Iram Ramzan has narrated this article for you to listen to.
There’s a joke that does the rounds about a Pakistani couple who get a divorce. After their union is dissolved, one of them says to the other: ‘Well, at least we’re still cousins!’ I feel slightly guilty whenever I laugh, yet there is some truth to it.
I remember at my secondary school how Pakistani girls would, shortly after they’d completed their GCSEs, find themselves married off to a cousin from ‘back home’ just so their husbands could get a British passport and send money back to their families.
I was relieved my family never brought up the subject with me at that age. And then one day, to my horror, they did. I would have been 19 or 20, when my mother told me it was my late grandmother’s wish for me to marry her nephew (my second cousin) in Kashmir. While he seemed decent, there was a big age gap between us, and he didn’t speak English. On top of that, he’d lived his whole life in a rural village while I was born and brought up in the UK. I said no.
Then came the time my maternal aunt wanted me to marry her eldest son, who is five years younger than me. When I told him of this bizarre proposition, he was (understandably) revolted. ‘No offence but euuuurgh! What is wrong with these people?!’ he cried. Part of me was slightly offended (‘I’m a bloody catch,’ I wanted to say) but I couldn’t disagree with the sentiment. I used to babysit him for heaven’s sake.
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