A Letter to my Wife
A love letter from Shamim Sarif to Hanan Kattan, the woman who inspired her heart and work.
Dearest Hanan,
This is a love letter.
A love letter is thrilling. Longed for, and nerve-shredding. It carries the fear and promise of a heart opened and left to bleed on the page like a faulty fountain pen. Like a poem, a love letter uses words to try to express a passion that words can never truly describe.
We have written each other many letters over the 29 years we have spent together. But I took the opportunity to write this letter to you now—to take a moment’s pause in the endless whirl of our busy days, to step back from the constant stream of texts and emails that we exchange about everyday life. To look back at how we began, why we stayed married (in a world that did not acknowledge our union), and why it was you, the love of my life, that inspired this journey through darkness, into light.
The First Spark
In the screenplays that I write and so many movies that we watch, how often is there a moment—that moment—when eyes meet, when energy pulses in the air, when something happens between two people without anything being said?
That happened to me once in my life, and it was when we met. I was dating the young man that my parents felt would be suitable for me to marry, and you were one of his best friends.
“You have to meet my friend Hanan,” he told me. “You’ll love her.” Indeed, he was right. But it was, perhaps, not the most auspicious start.
Each of us, at that time, was walking a cultural path laid out for us since birth. You were born into a Palestinian Christian family; I was born of Indian South African Muslim parents. We had nothing in common. Or rather, we had one big thing in common. We were both women. But neither of our families found that particularly reassuring.
I was an introvert, more comfortable with written words than spoken ones. You were the life of every room you walked into, the person with friends in all corners of the globe and an entrepreneurial spirit. You made me feel like the only person in the room, but you did that with everyone, and so I didn’t make too much of it.
At the time, I would have given up a lot to make it work with the young men that my parents wanted me to marry. To follow an easier path that didn’t stress out the people around me. But, it turned out, I wouldn’t give up anything or everything. I wouldn’t give my heart or soul or integrity.
And neither would you. You made it through five engagements to eligible men. Like a tireless wave in a tide that keeps hitting the prescribed beach but then pulls back to the ocean, swirling and deep.
A Journey of Self-Discovery Together
Was that what drew us together and made us follow this deep attraction? Was it a need to be true to our real selves? Not the self described by culture or religion or tradition or family. But the self that lies within, that doesn’t understand restrictions imposed by random rules.
Whatever it was, I fell in love with you.
And it was a fall. A tumbling into light, a skydive into the blue, into everything I knew I really was, and wanted to be, and could be.
This piece was first published in From Women to the World by Elizabeth Filippouli.
Do you know what a gift that is to give another soul? Not for us to complete each other, as if we were both unfinished without the other. But to find the better parts of our selves and bring them, gleaming, to the surface. To grow together, to explore the landscape of love and maturity and what it means to be alive and human, and to do all this better, because we do it together.
The Road Less Traveled
Our families, in large part, turned away, disowned at first. At the time it was painful; to lose the birthright of parental devotion. But it made us stronger. We grew up faster, created our own values, and then our own family.
Back then, there was no framework for recognizing our relationship. We were not legally joined in the eyes of church or state. This only mattered to us when we decided to have children. Even that decision felt like a hurdle to me, such a huge, serious question. But hurdles have always looked puny to you, like little fences to be stepped over.
I learned from you that we were not to blame for the stress that our families felt at our union; that we were completely responsible for our own happiness and for creating and building our own, new family. I learned alongside you a better way to evaluate people, on their values and ethics, not by ingrained assumptions about race or religion or orientation. You taught me that all of us have choices, when we dare to look outside what other people tell us is right.
Our Creative Partnership
“How do you work with your spouse?” is something I am asked a lot. I joke about it—she makes the small decisions, I make the big ones, but then I found out there are no big decisions. But the truth is, it is a privilege to work with someone who shares your focus, vision, and passion. We have such different skills in making feature films and stories—but those skills are symbiotic.
Creating characters and stories about those characters came naturally to me. I wanted to write about worlds that had limitations and characters that learned to transcend those limits. I began to see that stories can be even more than a reflection of our world and our humanity, if we let them. At their best, they can also show us who we could be—if we dare, as you and I did. If we dare to challenge the status quo or just to listen to who we really are at our core.
Freedom to Love, Freedom to Be
You always believed that we are limited only by our imaginations. And imagination has no limits. And once a mind has been opened to an idea, that glimmer of light can never be extinguished.
Each of us has the ability to open that glimmer of light in others and in ourselves. That, for me, is the ultimate power against those who think they can legislate us into a corner, those who see the rights of, oh let’s say in today’s world, Palestinians or the LGBTQI+ community, as a threat. Because you can’t put a lid on love, or emotion, or freedom. It will always explode off and expose the truth, the love, the passion beneath.
The Story We’re Still Writing
It took me some time to understand that in life and work, when you’re faced with a blank screen or page, you should never fill it with anyone’s story but your own. You, Hanan, were the reason I got that lesson and I hope I helped you to understand it too.
We are all told stories from the time we are children. I don’t mean bedtime stories but perceptions about the world—from our wider family, from communities, sometimes the beliefs of those closest to us.
And often, we can fall into patterns of life that are uninspired, or unfulfilling, or not ours, simply because we don’t realize our own power. Because it’s not just writers and filmmakers like us, who create stories. Everyone creates, every day, the stories that shape who they are.
Looking to the Future
My wife, my friend, my muse, my inspiration—I thank you for helping me learn all these lessons. For pushing me to be more than I imagined I could be (even while I complained). For being the most incredible mother to our grown-up sons, who have as much integrity and focus as you do.
It’s been an incredible quarter-century together, Hanan. I look forward to many more years with you and our children, and send you all my love, eternally—
Shamim