I made a post last year about pressure to get an arranged marriage, and got a mix of responses as expected, some supportive ones, others telling me to ‘man up’.
One comment that stuck with me was that if the pressure got too much, I could threaten to marry one of my white friends. I laughed, because this assumed a life I’ve never had. Not just female friends, but white female friends. That the next time mum asks me to consider a rishta I can tell her ‘mum if you keep doing this I will marry my close friend Rachael from school’. I think this says a lot about how some people in Pakistan imagine life abroad, and how different it can be in reality.
So here’s my story. I was born in a small city in Punjab, moving to the UK at age 10. Perhaps from the model Pakistani family- dad’s a doctor, mum’s a home-maker. We moved pretty much every year at first, eventually settling in Leeds. At most schools people were kind, however in one school I faced some racism, but we were out of there in a flash.
From the beginning the emphasis was that we are Pakistani first, and that value always stayed ingrained in me. We were taught Urdu and Islamiat textbooks, with the idea that ‘we might be moving back to Pakistan at any moment’. When I struggled to make friends at first, my mum always said ‘the next school might have some Pakistanis you can be friends with’. My high school did, but they weren’t the Pakistanis we expected. I spoke Urdu, they spoke a mix of Pothwari and English, and they were the opposite of the studious decent kids I expected Pakistanis to be, starting fistfights in school corridors.
In that school, I was good at studies, and this used to surprise my teachers. I once got a ‘certificate of excellence’ for answering a basic question in science class. Regardless, it would be a matter of time before we moved again.
Eventually, we settled down and bought a house in Leeds. I joined a grammar school (i.e. a school where you have to pass an exam to get in). The school was great, everyone was really nice. Following my dad’s guidance, I rejected the ‘cool kids’ group who kept inviting me to hang out with them, looking instead for the studious good kids. I didn’t really try and make friends for the first few months, usually keeping to myself, then eventually, I realised the Indian guy liked cricket, so I started ragebaiting him, telling him Pakistan team is better than India, but eventually I calmed down and he became my first friend.
This eventually expanded as I found other ‘good’ kids to be friends with. 4 white guys, two Indians. We had lunch every day, met up once a month to watch a movie at the cinema. But I always maintained that separateness. Kids in form time would talk about the premier league, and my response was ‘no I don’t watch football, I watch cricket and I support Pakistan, not England’. When the general elections came around, my friends would discuss politics, ‘which party do you support’. One would say Labour, the other preferred the Tories. When they asked me, I responded ‘Tehreek e insaaf’ cheekily. My dad always said Imran Khan might be Pakistan’s only hope, and I think he still supports him til now, though I don’t.
As you might expect, one of the biggest fears of Pakistani parents is ‘bacha kharab na ho jaye’. I was taught quite clearly, anything even remotely related to sex was forbidden. If there was a sleeveless woman in a TV ad, we changed the channel immediately. I was taught that ‘white girls are dangerous, stay away from them, the halal way is to wait for marriage’. I obeyed their advice. I was taught that talking to girls was ok if necessary, i.e. in group discussions as part of class, but not for friendship. So that’s what I did, I would speak to them in class, but if I saw a mixed group of guys and girls hanging out in form time, I’d get what I needed from my locker then leave.
My first crush was a ‘forbidden’ white girl aged 14. I couldn’t get her out of my mind no matter where I was or what time it was. And I knew she liked me back, I caught her staring a couple times. But I took extra measures, avoiding eye contact when possible, never speaking. It’s kind of funny how I acted, looking back at it all.
The home environment wasn’t good. My parents didn’t have a social life. My mum had some relatives living nearby, but was rarely allowed to see them. Dad was an introvert with an intense need for control. He couldn’t bear having people in his house without his explicit permission. He had bouts of rage, about once a week, where he’d be yelling, a voice so loud and so deep the whole house would shake, hurling insults at mum. Verbal abuse directed at mum was common, and in the quiet days there was non stop tension, we didn’t know what we’d be told off for. Using our phones, having the volume too loud while playing playstation etc. I learnt to start dissociating quite early on.
People might imagine a stable home and a good life for those abroad. We did own our house, but no one ever came over.
My safe haven was school. I was the top student in each class. When my Biology teacher asked a question, and none of the other kids could answer it, he would always redirect to me: ‘Ahmed what’s the equation for respiration’. And I’d give the correct one, he’d always say ‘thank you Ahmed’ with a sigh. My French and History teachers loved me too. I didn’t really like weekends.
