Posted October 28, 2016 from Pakistan In my country because it is very common for girls to get married at the age of 14 or 16 and if a married woman does not get pregnant with in few weeks of her marriage people start making stories about her . Like she must have some medical problem, or maybe she cannot get pregnant so a newly married couple cannot have a birth control either they want it or not.
At the age of 34 her child will get married and soon she becomes a grandmother and at the age of 60 she becomes a great grandmother.
Woman start feeling themselves old at a very early age , they feel now their life is over and they have nothing to achieve, so if a woman does not get married until 25 she will be considered an old woman who has very few chances to have a good proposal .
And this is what happened to my friend khalids. She had to take care of her parents when she was young, because as a woman she did not have a right to keep her parents with her after marriage so she decided to not to get married (in my culture if parents live in daughter’s house after her marriage, they say, they are equal to dogs) and concept of old homes is very rare in Pakistan it is limited to big cities only.
Khalida kept taking care of them but then both of them died one by one, now she was all alone, other sisters were married who did not want her to live with them. In a big house she would sleep alone in night and would wait for day light all night because in dark she would feel more alone and scared.
There was no one to take care of her, to love her, to make her feel that she was not alone.
She would keep praying and would think that I must die now because nobody needs me, people in surrounding did not like her being an alone woman, she was not protected from men of her village, she was not able to go for shopping, or to buy grocery, She was afraid to wear nice cloths to put make up or people would make stories about her character.
And then one day when she thought all was over and it was time to say good bye to the world and meet her parents in heaven, then suddenly a light cam in her life, an only hope for future, a feeling to be loved, to be appreciated, and to pamper. There was a man in her village that sent her a letter one day and said that he was crazy for her since years and he loved her so much and he wants to give her all what she wanted and whatever will make her happy and that he wants to marry her.
She consulted to her friends and accepted the proposal. This was a simple marriage ceremony in which only four witnesses came and she signed the marriage paper.
Life became like a heaven on earth, he would come to her every night for about six months and she felt like she cannot expect more than this from life. Although this relationship was only inside the house, they had to keep it secret because he was already a father of ten children and had one wife and needed time to convince his first wife to accept Khalida, although this is common in our culture to have four wives at a time but still could not tell anyone in his family.
Six months past like six days and then one day he went and then never came back.
he stopped talking to her, to take her call, he never asked how she was, how was her life, she had nothing to eat, her life became miserable and merciful and then she came to me I started giving her some money so that she can buy food and all what is necessary for her to be alive, she cannot do any work because she is very sick and weak.
I convinced her to tell her brothers and sisters about her marriage so she did it, her husband was called and he simply denied from this marriage———. And said she was just blaming him for this he does not know her .
Because it was a fake marriage, it was not registered anywhere and all the witness were his friends.
Now it has been two years since he met her last time, she still waits for him because she believes that she is his wife and she has to be faithful with him all her life and she will be given its reward in heaven.
Such marriages are also increasing and its loss is only for woman because they cannot tell anyone about it and when they tell they come to know about the fraud.
But why they get trapped in it.
Again male dominated society is responsible for this because they think women should just stay inside the house, they cannot go out to learn, they cannot watch TV, they cannot get education, they cannot meet people, they just have to live in isolation to proof that they have a good character.
As a result women do not understand about laws, they do not know where to approach in this situation, how to protect their rights, and that what a legal marriage is.
Secret marriage is a poison which kills women because there is no protection in it and men enjoy to misuse the weak women. Women cannot have children, they have to go through a mental torture, and even if they have to go to the Doctor they cannot tell that about their problem clearly they have pretended as they are virgins.
Our elders want to stick with their culture and do not think that they are ruining lives of their own children, they keep then hide from the world and then men misuse their daughters.
They want them to be simple and innocent and do not know anything so that they cannot take a stand against any injustice.
If Khalida already knew about marriage laws in Pakistan her life would have been saved.