A Pakistani couple united in an arranged marriage over 24 years ago recently learnt that they were in fact of the same parents, SMACK reports.
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.
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.