In rural areas, young girls such as Zarghoona are often betrothed to much older
men, the bride price helping their impoverished families or an elevation of
social status helping further still.
Zarghoona doesn't care what the law or her parents have to say.
She chooses to accept instead the Islamic belief that Allah matched a boy to a
girl for marriage before either are even born -- and Haroon was the choice for
her.
They met four months earlier when her elder sister married his brother. But
with one marriage between the two families already, another wouldn't have been
acceptable, she said.
Her parents wanted her to find someone else.
"When I saw her for the first time, something was created between us," Haroon
said through an interpreter, sitting on the lower bunk of his crowded and dirty
cell at the Kandahar prison.
"I think that it was love."
The 17-year-old, still in school, energetically explains that they had no
choice but to flee their village two months ago when they learned Zarghoona was
pregnant.
They ran away to Pakistan, where they stayed for two weeks before coming back
to Kandahar, desperate for money.
"Nobody would agree to our marriage and we were scared that we would lose each
other," he said.
So, Haroon sold Zarghoona to a local hotel owner for the equivalent of $600 US.
They were going to take the money and run to Iran, but the police were tipped
off.
Zarghoona and Haroon were arrested and jailed, their parents summoned to get
them. The pair swear Zarghoona wasn't going to be a prostitute, but it was a
gamble for cash gone badly wrong.
Still, Kandahar police said their parents must give permission for them to
marry or charges would be laid against Haroon for selling Zarghoona, and
against the hotel owner for buying her.
Their case is an example of how little civil law has penetrated the vast social
and cultural customs of the country, said a women's rights activist.
"All of this is off the books and designed to maintain harmony in households
and communities, often at the expense of the girl or woman," said Lauryn Oates,
of Women for Women in Afghanistan, a Canadian-based not-for-profit group
working with women's rights agencies in Afghanistan.
Zarghoona's parents had no idea at first that their daughter was pregnant. She
didn't tell them, saving the trump card that she hoped would force them to let
her marry.
"If this girl is pregnant -- and unmarried -- she is in big trouble," said
Oates. "Her life is at risk, to be totally blunt. That just doesn't happen in
Afghanistan."
Every mention of Haroon's name elicits a blush and girlish giggle from
Zarghoona.
She furtively touches her belly and glances up at the Westerner sitting in
front of her.
"I want a better life for my child," she said.
The jailed lovers shared the same dreams: they'd marry, move to Iran, where he
would work and she would look after their family.
They knew their parents would be angry.
But two weeks later when they finally arrived at the jail, the parents told
police they would consent to the marriage.
The Canadian Press
