The year was 2018 when Nayeem first met Farziah in MSP Airport. Nayeem being a friend of Farziah’s sister Kashfiah was asked to pick a freshman from the airport as she was arriving from Bangladesh to attend Minnesota State University, Mankato. A sense of homesickness and anxiousness prevailed in Farziah as she was gazing into the busy crowd of the airport after she landed at 9pm CST. She already started missing her family, and the thought of her sister not being able to meet her on the first day (due to work constraints in a different state) felt her heart with despair and an everlasting doubt of how she must adult-up her life from that exact point on. Amidst all these emotional turbulences, her teary and blurry eyes gazed upon a rather interesting character walking towards her, with a sense of bounce in his walk and an unnecessary smile on his face (so it seemed). The first ever person she saw, or talked to, after coming to landing on Minnesota soil was Nayeem, enthusiastically trotting his way to this freshman as if its just another day for him, and said in Bangla:

‘’কি দেখো? চলো বাসায় drop করে আসি‘’.

A silly encounter don’t you think? This too was felt by Farziah, but little did she know that this would start to have a joyride of a lifetime to come. Both being part of Bangladeshi community and students of MNSU sort of paved their way to meet and see each other on constant encounters. Both never realized how wonderfully they understood each other without even trying, and both negligently felt the warmth in each other’s heart.

The journey never seemed that easy to be honest. Nayeem was and still is a strange one, Always oblivious to his own feeling and on an aloof mindset apart from his usual “I just love myself” NPC behavior. For some reason he knew he was getting drawn to her, but he submerged those feelings and wanted to solely focus on his path to “greatness”, or so he believed LOL!

On the other hand, Farziah knew from a very early stage that she was falling for this person, and no matter how ignorant she wanted to look in terms of hiding her feeling, she wasn’t the type of person to mask her true emotion. She knew a freshman and a senior, where the senior was her elder sister’s friend, would find it rather difficult to cultivate a relationship at this early stage. A young girl shouldn’t just fall in love this quick right? She has all the time her world to explore! Besides, Nayeem’s reputation in the college of being obnoxious, self-centered, rude and soccer-addict almost helped her to walk away from this sweet, ample encounter which she wanted to keep in her memories. But before deciding to completely forget about it, she expressed her feelings to him once, just for her closure, and she knew Nayeem would turn it down, but she made her peace with it and told him, without wanting any answer from him.

The dumb boy didn’t even realize what he was about to lose. Plenty of fish in the sea? No sir, a bond like this is not so easy to acquire now-a-days. Both generated an old-school, Bollywoody-heart in this fast=paced world, and Nayeem couldn’t bare to see this void in his heart to exist anymore.

On May 14th, 2019, almost after a year they have met, talked, quarreled, fought, cursed, sang, and did all the mixed feeling shenanigans one does when they are in denial of their love, he finally took her out, to Minneopa State Park, at the Bison Drive. They both sat underneath that not-so-famous, abandoned windmill, while the sunset gloomed on the horizon, he expressed his feelings, and wanted to keep her in his rollercoaster of an unpredictable life. Any girl would have walked away if a guy was this late to express or was in constant denial of his feelings. But Farziah believed in this and knew this would work from the beginning.

Thus began a 5-year long parage of sweet memories, loving relationships, magnificent travels, and all the exotic adjectives you can think of to describe this joyous couple. On July 13th, 2024, both of them are tying this knot and making their 5 year long emotional turmoil into an infinity long happy, married couple.

In Sha Allah