The girls who risk everything to follow their hearts

The girls who risk everything to follow their hearts - As a young Asian woman is killed for rejecting her 'chosen' husband, a London girl tells how she became an outcast after leaving a forced marriage.

ANIKA BEGUM'S slender fingers trace the gold embossed writing on the crisp, white invitation and she smiles.

Weddings in the young Bangladeshi's large, affluent and tight-knit west London community are a common affair - an excuse to buy a new outfit and indulge in five days of lavish celebration.

But then the spirited teenager's back stiffens and she gasps. For, with immeasurable shock, she suddenly sees that the name of the bride is hers - and the groom, her husband to be, apparently, is someone she has never heard of, let alone met. They are to be married, she reads, within the week.

It is December 2001. Anika has just turned 19 and her family are in the process of celebrating the annual Muslim festival of Eid. Like the Christian celebration of Christmas, it is a time for family and parties.

But for Anika, in this shocking moment of revelation, a chasm opens up between her and those she loves and trusts most. It will never be made whole again.

Her story, by most Western standards, is truly upsetting. Yet this week, just days after the appalling murder of Sadha Bibi, a 21-year-old Birmingham dressmaker who was allegedly stabbed 14 times by a relative of the man she had refused to marry, Anika Begum's experience reinforces the cultural divisions that are increasingly tearing apart young British Asians and their traditional parents.

Without her knowledge, Anika's parents - her father a restaurateur who came to England at the age of six, her mother a housewife whose own marriage was arranged - had found her a husband.

The man they'd picked was a successful businessman and the son of a Bangladeshi MP. He owned houses in London and in the country, and a chain of Indian restaurants all over the world.

He was 25 years Anika's senior and spoke only Bengali. Her parents considered him a perfect match.

Anika was horrified she had not been consulted or even told about the man - and her wedding was just days away.

"I was so shocked," she recalled this week. "I always knew I would have an arranged marriage. They are normal and I thought they weren't bad. But I assumed I would have a say. I thought my mum and me were close enough to choose my husband together."

We meet in Anika's tiny housing association flat in a poor suburb of south London, where she is living after fleeing from her family. She rocks in her chair as she talks and her words speak of more loss than most 21-year-olds have had to endure.

BACK in 2001, Anika's impending marriage meant she was about to join one of hundreds of British nationals - both male and female - who are each year forced into marriage against their will. The problem is so prevalent that in October 2000 the British Home Office, along with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, founded a unit to tackle it.

In its first two years of operation, the unit fielded thousands of calls and dealt with more than 440 cases - described by one Asian women's charity as "the tip of the iceberg".

After her younger sister had shown her the wedding invitation just a week before the ceremony, Anika confronted her mother, the driving force behind the plans.

Instead of sympathy, Anika found herself locked in the house and deprived of her mobile phone.

In some extreme cases of forced marriage, youngsters are beaten into submission. But even those like Anika, who remain physically unharmed, find themselves under enormous cultural pressure to comply. "All the community knew about the wedding and they were all really happy for me," she says. "If they knew it was against my will, they chose not to acknowledge it. It would have been shameful for me to refuse."

Humera Khan from the An-nisa Society, which supports Asian families in England, said: " Children are brought up not to go against their parents. They would rather do as their parents say than bring them shame."

However, even among those agencies that support victims of forced marriage, it is generally agreed that the parents' intentions are rarely malicious.

Azad Choudhury works for the Newham Bengali Community Trust, which repatriates young British-born Bangladeshis who are taken to Bangladesh and married against their will. NBCT deals with 100 cases each year.

"The parents aren't their children's enemies," he says. "They think they're doing the right thing.

They feel it's culturally appropriate for their child to marry someone from back home.

"It could be to maintain family ties over there or to protect them from influences here. Young women may want to marry someone from a different culture.

"The men may get into drugs or gangs. The parent wants to keep them away from this." In the more selfish cases, parents make a match to support them in their old age, or to secure a British visa for a relative overseas.

For Anika, who suffers from diabetes, the motivation was much less sinister.

"They thought I was incapable of taking care of myself," she said. "They wanted someone rich for me so that I could enjoy life and relax."

She felt powerless to resist. The wedding went ahead.

On the day of the ceremony, Anika was dressed in a stunning golden outfit called a Lenhga.

