in an arranged marriage over 24 years ago recently learnt that they were in fact
of the same parents.
The siblings, who were separated as children
after the tragic death of their parents, were later adopted by different
families until they later married each other.
It took about 24 years for
them to realise the truth…
“We thought our marriage
was normal, we thought we were cousins” explained Abdul Rahim, 47.
“Everybody in town knew we were brother and sister but no
one had the courage to tell us until now,” said the sister turned wife,
Aisha, in tears.
According to SMACK, anthropologist Juliane Edwards, who
has studied the case of incestuous arranged marriages in Pakistan for decades is
not surprised the least by the situation.
“It’s a cultural thing. When
endogamous consanguineous marriages, or marriages between cousins, is socially
acceptable, then marriage between siblings doesn’t seem as far-fetched,” she
explained.
“I’ve repeatedly studied cases in Pakistan where widowed
fathers would marry one or more of their daughters,” she admitted.
“I’ve
heard of one case where one man’s daughter was allegedly very ugly and could not
find a husband, so he forced his son to marry his own sister as a punishment for
being lazy,” she recalls.
last year, a Pakistani Federal Shariat Court
judge made international headlines after refusing to allow a woman to divorce
her brother from an arranged marriage stating that being siblings “was not
enough of a justification” to obtain court approval for divorce under Sharia
law.
