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The Tearful Bride

"I do not love him!" "I do not love him!" "Please, stop taking me to his house." She loudly cried out in a tone of grief which continued until she was pushed inside the car.

Upon hearing this voice around 8 o'clock in the night which was accompanied by the noise of women, my curiosity mounted to the sky. I had just passed the place but not very far from it when I heard the voice. In order to quench my boiling curiosity, I returned. It was a young pretty girl in her elegant bridal attire taken to her matrimonial home. I learnt that the wedding took place the previous day while everyone knew that the girl did not love the man.That was how she was forcefully taken to the man whom she had no inch of love for.

I kept walking to where I was going, thinking and foreseeing what might happen when the bride was left alone in the room with the groom. I stumbled and nearly fell down because my attention travelled very far away and left my body under the control of my feet. I kept imagining myself in the shoes of the man; I asked if I could marry a girl that does not love me at all, a girl who cries of pain because she was wedded to me, a girl who seemingly feels better to become a spinster than marrying me.

Two days after she was taken to her unhappy matrimonial house, I passed the same place at an exact time and saw a noisy gathering; this time around, of muscled men. "What happened again?" I asked silently while my eyes opened widely to clearly see what was happening there. It came to me with a great shock that the bride disappeared the very night she was taken to the man's house. I heard that that very night they were left alone in the room as married couples, he hungrily approached her in the bed whose sheet was wet by her tears of sorrow. She smiled shyly and sought for an excuse from him, that she would be at the toilet to ease herself before anything conjugal transpired. As she went, he had undressed himself waiting for her return, counting seconds, watching the clock hanging on the wall, but that's how she had not returned because she ran away to a place nobody could tell. Who knew whether she was even alive.

The gathering of the men I saw included the parents and relatives of the couples blaming one another for the disappearance of the girl for over two weeks now. The side of the man were saying their son married a wayward, an indisciplined girl, while the side of the girl were accusing the man's family of witchcraft who performed a ritual with their daughter. The two families fought and injured some of them; the police had to intervene that night in bringing the situation under control.

It reached to us a week later that the girl was found in one of the villages of a neighbouring state. She narrated to the villagers everything that happened. They sympathized with her. As a result, they sheltered her and took the report to the District Head at last. She was then taken back home to her parents. After seeking for divorce, the disappointed groom did that quickly, regretting the huge amount of resources he spent on the girl and the wedding while he knew she did not love him at all, while she had told him that there would never be a day she would love him.

Forced marriage is a great problem that mutiplies problem and ends up only ending good relationships in our society.

Written by Abdul Mutallib Muktar
Fiction
abdulmutallib.muktar@gmail.com

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