More years passed, and then came the phase of my marriage. By this time, I had become comfortable telling people that my parents were separated, so when my husband approached me for marriage, I naturally told him everything. But when my mother-in-law talked to my mom formally about our proposal, she casually asked, “Anum’s father will attend the wedding, right?”—a fear shaped by society for years was screaming in my mom’s face that people will ask about the father at a daughter’s wedding, just like Zeba lived with this fear throughout her torturous married life. My mom asked me if I wanted him to come and was willing to use her contacts (common friends and acquaintances) to find his whereabouts, but unlike Zeba’s daughter Jaweria, I was not ready to start a new chapter of my life with a toxic person by my side whose mere presence would have brought back all the trauma and reopened old........

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