I am in the process of writing the last episode for The Eid Engagement, and Other Weddings. It has been a great journey writing this series. While Hackschool Project, my first novel serialized in Us Magazine, The News International, was hugely popular for its coverage of the educational issues of Pakistani youth, The Eid Engagement, and Other Weddings got a lot of attention for the issues it covered. Every time I highlighted an issue related to arranged marriages in Pakistan in The Eid Engagement, readers would write in to Us Magazine to share their experiences. I was always amazed how, no matter what I wrote, someone would write in to say that the same thing happened to them. It just goes to show that the issues related to arranged marriages in Pakistan are universal and can be appreciated by all readers.

According to the feedback I received, readers thought Hackschool Project dealt with a more groundbreaking topic than arranged marriage, which is a good assessment when Pakistani media covers arranged marriages from every angle. Still, I felt like I needed to add my viewpoint on this topic. While in Hackschool Project I covered a collection of various issues related to student life, in The Eid Engagement I dealt mainly with one topic: the right of a girl to choose the man she marries. I did not feel the need to cover multiple aspects of arranged marriage in one novel. Certainly, I can always address another aspect of arranged marriages in Pakistan in another novel related to this issue. For now, I am content that I followed Hina on her journey of deciding whether or not to marry Sameer. It was important to me to stress that a girl needs to be satisfied with her decision to marry someone before the families proceed with the marriage ceremony. Far too often, a girl’s view on her own marriage is brushed under the rug, pushed out of the way to make room for other things like what her parents want and what society demands from a young woman. Not every case of arranged marriage where the girl feels undecided about the match ends happily, and as I showed with the character of Sameer, the girl’s indecision about her own marriage can cause trouble after the couple starts their married life together.

It is a simple expectation, really. Let a girl decide if she wants to marry the man her parents choose for her. She is the one who is going to spend the rest of her life with the man she marries. The marriage formula “put a man and a woman together and the woman will make the marriage work no matter what the man does” is no longer relevant in the 21st century. Parents need to adjust their expectations from their daughters and accommodate their wishes about the most important decision of their lives.

I hope my readership enjoys the last episode of The Eid Engagement. I have the next novel lined up to start writing soon, but that is the topic of another blog post.