A FEW days after I helped prevent the marriage, my phone rang. It was Sumaiya, or Dadli, as she is more commonly known. I have known her since she was very little. She is shy and soft-spoken, the kind of girl who quietly laughs with her cousins and loves carrying babies. That day, however, I barely recognised her voice. She was almost inaudible, her words tumbling out in fear. A man had come to visit her parents. She did not know who he was, but she thought he was a government official who had come to take her away. Although the marriage had been stopped, the fear had not.
For weeks I had tried to persuade her parents and relatives not to proceed with the planned marriage in a farming village in Larkana district. An uncle whom I hoped would intervene refused to do so, and both families remained determined. Throughout those discussions, Sumaiya’s own position never changed. “I don’t want to,” she would say quietly. There was no drama, only the simple, persistent objection of a 13-year-old child.
The marriage had been arranged through watta satta — a reciprocal exchange in which two families promise daughters to one another in marriage. Adults negotiated, made promises and discussed tradition while the one person whose future was being decided repeatedly said she did not consent.
Once it became clear the families intended to proceed, there were no meaningful options left. I informed the child protection authorities and the district police, whose responsibility was simply to enforce the law. Sindh became Pakistan’s first province to prohibit marriage below the age of 18. The Sindh Child Marriage Restraint Act, enacted in 2014, requires the authorities to prevent such marriages. In 2023, the Federal Shariat Court upheld the law, ruling that fixing the minimum marriage age at 18 is consistent with Islamic principles because it promotes education and mental maturity.
Every statistic on child marriage is a child with fears, dreams and a voice.
On the day the marriage was stopped, Sumaiya’s humour briefly resurfaced. Referring to the woman who was to become her mother-in-law, she laughed: “She must have been happy thinking she was getting a slave to wash all the dishes. Now she’ll have to wash them herself.” Everyone laughed, but beneath the joke lay a painful truth. Adults had decided her future long before anyone seriously considered what she wanted.
The intervention quickly descended into chaos. A female police officer who had come to prevent the marriage was surrounded by boys and young men, who pulled her hair and threatened her with sticks. She managed to leave with Sumaiya and two adult female relatives before the violence escalated further. The child was taken into protective custody, gave a statement and spent two days away from home while arrangements were made to ensure she would not be forced into marriage.
The loudest voices from her community took to social media, expressing sympathy almost exclusively for the intended bridegroom, himself probably under 18. At a press conference in Ratodero, he appealed for justice, insisting the marriage should proceed and that his family should be compensated for its ‘honour’ having been tainted. Amid all the discussion about honour, tradition and religion, the child herself almost disappeared from view.
Years from now, most of the adults involved will probably remember the arguments, the legal questions and the controversy. Sumaiya may remember something much simpler: adults shouting, a police officer being assaulted, being taken from her home, sitting in a police station wondering what would happen next, and making a phone call because she was terrified someone had come to take her away.
When we discuss child marriage, we often speak in the language of law, religion, culture and policy. Those debates matter, but they can obscure the human reality at the centre of the issue. The reality is a child whose future is negotiated by adults despite repeatedly saying, ‘I don’t want to.’
That phone call has stayed with me. Not because it proved I was right to intervene; the law is clear on that question. It has stayed with me because it reminded me that behind every statistic on child marriage is a child with fears, dreams and a voice. We often measure success by the number of marriages prevented, interventions made and cases prosecuted. Perhaps we should ask another question: what does it feel like to be the child at the centre of the story?
For weeks, Sumaiya had been telling the adults around her exactly what she wanted. The tragedy is not that she failed to speak. The tragedy is that so few people were listening.
The writer is a rural development specialist and social entrepreneur.
Published in Dawn, July 26th, 2026
