Elnaz, another victim of forced and early marriages

Hasina Ersad

Elnaz is 14 years old. She is in 7th grade. It has been a year since she was engaged to a man who is 10 years older than her. She is supposed to leave school in a couple of months to marry him. Her future husband has warned her that if she continues to go to school, she will have to stay at her father’s home for the rest of her life. Her fiancé believes that if women are educated, they will no longer listen to their husbands. Of course, this attitude is common among our communities and he is not an exception.

I asked Elnaz why she accepted this engagement.

“I didn’t want to be a bride. I wanted to study and become a teacher for literacy courses so I could teach illiterate women reading and writing, but my father said that I have to be engaged to this man, because he is a businessman. My father told me that he needs the money and this man is able to provide for me. After a few days, I was engaged to him with 400,000 Afghanis as bride-price,” she said.

“Was there an Imam/Mullah at your Nikah, (Islamic marriage ceremony)?”

“Yes, the Mullah performed the ceremony,” Elnaz said.

“Did they agree on the bride-price in front of the Mullah? Did they ask for your consent during the ceremony?”

“Yes, they agreed on the bride-price at the ceremony and my fiancé accepted it. But no one asked me whether I wanted to marry this man or not.” With a heavy throat she continued, “Why doesn’t Islam give any right to women? My grandmother was a slave, my mother was a slave, and now I will be a slave.”

“But your Nikah was not Islamic. It was customary. There is no bride-price in Islam. The only thing that Islam has set is a mahr (dowry) and the owner of this mahr is the bride herself – no one else. The bride can ask for her dowry at any time and her husband is obligated to provide it for her. Furthermore, consent of both partners, bride and groom, is the core for the validity of your Nikah,” I told Elnaz.

No longer able to look at me, Elnaz cried and said: “When he comes to me at night, he says that I have to do obey him because he bought me for 400,000 Afghanis.”

Elnaz’s story is not an exception. Many women and girls are married without their consent in Afghanistan. According to Islamic laws and the country’s laws, these marriages are false, instead they are repetitive rapes. I think of Elnaz and the future she would have had if she continued her education and became a teacher. She would have saved many women by making them literate. Now she will never have a chance.

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Read this piece in Persian here. 

This piece was translated to English by Maryam Laly. A volunteer for Free Women Writers, Maryam is passionate about human rights issues. She has a degree in Government with minors in Peace Studies and Arabic from St. Lawrence University.