Multiple marriages: Strength in numbers

Five brothe­rs wed five sister­s to set a new world record.

OKARA: Five brothers from Okara wed five sisters from Kahror Paka and set a world record. The previous Guinness World Record was held by four Bangladeshi brothers who were married to four sisters.

According to guests at the recent wedding of late Rao Saeed’s youngest son Adil, the five brothers have been sharing a house for years and have been raising their children together. “The brothers have been living together happily for years. The eldest got married 14 years ago but they are all married to their cousins,” said one of boy’s aunts.

According to the family, late Rao Saeed’s five sons married their maternal uncle Rao Akhtar Ali’s five daughters from Kahror Paka. The eldest son Rao Asad Ahmed Khan is a vice principal in a college and married his cousin Shahida 14 years ago. “My father was still alive when we got married and he blessed the union. That was when my uncle and he decided that all of us would marry in the same family, Asad said.

Saeed’s second son Masood is a computer engineer and married his cousin Naila four years after his elder brother’s wedding.

Masood has four children and said that sometimes it got a little crowded. “We are a large family and family outings certainly aren’t easy,” he laughed and told reporters that now that his youngest brother had also gotten married they had moved to the Saddar area in Lahore instead of Okara. “My brothers and I decided to move for our children’s education. It is easier to get better jobs in the city but we are all still living together,” he said.

Masood’s younger brother Saud is working for the water and power development authority (Wapda) and married his cousin Faiqa, two years after Masood’s wedding. He said that the entire family had agreed to move with him when he got a job at the Lahore Wapda office. “I said that I would have to move for my job but my brothers refused to let me go alone. They all eventually decided to move with me and we bought a house in Saddar,” he said, adding “I can’t really imagine a life without them. We have always known that we were going to live together and it makes me happy that we have managed to do so.”

Their younger brother Amir married his cousin Raheela after she completed her BA degree and is now the principal at a public school.

Rao Saeed’s youngest son Adil, who is a traffic warden, married his cousin Shireen on Sunday evening.

“I’m happy that we all have fulfilled our parent’s wishes and that my mother and my brother’s families are all living together,” he said. Shireen said that she was happy to be living with her sisters in the same house. “It is almost like I am going to my own house because most of my family is already there,” she said.

All the brothers live under a single roof and said that they respected their parent’s aspirations to marry the daughters of their uncle.

The brother’s, their wives, children and mother in total make up a family of 37. “It seems a lot but we are happy and we are still waiting for Shireen and Adil to have children,” the boys’ mother Naghma Bibi said.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 30^th, 2010.