Pashtun Marriages in the West – Part I: The Problem(s)

Continuing the series on marriage among Pashtuns in the West. 

*Disclaimer: The topic of this post is marriage among Pashtuns raised in the West with those who are raised back home (Afghanistan/Pakistan/Pukhtunkhwa). Please note that I'm not talking about those marriages that take place between two partners (one from the West, one from back home) who choose the marriage knowing well in advance that they were both willing to reconcile their major differences because they love each other. Some of these couples, I know them personally, are happily engaged (a couple of them are married as well), and I hope that this post will not be offensive to you! No :) I hope and pray very sincerely that you live lifetimes of happiness, love, and peace with each other and that you are blessed in every way possible!

Just thought I should make that clear since I fear some might misunderstand my point and observations. I'm also speaking *generally*, not taking any individual cases into consideration. If you've an exceptional case, please do share it with us--anonymously so, if you'd prefer.

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The main problem that leads to much frustration among young Pashtun women and men is that our parents raise us (boys and girls) here in the west, educating us here, allowing us to be exposed to different lifestyles and a different culture, new ways of thinking and seeing things – but when we’re “of age” to marry, they take us to Pakistan/Afghanistan to get married. Their intentions are, of course, positive, and I’ll discuss those momentarily as well. But for now, I want to explain why this leads to problems and troubles for the couples involved in the marriage. 

So, the reality is that much of the time, our parents want only our brothers to marry in Pakistan/Afghanistan (depending on where the family’s from—marriages among Pashtuns of Pakistan and Afghanistan are not common) and have them marry a cousin or another close relative from the community. As for the girls who are “of age,” well, our parents hope they’ll find us an absolutely perfect Pashtun man (an “authentic” Pashtun, religious, good, decent, excellently-educated with an excellent job with an excellent income) here in the west (United States, Canada, Western Europe). What they don’t seem or want to realize is that just as they want their sons, our brothers, to marry barely educated young girls who are in their late teens or early twenties at the latest, most other Pashtun mothers want the same thing for their sons, too. Where does that leave us Pashtun girls? It’s not like anyone’s going to let us marry a non-Pashtun man! But what else are we supposed to do if there are no single Pashtun men around who are compatible for us, or if they can’t marry us because their mothers want them to marry younger girls from back home?

That, I think, is the problem of marriage among the Pashtun diaspora--being compelled (pressured, forced, having no other choice because of a lack of "availability of Pashtuns raised in the West, etc.) to marry someone culturally, mentally, personally, intellectually incompatible who's "imported" (and I hate this word) from back home. 

And it is a problem because it has everything to do with the personal, intellectual, cultural, mental, emotional incompatibility and hence the lack of mutual understanding between the partners. Too often, then, at least one partner HAS to change for the other, and historically and sociologically, that tends to be the female partner. 

[This is going to be elaborated upon in the next post. Please be patient. For now, let's talk only about the problems.] 

Another problem is connected to the misconceptions about Pashtun girls raised/born in the West, and Pashtun males generally don't help much with this, either, since they, too, seem to prefer "girls from back home" (for obvious reasons?).  I will talk about this, too, in an upcoming post in the series.

There are many Pashtun families where I live, at least 15 (that’s a lot, okay?). Most of them have sons who are in their late 20s, a couple of them have good jobs—(but barely any of them are well-educated) – so they are there and they’re available for marriage to the Pashtun girls in that community. [I’m not speaking about myself; I’m personally not interested in marrying any man from the community I speak, but I’m saying that they’re available for Pashun girls raised here because they’ve pretty much grown up together, even though they may never/rarely have seen each other, since we’re quite strict on gender segregation.] Every one of them with two exceptions has so far been married to a girl from back home, who has never visited the west while the guy has been here at least half of his life. Then there’s a Pashtun family with I think three sons (I wouldn’t know – we aren’t allowed to interact with the opposite gender), with the father married to a white American woman, though the sons are from a Pashtun mother who has passed away, may she rest in peace. So, all of these sons are married to non-Pashtun women. When the last of the sons was getting married and all the Pashtun families there were invited, guess what the Pashtun mothers were saying :) This:

“How dare these boys marry non-Pashtun women, from other countries, when our daughters are available for marriage for them!”

So, all of those guys are doctors (I think? Or some other professionals), which is why the women were angry, since, remember, they want for their daughters “good, well-educated” husbands with respectable jobs, like most parents around the world do.  

I was like, what the heck – you send your own sons back home to marry girls who you expect would be “subservient, barely educated, submissive, obedient to their husbands and mothers-in-laws,” but you condemn the choice of those men who refuse to marry YOUR daughters who probably share your mentality? I’m not implying that all doctors or well-educated Pashtun men opt to marry non-Pashtun women. No, not at all. But these three guys we know did that, and I have so much respect for them. Bravo, boyz! 

At least one more problem is this: visas! Pashtun girls from the West having to marry men back home so that the men can come to the West! Pashtun girls in the West being used and abused as entries to the West, the land of the infidels, the land that's apparently harmful to the minds of girls but a perfectly legitimate place for boys! A land where, God forbid, a woman might betray her husband, but never mind that (our) men betray their wives constantly whether they're back home or here and no one gives a damn and no one talks about that and no one think THAT is a problem. But, you see, if a Pashtun girl refuses the proposal or marriage to a cousin/someone back home who's never been to the West, her family and relatives will accuse her of being selfish: "You know very well that life is hell for men there. They can't find a job, they can't get good education, they can't do ANYTHING. You HAVE to marry this guy if you care at all about the honor of this family or of your roots and people. Shame on you if you don't." This is how we're emotionally blackmailed.

Another of the upcoming posts in this series will be an elaboration of this problem of pushing girls in the West to marry guys back home for visas for the guys. Again, please be patient.

And my ultimate point, y'all, is this: It's simply unfair. It's so unfair to compel two people to get married when they are so different from each other in many ways, and perhaps the only thing they share is a religion and their ethnicity (and their language). It's so unfair. And it should be considered wrong. Stop blackmailing your kids to marry folks back home for the sake of your honor, your "roots," your "people," your "culture" -- these are all unhealthy and unfair excuses, and you know that deep inside but you won't stop because you feel like you "have" to do this or else people will talk, or your daughter-in-law will turn out to be a "bad" girl and people will talk and other shit that's usually there only because -- you guessed it -- people will talk.

Stop putting "people" before the happiness of your children; stop making "people" your priority, especially when these "people" are full of foul mouths that are constantly running only to hurt you and obviously don't care about you at all. What kind of "people" are these that you're trying so desperately hard to please? What good has ever come out of our trying this hard to please these "people"?

And that is why it's unfair.

Coming up on this discussion: 

• "Imported" brides (i.e., when men born/raised in the West marry women from back home and/or when women born/raised in the West marry men from back home)  
• Visa marriages (i.e., using/abusing Pashtun girls as back-home Pashtuns' access to the West)  
• The Causes of this Problem  
• the "Pashtun" way of marriage  
• misconceptions about Pashtun women in the West 
• Possible Solutions to the Problem