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Author: Kamana Shrestha
Source: Fios1
Afia Nathaniel’s directorial debut film ‘Dukhtar’ may have been shot thousands of miles away in the remote mountainous regions of Pakistan, but it explores an issue still relevant today in this country: forced marriages.
“I wanted the story to be told from a women’s point of view, so I turned the lens on her,” said the New York City-based filmmaker. “The film tackles this issue because it still does exist and we hope that through it we can bring awareness to this culture of silence that needs to be broken,” she explained.
It’s an issue that also hit close to home for one Long Island based nonprofit – Domestic Harmony Foundation (DHF) – and the thousands of South Asians and Muslims on the Island it has single-handedly served for more than 20 years.
The Syosset foundation has partnered with Nathaniel to host the screening of her film on March 8, at the Bow Tie Herricks Cinemas, 3324 Hillside Ave., in New Hyde Park at 11 a.m. A Q&A with the filmmaker will follow.
It’s also International Women’s Day.
‘Dukhtar,’ which means ‘daughter’ in Urdu, is a story of a mother who flees her home with her child in order to save the 10-year-old from a forced marriage to a tribal leader. The mother succumbed to a similar fate when she was married off at 15 to a much older man who takes her from her family in Lahore, Pakistan to live with him in the mountains.
Nathaniel, who grew up in in Pakistan, says she remembers hearing a similar tale that inspired her own screenplay from her grandmothers as they helped raised her and her two sisters.
“Growing up in a strong matriarchal family, I wanted to do a film that portrayed a powerful female protagonist who wasn’t just there to serve the male in some capacity,” Nathaniel, 41, said.
It’s no surprise the film’s plot came naturally to her and took her on a journey that spanned over 10 years from when the film script was written in 2003. The green light came in 2012 when she got funding for the project. The director and her all-male crew of 40 traveled to desolate areas of the Kashmir region where the film was predominately shot.
The Pakistani native said her film highlights the underreported global issue and explores the universal theme of a bond between a mother and her daughter.
“Those kinds of special bonds, whether it be between a girl and her grandmother or mother, run deep and can never be forgotten,” said Nathaniel, a mother of a 7-year-old girl. “I saw my own grandmothers struggling while trying to raise us in a middle class family where we were the only female household in our neighborhood.”
A mindset hard to break
In the United States, there have been 3,000 known and suspected cases of forced marriages documented within the past few years, according to the Tahirih Justice Center – a nonprofit organization protecting immigrant women and girls from gender-based violence.
Domestic Harmony Foundation handles cases of forced marriages and says it’s about breaking the cycle of abuse for the victims.
“We had a girl who was pressured by her family to get into this kind of marriage and she came to us for help because she didn’t want to break away from her community, but she also wasn’t ready to get into the marriage,” said DHF Program Coordinator Jasia Mirza.
The organization provided the girl counseling and other guidance before she stood up to her parents and convinced them otherwise.
It’s a mindset that is difficult to break, the group says, because of deep-rooted cultural traditions many of its immigrant population holds firm to even after having migrated to America and other westernized countries.
“The parents fear that their children, especially the girls, will assimilate into a western way of thinking and will no longer honor their culture, which is why they don’t think they are doing anything wrong when they coerce these girls into these harmful relationships,” Mirza said.
The families in these instances will threaten the women or even bribe them to agree to the arrangement. Fears of being disowned by the family and community are what lead the victims to feel like they have no other choice but to give in to the demands, experts say.
“Whatever the rationale, the result may subject the woman or girl to severe and sustained harm, including psychological and emotional abuse, domestic violence, and rape, among other harms,” Tahirih Justice Center states on its website.
The organization launched the Forced Marriage Initiative in 2011, a national program to stop forced marriages in the United States and surveyed 47 states in its attempts to quantify the extent of the problem here.
Forced marriage occurs when consent is taken away from both individuals entering the union. It’s usually at the will of family members seeking to honor culture and tradition while also gaining financial security. It’s not an arranged marriage – a union that does require the consent of both the man and woman – and it is often mistaken for a forced marriage and even used interchangeably, Mirza said.
Breaking these misconceptions comes with time and awareness.
“I usually say change is better when it’s slow,” Mirza stressed. “The awareness needs to be directed more to our granddaughters, daughters, and nieces because they are the ones who will need to say no.”
Email the reporter: kshrestha@fios1news.com
