Rafia Zakaria: Stories of Women in Karachi and Islamic Culture

Last Friday I had the chance to see Rafia Zakaria speak about how she grew up in a Muslim family, and the challenges she faced throughout her life. She grew up in a fairly strict Muslim household, and when she was young she lived through a crisis in her family. Her aunt's husband had been unable to have children with her aunt, and supposedly for this reason was taking another wife. This devastated Rafia's aunt, who spent the rest of her life becoming more jealous of the other wife. When Rafia was 17, she was married by arrangement to a man living in the United States. Part of the contract was that she would be educated, and she ended up at Belmont University. Later, after she had graduated and had a child, she found herself at an abused women's shelter, trying to escape her abusive husband. She learned from another person staying there that things would not change if she returned home, and so began the lengthy and difficult process of divorce under American law. Her divorce had far reaching consequences in her family as well, but she did her best to try and repair the damage that had been done between the women in her family. Her's was an interesting story that opened my eyes up to a completely different idea of marriage, one with its benefits and negatives.