Forced Marriage: Home

Forced by her father to marry a man three times her age, young Nujood Ali was sent away from her family and made to live with her husband in in an isolated village in rural Yemen.

Life as Zeba knows it could be over for good Zeba Khan is like any other 16-year-old girl: enjoying herself, waiting for exam results. . . and dreaming of the day she'll meet her one true love. Except her parents have other plans. In Pakistan for the summer, Zeba's world is shattered. Her future is threatened by an unthinkable--and forced--duty to protect her father's honor. But does she hold the secrets that will help her escape?

Chandra can't believe her luck. The boy her parents have chosen for her to marry seems modern and open-minded. She's sure they'll have a wonderful life together. So after they are married Chandra travels out to the desert to live wiht her new husband and his family - only when she gets there, things are not as she had imagined.

In 1998, Sarbjit Athwal was called by her husband to attend a family meeting. It looked like just another family gathering But the subject they were discussing was anything but ordinary. 'It's decided then,' the old lady announced. 'We have to get rid of her.' 'Her' was Surjit Athwal, Sarbjit's sister-in-law. Within three weeks of that meeting, Surjit was dead: lured from London to India, drugged, strangled, and her body dumped in the Ravi River, never to be seen again. After the killing, risking her own life, Sarbjit fought secretly for justice for nine long, scared years. Eventually, with immense bravery, she became the first person within a murderer's family ever to go into open court in an honour killing trial as the Prosecution's key witness, and the first to waive her anonymity in such a trial. As a result of her testimony, the trial led to the first successful prosecution of an honour killing. But her story doesn't end there. Since the trial, her life has been threatened; her own husband arrested after an allegation of intimidation.

Michelle Nouri was born in Prague but grew up in pre-war Baghdad in a world where East and West collide. Family tradition dictated that she should marry a cousin but she resisted.