A FEW days after I helped prevent the marriage, my phone rang. It was Sumaiya, or Dadli, as she is more commonly known. I have known her since she was very little. She is shy and soft-spoken, the kind of girl who quietly laughs with her cousins and loves carrying babies. That day, however, I barely recognised her voice. She was almost inaudible, her words tumbling out in fear. A man had come to visit her parents. She did not know who he was, but she thought he was a government official who had come to take her away. Although the marriage had been stopped, the fear had not.

For weeks I had tried to persuade her parents and relatives not to proceed with the planned marriage in a farming village in Larkana district. An uncle whom I hoped would intervene refused to do so, and both families remained determined. Throughout those discussions, Sumaiya’s own position never changed. “I don’t want to,” she would say quietly. There was no drama, only the simple, persistent objection of a 13-year-old child.

The marriage had been arranged through watta satta — a reciprocal exchange in which two families promise daughters to one another in marriage. Adults negotiated, made promises and discussed........

© Dawn