BY Lux Alptraum
October 8, 2007
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The New York Times “Modern Love” column: 1/3 inspiring, 1/3 boring, and 1/3 aggravating. Every Monday, we review this week’s installment, and let you know how the current tale of love (lost, found, or otherwise) stacks up.

We all have our boundaries: for some of us, that means we won’t have sex with someone until we’ve been on X amount of dates, or that certain kinds of sex are off limits, or that we’ll only do a certain activity with someone we really love.

And for others, like the author of this week’s “Modern Love,” our boundaries mean that physical contact with the other sex — even hand holding — are off limits until we’re legally wed.

A religious Muslim, Saba Ali was raised with traditional Islamic beliefs about relationships — beliefs that don’t always gel with life in the not-so-traditional, not-so-Islamic United States. Though we’re far from Muslim, and even further from “traditional,” we found ourselves touched by Ali’s search for true love.

Sure, the held hand that ended her relationship seems like a tiny thing in our world of, well, a lot more than held hands. But the underlying heartbreak, the disappointment, and the frustration of finding someone so close, yet realizing that they’re not close enough — strip away the head scarf and the Muslim values, and it becomes the universal tale of looking for love.

[Photo by longjianing]