Hi,

I’m Rabia!
I’m here to tell you about the darkest night of my life. Please read till the last. So, let’s go back to the time when I was fourteen years old.
After a hard day of toil at my parents land, I was having a short nap. That’s when a group of twenty year olds abducted me from my home and dragged me into the forest next to my village.
Can’t you predict what happened next? 
About 80% of women who are kidnapped are ultimately raped. Yeah, that’s what happened to me. All of them left, leaving only me and Kwame in the woods and subsequently he raped me. 
The next morning when I woke up he was still asleep. Hence, I managed to elope and reach my parents. 
Wait, there’s more because the reality is never simple. A week after this incident, I was married to Kwame.
Couldn’t really understand that, right?
Let’s get to the beginning of all this.
A year before my abduction, Kwame had asked me for marriage. Though I wasn’t interested,  my family considered the proposal with a bride price to replace my labour in their field.
His family was not able to pay it due to some financial crisis. Therefore, the wedding was taken down.
When the same guy captured me from my home and slept with me forcibly, my family deemed me impure and didn’t even ask for the bride price.
So yeah, I married my prosecutor and my first son is a product of my rape and which is why I always craved for a second one. But life was always unfair to me. As I had given birth at such young age, I couldn’t conceive again due to uterine  disorders.
Inspite of the fact that I live with him for years and have raised a family with him, I have never loved him. It is said that matches are made in heaven whereas mine was made in hell.
____________________________________________
The event that happened here is known as bride kidnapping. It is a practice in which a man abducts the woman he wishes to marry in order to negotiate the bride price. The woman is enslaved by her abductor, raped and taken as his wife. These kind of women even experience domestic violence in later life. Bride kidnapping is practiced all around the world where the girl is usually of 10-19 years age. These are primarily judged on the basis of their purity by their own family.
Shame, shame.

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