

Sheila assigns Khalid to WomenFirst Design, a lingerie company, hoping to humiliate him, but the founders appreciate his honesty and insist on working exclusively with him. Khalid cooks kofta curry for Ayesha as an apology after a tense exchange, and they share the meal in a parking lot. Khalid reveals that his older sister, Zareena, lives unhappily in India and that he sends her money secretly. Ayesha invites Khalid home for a cooking lesson with her grandmother Nani, which ends in an intimate moment when Ayesha brushes flour from Khalid's beard and he clasps her wrist. After a dinner at Clara's condo, they sit together under the stars, and Khalid admits he is no longer sure he wants an arranged marriage.

Farzana, however, has discovered that the "Hafsa" her son has been spending time with is actually Ayesha. She calls the real Hafsa and warns her that Ayesha has been pursuing Khalid behind her back, then arranges the engagement to the real Hafsa without Khalid's knowledge. Ayesha returns home to find the family celebrating and is devastated. Khalid, learning the same news, is thrilled, believing his mother has chosen the very woman he fell for. Nani investigates and confirms that Farzana deliberately arranged the marriage to the wrong woman but decides not to intervene, trusting events will sort themselves out. Ayesha resolves to step aside, feeling she owes Sulaiman's family too much to interfere.

At the engagement ceremony, Khalid finds Ayesha decorating alone and gives her a blue leather notebook inscribed "When I think of you, I see my future" (197), still believing she is his fiancée. Farzana reveals that the woman before him is Ayesha, not Hafsa. Khalid is stunned. The ceremony proceeds with the real Hafsa while Khalid sits stone-faced and Ayesha sobs in the bathroom.

In the weeks that follow, Tarek Khan, the leader of Muslims in Action, tells Ayesha that Khalid's family beat Zareena nearly to death and forced her into marriage after Khalid revealed Zareena's boyfriend and pregnancy to their parents. Ayesha is horrified. Tarek separately manipulates Farzana, giving her a flash drive he claims contains proof the imam is stealing funds. At the conference, Ayesha performs Shakespeare's "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow" soliloquy onstage, staring at Khalid in misery. Afterward, Khalid follows her to the parking lot and declares his love, but he does so clumsily, questioning her faith, belittling her poems, and proposing as though it is a foregone conclusion. Ayesha rejects him, pointing out he is still engaged to her cousin and that she knows what his family did to Zareena. She calls him a coward and drives away.

Khalid breaks off his engagement. Hafsa then leaves with Tarek, leaving a note saying she will be in touch after their nikah, or Muslim wedding ceremony. Her family is frantic. Khalid writes Ayesha a long letter explaining his side: Zareena was sent to India and married to a stranger, but she was never beaten. He admits he failed his sister by keeping silent and signs the letter "Yours always" (275). Ayesha reads it repeatedly, angry but moved.

During a late-night conversation, Saleha tells Ayesha how Syed died. He was a journalist beaten to death covering the 1992-93 communal riots in Mumbai following the demolition of the Babri mosque. Sulaiman arranged the family's escape to Canada as refugees. The revelation helps Ayesha understand her mother's overprotectiveness.

Zareena then arrives at Khalid's doorstep from India, pregnant and determined to start a new life. She reveals she had an abortion at 17 and nearly died from hemorrhaging, which is how their parents found out. She was sent to India as punishment but fell in love with her husband, Iqram, after the forced marriage. She also reveals that the boyfriend who got her pregnant was Tarek.

At a mosque meeting, Farzana plays Tarek's flash drive expecting it to expose the imam. Instead, the video publicly humiliates Farzana, revealing how she forced Zareena into marriage and manipulated Khalid's engagement. Khalid confronts Tarek and punches him. Tarek admits his true motive: revenge against Farzana for separating him from Zareena 12 years ago.

Hafsa returns after about a week, revealing that Tarek took compromising photographs of her for his pornography website. Khalid works with Amir and Idris to dismantle the site, exposing Tarek to his subscribers. Khalid is also fired from Livetech after Sheila discovers pornography on his workstation, a subscription Amir had purchased. He confronts Sheila with audio evidence of her Islamophobic comments, recorded by Amir, and negotiates his freedom to work with WomenFirst Design independently.

In the aftermath, Ayesha quits teaching to pursue poetry and travel. Hafsa becomes engaged to Masood, a kindhearted life coach for wrestlers, and launches an event planning business. Clara sends Khalid to propose to her boyfriend Rob on her behalf, inspired by the Islamic tradition in which the Prophet Muhammad's wife Khadijah proposed to him. Rob accepts. At Hafsa's wedding, Khalid finds Ayesha. Wearing a trimmed beard and navy suit, though he has returned to his white robe in daily life, he tells her he has changed. Ayesha tells him she knows what she wants: to travel, to write, and to be with him. She accepts his proposal, and they agree to marry the following summer.