GUASTALLA, Italy (AP) — From the day of her birth in Pakistan, Iram Aslam was betrothed to a cousin 17 days older. But to the young woman, who emigrated as a teenager to this Italian farm town on the Po River plain, the cousin felt like a brother. So on a visit to her homeland, she played for time, telling her aunts she wasn’t ready for marriage.
“They did everything possible to make me marry him,” said Aslam, now 29. She said she told them: “‘I don’t want to marry him and please don’t ask me anymore.'”
Her family, in both Italy and Pakistan, kept scheming to have her wed a man of their choice — and their caste. Aslam dismissed around 30 potential husbands.
“In the end, I made everyone angry, and no one talks to me anymore,” she said of her relatives in Pakistan.