Marriage in Disguise

When Aisha Salim marries her fiance in Pakistan next March, it will be the wedding of her dreams. Wearing a veil and gown, she will be every inch the fairytale virgin bride and as befits her strict Muslim religion, after the ceremony, she will hand her blooded wedding-night sheets to her in-laws as proof of her virginity.

But far from being the traditional untouched bride that many Muslim families demand, she is a modern-day university graduate who has smoked, drunk, made love to - and even lived with - a previous English boyfriend. To disguise the fact that she has had sex, she has paid for painful surgery to "restore" her virginity.

It is a drastic and costly measure but as she takes her husband's hand in marriage, she knows it is one which may - quite literally - save her life. The horror and outrage that would ensue if it was discovered she had already slept with a man would be so damning that her own strictly religious relatives might kill her rather than face public shame.

"My virginity was restored in a delicate operation just last week, and I honestly view it as life-saving surgery," says Aisha. "If my husband cannot prove to his family that I am a virgin, I would be hounded, ostracised and sent home in disgrace. My father, who is a devout Muslim, would regard it as the ultimate shame.

"The entire family could be cast out from the friends and society they hold dear, and I honestly believe that one of my fanatically religious cousins or uncles might kill me in revenge, to purge them of my sins. Incredible as it may seem, honour killings are still accepted within our religion.

"Ever since my family arranged this marriage for me, I've been terrified that, on my wedding night, my secret would come out. It has only been since my surgery last week that I've actually been able to sleep properly. Now, I can look forward to my marriage."

Aisha is far from alone in seeking such drastic - and almost barbaric - surgery.
The rise in Islamic fundamentalism is being blamed for the growing trend for hymenoplasties, where the hymen is re-created from the already torn tissue, or a new membrane is inserted using a gelatine-like substance.

In some cases, the vaginal lining can also be used to create a "false" hymen. A blood capsule can be inserted into the lining to ensure realistic blood flow when the false hymen is broken.

women in the UK had the procedure on the NHS between 2005 and 2006, but it is thought that hundreds or even thousands more - Aisha included - have plundered their savings to pay up to £4,000 to have private surgery.

Aisha's story illustrates the intense pressures on young British Asian women caught between the strict moral code of their own community and the laxer, permissive attitudes of their white contemporaries.

She grew up against a stiflingly strict background as one of seven dutiful Muslim daughters in an affluent middle-class family who moved to England from Pakistan two generations ago.

Aisha says: "I've always adored my parents. My father, now 62, is a retired accountant and my mother raised a family of seven sisters in a five-bedroom house in Birmingham.

"I attended the local Catholic secondary school and although I wore a scarf on my head, I refused to wear a veil, telling my parents that it would make me stand out too much. "I was one of the girls, totally accepted by my white, English friends whose lives revolved around shopping and fancying boys.

"But the moment I stepped over the doorstep, normal teenage life would cease and it was like entering an entirely different world. At home, we had to pray together five times a day.

"We weren't allowed to watch television. My parents were so worried that Western influences might take our minds off the most important things - education and religion - that we were never allowed to bring any schoolfriends home.

"But it made all the things my friends did more attractive to me. I would sneak out on Saturday afternoons and join them in town, hanging around, shopping and chatting to boys."

Perhaps ironically, it was Aisha's academic success that was to prove her downfall, as she moved away from home to study language and politics at university, and found herself plunged into a world of louche student living.

She recalls: "I was a totally naive 18-year-old, and found myself living away from my parents for the first time, and suddenly, everything that I had been bought up to believe was wrong, was being played out in front of me.

"I decided that drinking, smoking and having boyfriends was just a part of normal, teenage growing up. "Like other young girls, I just wanted to be part of a crowd. I stopped wearing the veil and for the first time in my life I wore Western clothes - designs which revealed far more of my body than anything I had ever worn before.

"I also started drinking. I started off on beer and then gradually things like vodka and cocktails, which naturally helped me lose my inhibitions." Aisha was in her second year of university when she found love and inevitably, lust.

She says quietly: "He was another student in my tutorial class, and the more time we spent together, the more I found myself falling in love. "Philip was white, English, charming and kind. When we started dating, I told him I was a virgin and that I was expected to keep my virginity for marriage.

"But he wore my inhibitions down, and I began to see that having a physical relationship with him would be pleasurable. "All my friends were sleeping with their boyfriends and it was entirely accepted. I was the odd one out, so after several months I took the plunge and went on the contraceptive pill as a precaution.

"As the months went past, he became more and more desperate to make love. "I wrestled with my conscience night after night, but having taken away the fear of pregnancy by being on the pill, I saw that - as long as my parents never found out - there was no reason not to make love.


"Marriage was the furthest thing from my mind. Anyway, at that time I assumed I would marry for love, not have an arranged marriage." She says: "I tried to resist Philip but I discovered that I liked the physical contact. Then one fateful night, we went out and I had too much to drink. My head was spinning, we ended up in bed together and couldn't resist any longer. It was really lovely, and I felt no shame.

"It was only when I woke up the next morning, and saw Philip lying beside me, that I thought: 'What have I done?' "But there was no turning back and it felt entirely natural. He reassured me it was OK and told me that he loved me.

"Part of me was scared but I was also rather proud of what I'd just done. I wasn't just a little Muslim girl, I was an independent young woman who could make up her own mind how she was going to live her life.