Speaking Out: A Muslim Woman's Story (Part 1)

I immigrated to America in 1974 after marrying my first cousin Naseer in Pakistan.

I had a lavish, happy life in Rangoon, Burma until the age of ten. In 1960 my father went to Pakistan to visit my sister, who had married two years earlier. What he found was a daughter whose husband and mother-in-law abused her. On the day my father left their home, he died of a heart attack.

We sold Papa's business, flat and cars and moved to Pakistan, his true home. My mother was left with the daunting task of arranging marriages for four more daughters, as was tradition. My second sister married at age fifteen. Her husband beat her for five years and once left her to die. Then he divorced her and kidnapped her two daughters forever.

When I entered my teens, I was told to wear a heavy long black burka, a woman’s garb, in 120+ degree temperatures. How I sweated every day under that heavy garment. When I turned fifteen, the marrying age, I felt like a goat in line to be slaughtered. I refused to marry and decided to go to school so I could stand on my feet. I begged my mother for college. I had always heard her say "Girls are born to be married, not for college." But she relented and I went to college for four years. Afterward it was hard to find a husband for someone twenty years old with college degree. I was rejected many times by suitors. My mother developed high blood pressure because she couldn’t marry all her daughters off...