Unlucky in marriage, lucky in escape

A woman recounts her tale of exploitative marriages and her near miss from a disastrous match with a Chinese national

LAHORE: In a small rented house in the Manawala area of Lahore, K*, a young woman, recounted her ordeal. At only 23 years of age, she has already borne more pain and sorrow than many even witness throughout their life.

After two disastrous marriages, one of which resulted in her being forced into prostitution, K was understandably apprehensive when approached with a proposal from a Chinese national. Although she reluctantly accepted the offer, K counts herself lucky for escaping her third marriage before just as reports revealing the fate of Pakistani women married to Chinese nationals began circulating in the media.



“I have been accustomed to hardship and struggle since childhood,” said K. “My father was a security guard who put me in an orphanage when he married his second wife. I was only 8 at the time,” she told The Express Tribune.

K was married to her first husband when she was just 14. “He was a relative. We were happy for the first six years. I bore him two children,” K recalled. “But then he, like my father, took a second wife and made me leave.”

With nowhere to go, K went to live with her mother and brother. But without any income of her own, K’s brother soon came to see her as a burden. “He would torture me because he would think of me as a liability,” she said. “There was only so much abuse I could take so I left and moved in with another family.”

K met her second husband at this new abode. That marriage, however, turned out infinitely more terrible than her first. “He took me to Dubai and sold me to a prostitution gang there,” she narrated with sorrow. “I was made to sell my body to strangers. I wished and prayed so badly to be saved from such an inhumane life.”

In a stroke of luck, something in short supply in K’s life, a young Indian citizen stepped in to rescue her. According to K, he not only helped her escape the prostitution ring that exploited her but also facilitated her return to Pakistan.

Back in the country, however, she would find herself alone once again with no abode. K sought out her mother at first in Lahore but discovered that the latter no longer lived in the house where she once stayed with her brother. K could not reconnect with her father either.

“I had only Rs2,000 when I reached Lahore from Dubai,” she recalled. Somehow, she made her way to Chiniot, where another family took her in. “They not only let me stay, they assured me they would find me work as well.”

As K began her life anew in Chiniot, a woman approached the family she was staying with a marriage proposal for her; the suitor, a 24-year-old Chinese national living in Pakistan. Having suffered two dreadful conjugal experiences already, she vehemently opposed the notion of a third marriage.

“The family I was living with tried to convince me otherwise. They told me I would be very happy in China. That I would be rid of the misery I was living through here,” she said. “To tell you the truth, I was also beginning to feel like a burden on them as well.”

Reluctantly, K relented and accepted the proposal, and was married off the following day in an exuberant function. At the wedding, her husband-to-be showed her a certificate from Jamia Ashrafia to prove that he had converted to Islam, although he maintained he had kept his birthname for legal and travel purposes.

After marriage, K returned once again to Lahore to move in with her husband in a house in Defence. “I was happy. At least I would soon start a nice life in China, I thought. But I was shocked to find there were three other Pakistani girls and eight Chinese men living in that house already,” she recalled.

“Soon enough, I was being tortured again by my husband and the other Chinese men. They would force me to attend these events and send me to offices,” K said. “I tried to keep my hopes up. I was waiting for my Chinese visa and I told myself my nice new life would begin soon.”

“And then the news broke of other girls like me, married to Chinese men… that they were taken China and put to work in brothels,” she added. For K, the media reports set off a dreaded feeling of déjà vu. She had been duped once before and was not going to allow it to happen once again. “I decided, come what may, I would not go to China.”

“I pretended to be sick one day and used the excuse to escape from that house. I never looked back and never thought about returning,” said K. “I was able to reconnect with my mother and here I am now, living with her in this one-room house.”



While she counts herself lucky to have escaped before her third marriage turned sordid, K’s life is still far from easy. While the woman who brokered her marriage with the Chinese national pocketed Rs50,000 from the arrangement, K herself got nothing, not even the haq mehr of Rs20,000 she was promised. At the same time, her brother, who now works in Karachi, sends her no money while forbidding her from working.

“If that was not enough, the Chinese man I was married to threatens to kill me if I don’t return. I went to the police, but no one paid heed to my complaint,” she lamented. “The stress has been so much that twice, I was driven to attempt suicide.”

Still, K’s resolve against her Chinese husband is firm and she aims to begin legal proceedings against him soon.

Meanwhile, the Defence bungalow that K, her husband and the other Chinese men and Pakistani women lived in is now empty. The Express Tribune spoke to the house’s owner, who said they all left all of sudden, even leaving behind many of their belongings. “I have tried to reach out to them to recover some of the rent they still owe me but to no avail. They won’t even collect their own stuff from here,” he said.

*Name withheld to protect identity.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 13^th, 2019.