We went abroad quite a lot since we had family in different countries. The highlights were going to visit family in Sweden. Our mamus would make sure we enjoyed ourselves, taking us out to different places, the city centre, going bowling etc. Returning home to the UK was the worst feeling, I used to blame the buildings: ‘The houses are so old and ugly, there’s no modern buildings like Sweden’, or the weather: ‘It’s always grey here, it gets cold and yet it doesn’t snow like Stockholm’. I was planning my escape from the UK from back then, and learnt Swedish on Duolingo, and I still speak it well enough that I can speak it with my little cousins.
I entered my A levels phase. My white friends stopped their cinema trips and the entire social life became gathering at someone’s house and drinking vodka, which I couldn’t attend. Eventually, I ended up making friends with some ethnic guys. Two Pakistanis, one Bengali, two Indians and one Arab. We would hang out at lunch, head out to the local high street to buy cheese and onion pastries at Gregg’s due to lack of halal options. Eventually, we started playing football once a month. None of us drove, but somehow we managed to get lifts from parents or siblings.
My school told us we need to start thinking about careers early, and we would get the appropriate support with our applications. I didn’t really have any idea about the career options. I thought I might do engineering since I liked physics, or economics since I was interested in the development of countries (GDP, HDI all that), but my parents thought medicine was a better option. They convinced me to keep Biology at A level. Medicine didn’t really appeal to me, but they kept saying ‘you’re smart you should do something where you can use that brain’ and ‘if you do medicine there won’t be an issue with jobs’. The latter phrase my mum repeated like a hundred times, it really started to irritate me. I was quite half hearted about medicine, but I kept considering it because I found Biology interesting too (then again I found everything interesting) and also because I used to see that engineers didn’t earn that much in the UK, and thought that I have to earn six figures, which doctors eventually do but engineers don’t.
In the UK medicine application requires a lot of varied experience. I had done the required work experience placements, volunteering and sat the entrance exam. As the deadline for university admissions approached, I knew in my gut I didn’t want to do medicine. I loved physics, and thought engineering was the better match. Eventually, I mustered up the courage to tell my parents and applied for engineering.
I was quite looking forward to start learning to drive, and many people at the sixth form college drove to school, while I was still dropped off by mum, but my dad said that driving would bring too much ‘excitement’ and derail me from studies, so that got delayed a few years.
A levels came around, and I wasn’t doing too well in Chemistry. I studied like crazy, and always held on to the idea that ‘this summer will be unforgettable’, where all my hard work would pay off.
Summer came around, 3 whole months before university started. I reached out to the group chat. Guys let’s get food. Let’s do this. Let’s do that. We didn’t make a single plan. Some of them were just lazy, but also none of us drove which made things harder. I started becoming depressed, but looked forward to university for a fresh start.
I was called to interview at Oxford, but didn’t quite make it. Instead, I accepted my offer at a supposedly elite university in London. I was so excited at first, talking to everyone in class, people from different backgrounds, Malaysia, Lebanon, China you name it. I went to some Pakistan society events, some Islamic society ones, I joined the cricket club and we used to have our nets session at Lord’s.
University was the one time I had looked forward to my entire life. It was the time I had pinned my hopes on when I would finally start living my life, where I would have a friends group, and enjoy life to the max. It’s what kept me going all that time in my teen years. So when I joined, I poured all my energy into it.
Then, somewhere around October time, my mental health tanked badly. For the first time in my life, I was struggling in studies. The lectures didn’t make any sense and I was several weeks behind on my problem sets. I hadn’t made any friends. That was a very dark time. I became very dissociated, feeling like I was just floating through space. I kept going out, going for walks around London, even attended some sports sessions, but I always felt like I wasn’t quite there. My sleep became quite bad, and I started missing lectures. My depression had become quite serious. Then Covid came along, that year, and I ended up going back home.
That was a horrible time. The same environment, being watched all the time. At any point, dad could walk out of his room and down the stairs and see me using my phone. I was always on edge. I don’t think my parents really noticed, or at least didn’t ask. My school friends used to play playstation online with each other until 2am every night, but I was too afraid to even ask if I was allowed to play.
I had to escape the house, so in second year, our uni said that in person attendance was optional, they may start some in person classes once lockdown restrictions eased. I told my dad ‘they are saying they may start some classes, I need to go in’. So I went back to London and stayed there for a while even though they didn’t move to in person classes.
