Ella Al-Shamahi

Yeah.

And she was there and I was so excited because I thought I'd found like a partner in her.

I was like, oh my God.

And I was sitting there and I was like, right, so this bit of the theory, like I'm just thinking that actually there's a different interpretation that you can have for this data, blah, blah, blah.

And she just freaked out and she looked at me and she was just like, look, I'm here because this is a mandatory course.

I have to pass this evolution class.

Otherwise, I don't get my degree.

So there's like two things going on, right?

So I'm just living my life being a missionary.

I have an arranged marriage.

Why am I imam, by the way?

My dad wasn't even involved.

It was my first semester at university.

Really?

The imam suggested to me that, yeah, he wanted me to marry one of his children.

other um students and i was like okay and so that took a while excited about were you flattered was that did that feel good or did that feel icky you know what like i i didn't know him i had three chaperoned meetings with him to decide if i was going to agree to marry him and then we basically never talked ever

I can't explain it enough.

I just didn't know him, you know, and like, we had to get my dad to agree.

And so that took a while because dad didn't want me getting married before I'd finished my first degree.

And so we had to wait.