{"id":76279,"date":"2019-08-03T11:24:17","date_gmt":"2019-08-03T16:24:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/persian-heritage.com\/wordpress\/?p=76279"},"modified":"2019-08-04T16:19:55","modified_gmt":"2019-08-04T21:19:55","slug":"my-father-believed-it-was-sinful-to-delay-marriage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/2019\/08\/03\/my-father-believed-it-was-sinful-to-delay-marriage\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018My father believed it was sinful\u2019 to delay marriage"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\"\"VOA – By Muhammad Saqib and Carol Guensburg | VOA News DISTRICT DADU, PAKISTAN<\/span>In Qubra Bibi\u2019s Pakistani family, \u201cmy father believed that it was sinful\u201d not to marry off a daughter as soon as she could carry a heavy vessel of water to the household, she says. So, as a slender 13-year-old, Qubra was wed to a man roughly twice her age. Dodo Khan brought her to live in his family\u2019s compound in Pir Baksh Lashari, a village in Pakistan\u2019s southeastern province of Sindh. He needed someone to care for his ailing, widowed mother and their home.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Now 19, Qubra muses about the decisions \u2014 made by others \u2014 to end her schooling in eighth grade and set her on a course of housework and motherhood. She and Dodo have a 3-year-old daughter and baby son.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter marriage, the responsibility of the whole house fell on me,\u201d Qubra says, between chores such as cooking over an open fire and hanging laundry to dry. \u201cI still cherish the desire to get an education. \u2026 When my daughter turns the proper age, then she will marry. Otherwise, how can she pursue an education?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

By Muhammad Saqib and Carol Guensburg | VOA News<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

DISTRICT DADU, PAKISTAN<\/span>In Qubra Bibi\u2019s Pakistani family, \u201cmy father believed that it was sinful\u201d not to marry off a daughter as soon as she could carry a heavy vessel of water to the household, she says.<\/p>\n

So, as a slender 13-year-old, Qubra was wed to a man roughly twice her age. Dodo Khan brought her to live in his family\u2019s compound in Pir Baksh Lashari, a village in Pakistan\u2019s southeastern province of Sindh. He needed someone to care for his ailing, widowed mother and their home.<\/p>\n

Now 19, Qubra muses about the decisions \u2014 made by others \u2014 to end her schooling in eighth grade and set her on a course of housework and motherhood. She and Dodo have a 3-year-old daughter and baby son.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter marriage, the responsibility of the whole house fell on me,\u201d Qubra says, between chores such as cooking over an open fire and hanging laundry to dry. \u201cI still cherish the desire to get an education. \u2026 When my daughter turns the proper age, then she will marry. Otherwise, how can she pursue an education?\u201d<\/p>\n

Those duties and childbearing taxed her health, she says. Qubra had not reached puberty when she married and required unspecified surgery late last year when son Abdul Wahab was born prematurely.<\/p>\n

Qubra\u2019s mother, Mehar Bibi, was also a bride at 12 and had three children, including two sons. But now, she vows to break the family\u2019s multigenerational cycle of child brides.<\/p>\n

In forcing Qubra\u2019s marriage, Mehar Bibi admits she and her husband \u201ccommitted a wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe now see education has become a necessity,\u201d she says, speaking of her daughter and granddaughter. \u201cWe must think ahead. If a daughter is young, we must not marry her off. She must continue her education. Now we understand this.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

VOA – By Muhammad Saqib and Carol Guensburg | VOA News DISTRICT DADU, PAKISTANIn Qubra Bibi\u2019s Pakistani family, \u201cmy father believed that it was sinful\u201d not to marry off a daughter as soon as she could carry a heavy vessel of water to the household, she says. So, as a slender 13-year-old, Qubra was wed to a man […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.2","language":"en","enabled_languages":["fa","en"],"languages":{"fa":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"en":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76279\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}