All of my second year, I stayed more or less numb. I’d kind of just given up on studies, completely lost track of the problem sets, but somehow passed since they replaced most exams with courseworks as part of Covid adjustments.
I did join the PakSoc committee then. They used to hold online ‘zoom socials’. And I attended a couple, but to me it just felt really wrong that there was ‘free mixing’, socialising with girls in our zoom calls. I was welcomed to re-join the committee in third year, as university moved back to in person classes, but I refrained, thinking this feels too haram. But I still made an attempt to start being social again. I used to attend Pakistan society events, Islamic society. I rejoined cricket and played as the opening bowler for the second team too.
I then started hanging out with some international students from Pakistan. This was my first time being exposed to Pakistani guys my age, and this is who I thought my people would be. But I was in for a shock. They spoke Urdu so fast, with such creative wit, I could barely keep up. Then there was the constant sexual jokes, cuss words I hadn’t heard in my whole life. It was nothing like how I imagined Pakistanis to be. I would meet them occasionally, and they were welcoming, but there was always that distance, I was less a member of the group than an ‘esteemed guest’.
By fourth year, I completely stopped caring about university. I was part of a group project, with two very ambitious kids, who complained to our professor multiple times that I ‘wasn’t trying enough’. I probably should have dropped out but somehow graduated with a 2:1 (pass with merit). My mum insisted I sign up to the graduation ceremony, which for me was meaningless, but we still went, and we took our photos with London eye in the background.
Around this time, my parents started uniting for the first time in my life. They had enough cash and they wanted to build a house. Every time I visited they were excitedly looking at the plans of the house, kept going to the showroom to decide what kind of brick to use etc. They added extra bathrooms, thinking that the kids might stay with them after marriage. My dad used to be quite offended that I didn’t take much interest in the house.
I had lost all interest in engineering at this point, but I did somewhat enjoy my coding module. I signed up to study a computer science masters, I would say it was for career, telling my parents how the earning potential is better in IT, but maybe I was just avoiding going into a full time job at this point.
The computer science degree was so easy. I didn’t really need to study at all. The courseworks took me two hours to complete, and I only studied when the exams came around. For my dissertation, I decided I would make a web app, doing the bare minimum to pass again.
Then university ended, and I was feeling like I could collapse from grief. The one period I had looked forward to as my salvation didn’t pan out. I felt like I could go insane. My dad didn’t know any of this, and talking to my mum just made me feel worse, as she’d just insist I ‘look forward to the next part of life’ (i.e. marriage).
I hadn’t taken job applications seriously. I applied to a couple places, I even got the first stage interview, but I didn’t turn up. I just didn’t care. Naturally, I had to take a gap year post university, and I promised I wouldn’t let myself get depressed again. I made a plan, I would go to the library almost every day, spend the day doing job applications, then go to gym in the evening. I applied from September to March, getting five final stage interviews, eventually landing a job offer in March. This is only God’s blessing since the vast majority of computer science graduates from my cohort are unemployed.
I had faith that I would get something eventually, but my parents were not doing well. I had to calm their anxieties, telling them that the recruitment cycle takes time, the job market is bad but I’m optimistic with my CV I got a good shot. For context, in the UK most applications close October-January for the next year’s September intake. Mum would tell me ridiculous suggestions like ‘apply to be a maths teacher just in case’, or worse, ‘ok, you’ve tried engineering and computer science and it didn’t work now apply for medicine’. For some reason she could never let go of the fact that I didn’t study medicine.
On top of that, they excitedly started planning my marriage, mum would be on FaceTime to khala or mamu, talking about ‘no we don’t like UK raised girls, we want someone from Pakistan’. About fifteen times, my mum asked me to consider my cousin, talking about how ‘marriage is a gamble and we never know who you might end up with, at least with cousin we know her and they know you’ ‘we have to find someone we would like and also someone who would be ok with you’. This was a no go for me, and I always tried to argue genuinely, ‘but what about the genetic risks’. She’d come back prepared the next conversation ‘well actually your dad said the risks aren’t that high because him and I aren’t cousins’.
Eventually she backed off on the cousin, but kept bringing the marriage topic up, usually to check if I was in line. Asking questions where there was a clear expected answer. ‘Should the girl be working or not?’ (right answer: she should be a house wife) should she be ‘family oriented or modern’ (right answer: ‘family oriented’). I eventually mentioned that I want to get to know the girl properly before marriage, to which she responded quite harshly ‘that’s haram, you are not allowed to be friends before marriage’.
