Rabia Ahmad’s parents, who live in Portland, Oregon, were not around to witness her exchange of vows with Christopher Pattison on Dec. 19 at the Manhattan Marriage Bureau in New York City. They were visiting relatives in her father’s native Pakistan.
But Ahmad, 39, was not without the warmth of family to greet her when she stepped out of a Mercedes-Benz wearing a blush-colored wedding dress amid the whir of cameras, the sun peeking at her from behind dark clouds on a chilly day.
Clutching a small bouquet of white roses and pine stems, Ahmad made her way past a dizzying array of soon-to-be and just-married couples and into the arms of Harper and Ellis Marsili-Batt. The blond 5-year-old twin girls are part of Ahmad’s “New York family,” an ethnic mix of friends who have been helping her view life through an ever-widening lens since she arrived in New York City 22 years ago.
“I was raised in a very conservative Muslim community in Portland and left there at 17 to attend NYU,” Ahmad said. “I liked the freedom that came with living in New York and never went home.”
When my parents realized that I was opening my mind to meeting other guys, which meant looking outside the tribe, it was a jagged pill for them to swallow
She began socializing, most often in Islamic circles, “and dated a couple of Muslim men,” she said, but it did not work out quite as she, or her parents, had envisioned.
“The guys I dated followed old-school Muslim traditions,” said Ahmad, now a vice president for media relations at Home Box Office in Manhattan. “I soon realized that what drew us together were the basic commonalities of our religion. But we had a different thought process and a different view of the world, as they were much more conservative than I was.”
As the years passed and her circle of friends became more ethnically diverse, Ahmad began dating men of different faiths, much to the chagrin of her father, Dr. Masud Ahmad, a cardiologist in Portland, and her mother, Salma Ahmad, a Filipino woman who was raised Roman Catholic but converted to Islam after meeting her husband, and who is now president of the Islamic Society of Greater Portland.
“When my parents realized that I was opening my mind to meeting other guys, which meant looking outside the tribe, it was a jagged pill for them to swallow,” said Rabia Ahmad, the youngest of three children. “I became the black sheep of the family.”
In September 2015, Ahmad met Pattison on OkCupid, describing him to family and friends as “this 6-foot-tall white guy who looked like Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys.”
“Not exactly what my parents had in mind,” she said, laughing.
But it was no laughing matter to her father.
I knew that her parents were not happy that I wasn’t a Muslim... so I was very nervous about meeting them
“As far as I was concerned, as a Muslim father, it was my obligation to see to it that my daughter married a Muslim man,” Masud Ahmad said from Saudi Arabia in a recent phone interview. “At the end of the day, the man Rabia was going to marry would be her decision, but she knew where I stood on the matter.”
Pattison, who was born and raised in Burlington, Vermont, and graduated from Champlain College there, was working as a cook for a catering service by day, and as a club DJ by night when he met Ahmad.
“He was a genuinely sweet guy who was old-school respectful, opening doors, pulling out chairs, all of those chivalrous things,” Ahmad said. “He was also a history buff who was fascinated by different cultures from around the world.”
Pattison made the 12-hour round-trip drive to visit Ahmad in New York just a week after meeting her online.
“From the beginning I realized that Rabia was a really kind, considerate and nurturing person,” he said. “I just loved being around her.”
For the next year and a half, he drove every weekend from Burlington to Brooklyn to spend time with her, racking up nearly 50,000 miles on his 2005 Ford Focus during the long-distance phase of their relationship.
“It wasn’t an easy trip, but Rabia made every mile worthwhile,” Pattison said. “Every time I came to visit she would always go out of her way to make me feel welcome, and did little things to show she cared, which made me want to keep coming back.”
Immediately after the conversion, I asked Rabia’s father for her hand in marriage
One day in May 2017 he decided to stay for good. He moved into Ahmad’s studio apartment in Brooklyn Heights, leaving in his rearview mirror the only life he had ever known in Burlington.
“I just picked up and left, and at first, it was definitely a struggle, especially when you consider it took me six months to find a job,” Pattison said. “But Rabia kept saying, ‘Just hang on, we will persevere,’ and eventually I got both feet down on the ground.”
Pattison, now 44 and a digital designer in Manhattan for the Smithsonian Network, for which he handles digital advertising across all platforms, had barely landed on his feet when Rabia’s parents came to Brooklyn for a first visit in December 2017.
“I knew that her parents were not happy that I wasn’t a Muslim,” Pattison said, “so I was very nervous about meeting them.”
Among the things that Ahmad’s father brought with him from Portland was literature about Islamic customs, teachings and overall history that he asked Pattison to read.
“I think he was hoping for two outcomes,” Pattison said. “As someone who loved history, he hoped I might be inspired by what I was going to read, and as someone who loved his daughter, he hoped I might be inspired enough to convert to Islam.”
In September 2018, Ahmad and Pattison visited her parents in Portland, where Pattison, a lifelong Roman Catholic, met with an imam who was close to the Ahmad family.
After what Pattison described as “a series of very spiritual and extremely inspirational discussions,” he did indeed convert to Islam.
“Immediately after the conversion, I asked Rabia’s father for her hand in marriage,” said Pattison, who proposed to Ahmad the following month.
Masud Ahmad was thrilled.
“I have been very impressed with Chris, who clearly loves my daughter and has willingly accepted Islam,” he said. “I cannot criticize the road that Rabia and Chris have taken regarding his conversion, as I took the same road with my own wife.”
When Rabia Ahmad began discussing the two life-changing sacrifices made by Pattison on her behalf — leaving his community, and then his religion — she began to cry.
“His willingness to leave a life behind to commit to the adventure of New York, his expressed interest in learning about my cultural background and faith, and his acceptance of my loud but loving family made me fall into the kind of love that I had almost given up on finding,” she said. “Bottom line: I would have gotten down on one knee if he hadn’t beat me to the punch.”
On July 5 and 6, the couple are to take part, before 300 guests, in a traditional two-day Pakistani wedding ceremony that will conclude at the Sentinel Hotel in Portland, a gift from the bride’s parents.
“I’m very much looking forward to it,” Masud Ahmad said. “There is so much worth celebrating.”
