Life
In July 1995, Ahmed arranged for the 15-year old Zaynab to marry an Egyptian man named Khalid Abdullah in December, and Maha began preparing an apartment for the couple in the family's house.
On November 19 Ayman al-Zawahiri bombed the Egyptian Embassy in Pakistan, and Zaynab's fiancé went into hiding, named as one of the conspirators. When police arrived to arrest her father on suspicion of involvement eight days later, Zaynab took her father's rifle and held it over her head screaming, while her mother barricaded the door.
Zaynab recalled celebrating the engagement of Umayma al-Zawahiri at her family's house for an all-day party, and her father Ayman al-Zawahiri knocking softly at Umayma's door asking the two girls to please keep their singing and partying quiet as it was nighttime.
Her fiancé re-surfaced in Tehran in October 1997, and contacted the family to try to re-schedule the wedding he had missed. Ahmed agreed to bring his family on a long vacation culminating in the city for a farewell to the reluctant Zaynab as she started a new life with Abdullah.
Six months after the couple began living in a rented Tehran apartment, Abdullah phoned his father-in-law to report that Zaynab was inconsolable at being separated from her family, and the marriage was not working out. She returned to live with her family.
Read more about this topic: Zaynab Khadr
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“The happiest excitement in life is to be convinced that one is fighting for all one is worth on behalf of some clearly seen and deeply felt good, and against some greatly scorned evil.”
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Of his fault and his sorrows behind,
O! say wilt thou weep, when they darken the fame
Of a life that for thee was resign’d!”
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“The principal thing children are taught by hearing these lullabies is respect. They are taught to respect certain things in life and certain people. By giving respect, they hope to gain self-respect and through self-respect, they gain the respect of others. Self-respect is one of the qualities my people stress and try to nurture, and one of the controls an Indian has as he grows up. Once you lose your self-respect, you just go down.”
—Henry Old Coyote (20th century)