July 31st - August 1st

Amber and I have a lot in common. We’re both Ismaili, we both work in tech, we both love finding fun things to do around the city, and we both care deeply about our families. Somewhere along the way, I realized that what we had was more than just shared interests. I had truly fallen in love with her. We met in October 2023 at Manhattan Jamatkhana. What’s funny is how many times we almost met before that. We were both at the annual Jamati picnic the week before. We were both in New York that entire October. We were even at the National Jamati Sports Tournament in Dallas back in 2015. So many near misses over the years. But I guess you only meet when you’re meant to, and for us, it finally happened during a game of human bingo at a mixer night in Jamatkhana. We met that night, followed each other on Instagram, and then left it there. No messages, no real plan. Amber headed back to Dallas at the end of the month, and I didn’t realize at the time that this was only the beginning. We reconnected in February 2024 when Amber officially moved to New York. That’s when we actually became friends, not surface level friends, but the kind who spend all their time together and talk about everything. During that time, I really got to know her. She’s ambitious and works incredibly hard for what she wants. She laughs easily. She loves meeting new people and hearing their stories. But more than anything, she’s loving and genuine in a way that’s rare. Then I found out she had made a rule for herself: no dating for at least two months after moving to New York. Tragic news for me. But at the end of March 2024, just days before her own deadline, she made the first move, with a little encouragement from her friends. I like to think I was worth breaking the rule for. Our first date was April 3rd. We became official on April 28th. We said “I love you” in September. Since then, we’ve gone through real life together, the hard days, the tears, and the growth. Through all of it, we’ve chosen each other. We’ve laughed endlessly, made the best memories, and built something steady and full of love.

In October 2023, I came to New York for a month. I had always dreamed about living in the city, and this felt like my chance to experience it, even if just for a little while. At the time, I had no real intention of moving here permanently. One night that October, I went to a Jamati mixer and met Akbar during a game of human bingo. My first thought was very simple: wow, he’s so tall and cute. He seemed really nice too. I remember finding out he was living in Queens and thinking about moving into the city, which felt funny looking back because I was just visiting. I joked to my friends afterward that I thought he was cute, but I didn’t think much beyond that. When I left New York at the end of the month, something shifted for me. I decided to take the leap and move here for real, and in February 2024, I did exactly that. Moving to New York felt like starting over in the best way. I didn’t have many close friends here yet, and I wanted that fresh start. The very first weekend after I moved, I saw Akbar in khane again and told him I had moved. I asked if he had ever made his move to the city, and he told me he had moved just one month before I did. It felt like our timing kept aligning. We were both in similar phases of life. We wanted to explore the city, meet new people, and build our own communities. From the beginning, I could tell Akbar was one of the kindest and sweetest people I had ever met. He was genuinely the nicest person, the kind of person who makes everyone around him feel comfortable and included. At the same time, I had made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t date anyone for the first two months after moving. I wanted to focus on building my life independently, making friends, and fully experiencing this new chapter before adding a relationship into it. So Akbar and I spent weekend after weekend hanging out in groups with friends. Then toward the end of March, one weekend he was traveling, and I remember thinking, I kind of miss hanging out with him. That was the moment I realized I wanted to see if there could be something more between us. When he got back, we already had group plans that weekend, and with a little encouragement from my friends, I sent him a slightly flirty text that made it clear I might be interested. That same night when we saw each other, after we had been hanging out for a bit, he pulled out his phone and asked me very directly if I had been flirting with him. I immediately started blushing and said yes, but only with the help of my friends. He laughed and said that was really cute, then asked, “Date next week?” 😉 I said yes right away, with butterflies in my stomach. Our first date was the following week, and from there, everything unfolded so naturally. We kept choosing each other again and again, and somehow the boy I met during a game of human bingo became the person I get to marry. And now, here we are. ❤️