Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
Then comes the thorn in the rose, a line that punctures the fantasy.
Who cares if Im your cousin?
asks the vision in the desert.
I gotta shower by myself, he mutters.
My father spoke in a way meant to open my mind, it seemed.
He neednt have tried so hard.
I wasnt gagging at the thought.
In his working-class Jersey town, Ramy identifies as both super-Muslim and not Muslim enough.
His most consistent quality may be his inconsistency.
Amani is modern and devout, liberated yet intense.
Only, as Ramy soon discovers, shes also his first cousin.
What part of marrying my cousin dont you get?
What do you mean, Mo retaliates.
Its perfect … Noin-laws, everyones justin.
Ramy hisses the worddisgusting.
In pipes his other pal Ahmed, also on the call.
Any perceived repellency around cousin marriage, Ahmed asserts, stems from propaganda.
Scares about birth defects are bullshit.
Risks rise from like 1.4 percent to 2.8 percent for something to be off.
Its only a real problem when thekidsof the cousins start hooking up with the cousins, he explains sweetly.
If you dont have any cousins above you, youre fine, bro.
My father made his own such argument, not to a young second-generation American but to a peer.
Years ago, his friends son, who was born in America, insisted on marrying his first cousin.
I remembered that wedding from a different vantage.
My own first cousin and I attended as guests.
The ceremony was to take place in one of the 20 American states that allow cousin-to-cousin marriages.
I found the intensity and prolonged nature of his mockery curious.
In any case, he stoked my rebellious instinct.
This marriage was a hard-fought one, just not in the way one might expect.
The boy had been born in the U.S.; the girl in India.
I first met him on a family trip when we were both in high school.
He cracked dry jokes.
Then I heard in college that hed become a fervent campus Hindu.
I saw a swap of one costume normal American!
for another devout Hindu!
I could understand the need to overcorrect, to right an imbalance.
Partly, I was projecting.
My experience of America centered on a sense of being forever wrong for whatever role.
Texas white guys seemed to see every deviation from the norm as a nonstarter.
Indian-American guys fell short in their own ways.
One Id found cute one high-school summer whisked me on a brief but thrilling AIM courtship.
The bent of his costumery came off as almost comically overwrought.
But after all, wasnt an ability to perform precisely the quality I needed in a companion?
Then one night he let me know he could never actually bring me home.
My skin was too dark, Indian moms too prejudiced.
No society seemed to value members based on anything but signals of status.
Are cousins who marry freaks?
Are blond guys who recite theMahabharata?
White people who wear shoes in the bedroom?
People who measure worth by height or skin color or job title?
Ramy is never at ease in America, with himself or his various lovers.
Amani alone seems to hold his full attention, to promise a chance for self-knowledge through connection with another.
She alone seems the right shape.
The season ends on a cliffhanger.
Meanwhile, the parents generation might be the one to object.
(Ramys elders havent yet, but theres always season two.)
No better tension, to my mind, sets up a second season.
On which note I now ask of some higher power Allah?
that this essay be kept out of the reach of all of my cousins.
*An earlier version of this piece misspelled Amani.
