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Searching for Freedom, Chained by the Law
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Even if she could get out, she said, she could not visit her home village because she feels threatened by her husband and brother. So she spends her days sitting on the shelter floor learning embroidery, peeling vegetables for dinner, watching TV and worrying about the future.
She said her misery began at 14, when her mother insisted she marry her first cousin, who was five years older. "My mother said he had no one to make bread for him, no one to look after him," she said.
She said she protested that she was "too small" to be a wife but was given no choice. They married. He complained that she was not working enough and was going out of the house too much, and beat her, she said.
As the years passed, she said, she grew less tolerant of him. Then one day, he accused her of having an affair with their children's teacher, which she denies.
Her home village is located at the end of a narrow, zigzag path in lush green fields. Her husband, Arshad Mehmood, 40, lives with their three children in a small house made of mud and bricks.
In an interview, he insisted his wife did have an affair with the prayer leader of the village mosque.
"She has committed a mistake, and she has been punished for that," he said. Mehmood said he, his brothers and his wife's brother all searched for her with the police, and when his wife and the teacher were found together, they were jailed.
"I am even now ready to accept her and allow her to live along with her children in this same house," he said. "But she is not willing to return."
A tall, slender man with a mustache, he interrupted a game of netball -- a sport similar to basketball -- to speak to a reporter. He said he has treated her fairly and did not beat her. Men and women are equal, he added, but women have a duty to manage their homes and "stay within the four walls."
Back within the worn shelter's walls where she is now confined, Arshad cried when shelter director Tallat Shabbier asked whether she was considering returning to her husband for the sake of her children. "I will never go back to him," she said, dabbing her eyes with her green scarf. "Jail was better than being with him."
She has no way of seeing her young boys unless she returns to her husband, no money and little opportunity to start over at 35. Most people in Pakistan do not deem it socially acceptable for a woman to live alone outside the home of their family or husband.
According to shelter rules, women can be released only if they return to their husband, marry another man (often in ceremonies held inside the shelter) or are turned over to a blood relative.
"But my family is so cruel, and I will not marry again," she said. She has initiated divorce proceedings.
Sounding in turns defeated and defiant, Arshad said she would like to find a job, perhaps living in a house where she could clean or sew. But Shabbier shook her head. That was not option; women are to live with husbands or family, she said, reminding her of "social constraints."
As a fan whirled overhead in stifling summer heat, Arshad sat and repeated the one thing that to her was certain: "I will not go back to my husband."
Special correspondents Shaiq Hussain in Islamabad and Imtiaz Ali in Peshawar contributed to this report.