This was one of the first times I tried to give my own point of view on things, and it became a turning point which really made me question everything, and led me to a path where I’ve read and researched and changed my views on everything. I’m still religious but much more liberal and have some unorthodox views.
Anyways, after a long year, I moved back to London. My intention was always, that this is my chance to try again at having a life. That I would be attending whatever events I can find. Any Muslim social event, any hobbies or sports, to try and make new friends and have a life I never got. I would do the required tasks at work, but save my energy for what mattered.
Work was way more demanding than I expected. I tried participating yet got several warnings that I needed to improve ‘my attitude’. Meanwhile, I was sleep deprived, some days it got so bad I was getting out of breath just walking around the office.
On my third month at work, mum excitedly called me. She said she had received a proposal from one of her friends at the mosque, telling me how lovely this girl is. She tried to get me to commit to meeting her. I’d already checked out of the rishta process at this point, and held my ground that I’m not interested. Every single time I visited home they teased the topic of marriage, each time I’d say ‘I’m not ready’. They wanted the green light from me to start, at one point saying ‘just tell us the criteria, should she be tall or short? Skinny or chubby? You want someone UK raised, we prefer from Pakistan but that’s ok as long as she aligns with our family values’. I ended up creating a convincing narrative about how this current team is so stressful, that I’m overwhelmed with work, and asked them to just let me settle down first.
They also suggested moving to a more spacious house, kept saying I look outside of London where I can get a proper two bedroom with a garden, presumably thinking it’s a better place to raise a family, with a bedroom for them to stay in when they visit, and that I could take the train into London. This was a non starter for me- it would have killed my chance of building a social life, so I started telling them how people need to job hop to advance their career and I may change jobs at any point, so I needed to stay somewhere I can commute to central easily.
The work excuse carried me for a fair few months, but I eventually mustered up the courage to tell her ‘I’m not interested in arranged marriage, I am not interested in someone traditional’ but they still won’t let it go. They keep asking me what’s the real reason. Is it finances? Dad will give me the money for a deposit for a house there’s no worry there. Is it about being ready, well we’re not getting you married now, we’re just getting started, it could take 1-2 years, there aren’t many good rishtas. Just meet one girl then if you want you can tell us to put the wedding off for 1-2 years.
At work, I’ve now joined my second team and it’s much more relaxed. They’re happy with me and giving my manager glowing comments. My mental health still isn’t the best, but I take an active approach to maintaining it, making sure I go outside, doing solo activities like going to the cinema, getting therapy to process the past. I meet the handful of friends I did make at university like once a month, and I am trying to attend hobbies and events with no luck so far. I may or may not ever have a friends group that I dreamed of, or find someone to marry, but there’s no choice but to keep going.
So that’s my life to date. Anyways, there’s a reason why a lot of overseas relatives keep insisting Pakistan is better than abroad. Sure, they have a good material life, smooth roads, highways, no power cuts, but almost no social life. Some people go months without laughing out loud. Life takes on a grey colour, with the same routines, the same life around the office and the home.
This is the reason my parents are so obsessed with my marriage, it’s because they don’t have a proper social life of their own. They’re relying on their kids to provide them with the daughter in laws and grand-kids to make their ‘sacrifices coming to the UK and staying in a bad marriage’ worth it.
So was moving from Pakistan worth it? I don’t know. There’s many positives. With the British passport, the world is open for me, I can go travel, settle anywhere I want. I found a job in coding, which I somewhat enjoy, in Pakistan this would have been extremely difficult, and I may have had no choice but to study medicine since ‘at least you can open your own clinic’.
But also, maybe in Pakistan, we wouldn’t have been so lonely. It might have been easier to find people I have more in common with. Maybe my parents would have had a life instead of the house being a constant pressure cooker.
Does this mean I want to move back to Pakistan? No, not that. Anyone that lives in a developed country gets spoilt by the comforts. I am used to having reliable electricity, internet, civilised driving.
What’s the reason I wrote this? Well, I did think it would be useful for those still in Pakistan to have a perspective of what it’s like living abroad. You’ve got a chance to live well, you won’t be worrying about your internet going while you run an online business. I just think it’s also worth being clear eyed that it’s not a silver bullet, and there’s many difficulties. If you do come, make an active effort to make community, and try to give your kids a bit more support and freedom.
So to answer that commenter from last year, no marrying a ‘white female friend’ was never an option, we were raised as good kids who always listened to their worried parents’ advice to avoid the fitna of the west.
