Sharifa cried for twenty days. ‘What have I done? What a disgrace. Why are you dissatisfied with me?’

Sultan told her to pull herself together. No one in the family backed him up, not even his own sons. Nevertheless, no one dared speak out against him – he always got his own way.

Sharifa was inconsolable. What really rankled was the fact that the man had picked an illiterate, someone who had not even completed nursery school. She, Sharifa, was a qualified Persian language teacher. ‘What has she got that I haven’t got?’ she sobbed.

Sultan rose above his wife’s tears.

No one wanted to attend the engagement party. But Sharifa had to bite the bullet and dress up for the celebrations.

‘I want everyone to see that you agree and support me. In the future we will all be living under the same roof and you must show that Sonya is welcome,’ he demanded. Sharifa had always humoured her husband, and now too, in this worst circumstance, giving him to someone else, she knuckled under. He even demanded that Sharifa should put the rings on his and Sonya’s fingers.

Twenty days after the proposal of marriage the solemn engagement ritual took place. Sharifa pulled herself together and put on a brave face. Her female relatives did their best to unsettle her. ‘How awful for you,’ they said. ‘How badly he has treated you. You must be suffering.’

The wedding took place two months after the engagement, on the day of the Muslim New Year’s Eve. This time Sharifa refused to attend.

‘I can’t,’ she told her husband.

The female family members backed her up. No one bought new dresses or applied the normal amount of make-up required at wedding ceremonies. They wore simple coiffures and stiff smiles – in deference to the superannuated wife who would no longer share Sultan Khan’s bed. It was now reserved for the young, terrified bride – but they would all be under the same roof, until death did them part.