Signing of the nikahnama. Photo: Salman Arif / Dreamstime.
Signing of the nikahnama. Photo: Salman Arif / Dreamstime.

Ghar ki shaadi

Of family pressure, maulvis and the nikahnama.

Syeda Rumana Mehdi is a Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences in Ziauddin University in Karachi. Using poetry and storytelling as a medium, her research interests include anthropology of gender and marriage, political Islam, poetry and South Asian literature.

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The living room was decorated with roses and marigolds, flowers customary for the mayoun ceremony. Decorated bowls were filled with ubtan mixed with rose water; the paste was to be applied on the groom's face as a pre-wedding tradition. Before the ceremony could start, the groom's father walked into the room with an ashen face.

He had just gotten off the phone with one of the imam (nikah registrars) who was supposed to preside at the nikah ceremony the next day. The imam was upset that the groom had granted the bride the right to divorce in the nikahnama and had also entered a stipulated condition in the contract, as per the wishes of the bride. The imam had chastised the groom's father and accused him of bringing bad luck into the relationship prior to the nikah. When asked if he would still preside over the nikah, he grumbled and said that he would read the nikah although he did not wish to endorse conversations regarding divorce at the time of nikah.

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