The dress was beautiful and unbelievably heavy. Her head, neck, ears, wrists and fingers were adorned with masses of gold jewellery.

The whole outfit cost £7,000. In an almost perfect metaphor for her situation, Anika couldn't stand up in it.

SHE remembers: "They had to nearly carry me into the wedding because it was so heavy.

I wanted to run away but I couldn't. I tried to stand up a couple of times but I fell back down." After the ceremony, and a feast attended by 500 guests, Anika was taken to her new husband's house.

There again she was greeted by a huge welcome party of delighted well-wishers, all wanting to feed her sweetmeats and take pictures.

Kumar Murshid, a GLA adviser on Asian affairs, says part of the reason it is so hard

for young people to resist forced marriages is because weddings in the Muslim community are such momentous events.

"They are a community affair.

Everybody takes some responsibility, from introducing the couple to arranging the ceremony.

You could argue that this is better than Western marriages, which are arranged between individuals and so often end in divorce."

However, he admits that having so many people involved can lead to immense pressure being brought to bear on the intended couple.

It took Anika less than a week to realise her marriage would never succeed.

She was a young Western girl with many customs typical of British teenagers.

She was independent, outspoken and streetwise.

Although she had had a traditional Bengali upbringing and showed all the respect for her parents that was demanded by her society, she wasn't prepared to transfer that respect to a man she had only just met.

He was middle-aged, spoke no English - although Anika spoke enough Bengali for them to get by - and he expected his young wife to comply with his every wish, not least when they were in bed.

"The night of the wedding we were supposed to have sex," said Anika. "But I wouldn't. He kept trying to make a move on me. I threatened to call the police. I said I would sleep on the floor.

Once I even punched him in the nose. I did anything and everything to stop him. By the third day he had told his relatives what was going on."

While Anika had experienced the pressure of her parents and community, she had not yet experienced the pressure that could be brought to bear in the name of her religion. That was what came next, from her new relatives.

"The women came to me and said it was written in the Koran that I should sleep with him. I wanted to ask them if it was written-in the Koran that you have to force people to get married and have sex ... but that would have caused a riot."

It is this use of Islam to justify forced marriage that most enrages those working to stop it. "The Koran does not say it is okay to force a marriage," says Mr Choudhury. "It says you can guide them but do not force them. A forced marriage is illegal in Islamic law. It is not a marriage."

Yet some Muslims, especially the older generation, believe that to attack forced marriage is to attack Islam.

After her new relatives invoked the Koran, Anika decided she had to get away. A week after the marriage, while her husband was working in one of his restaurants, she went to her GP, who put her in touch with an Asian women's refuge. "They told me I should get in a taxi and go straight to them," Anika said. She left with her passport, some money and the clothes she had on.

By running away, Anika not only turned her back on her husband but on her old life. In the year since she left, she has seen her mother just once and her father twice. No one in her family or old community knows where she lives. Of the hundreds

of people she used to know, she is in touch with only close friends.

"I am paranoid about people finding out where I live," she says. "If they knew where I was they would come and get me. For ages I didn't leave the house because I was worried somebody would see me. My parents begged me to come back.

"They even promised I could get a divorce but when I went home my mum tried to shut me in my room again. Everybody was crying. I kissed my dad and said 'I love you'. I hated making him cry. Then I just walked out the door. I don't know if I'll ever see them again. It could take them years to forgive me."

Despite being convinced she did the right thing, Anika is still wracked with guilt. "I put on a brave face and I smile but it does hurt," she says.

"Sometimes I feel happy but then I think about what's happened. I think it's not right for me to be happy because of my parents. I feel guilty for putting them through such pain."

Anika's husband still calls her mobile phone most nights, leaving voicemail messages begging her to return. She doesn't answer his calls.

Although she is scornful of him - for agreeing to marry her, even though they had never met, and because he still wants her back - she says her overwhelming emotion for him is pity.

"What happened is not his fault.

My parents gave him the wrong impression. He thought I wanted to marry him. It must have been awful for him to realise I did not."

Anika is now living in a housing association flat provided by an organisation dedicated to helping Asian women in need.

She is living on full benefits and considering her next move. She hopes to return to college and finish her A-levels. She then thinks she may go to university.

"I used to want to be a child psychologist but now I think I might study Asian people's brains," she half-joked. "I want to know what makes them think like that. Why they think it's a good idea to force people into a life they don't want to lead."