Rishta in Rochdale

Reading a Rochdale profile properly

The age gap, and what is actually reasonable

Nobody writes about this and it decides a great many proposals, so here it is. A few years between husband and wife is ordinary and nobody thinks twice about it. What needs examining is the large gap — a man of thirty-eight or forty-two whose preference range starts at twenty-two, which appears on this site more often than it should.

There is no fixed rule in the religion about it and plenty of such marriages have been perfectly happy. But a family should think about what the gap actually means rather than only about whether it is permitted. A woman of twenty-two and a man of forty are at different stages of a life: he has probably finished deciding who he is and she has not started, and the imbalance of experience and money inside a marriage tends to become an imbalance of power. Think forward as well: when she is fifty he will be sixty-eight, and the years of caring for an ageing husband may fall on her while she is still raising teenagers. These are not reasons to refuse. They are things to weigh honestly instead of being told that he is settled and she is lucky.

There are also the fair questions to ask when the gap is large. Why has he not married before, and is there a previous marriage he has not mentioned? Has he been looking for a long time, and if so, at what age range — a man who has spent ten years declining women his own age is telling you something. Does he actually want children, and does she, and have they discussed the timing? And, plainly: has she been asked what she wants, on her own, without the room watching?

The reverse happens too and gets harsher treatment than it deserves. A woman a few years older than the man she is considering is not an unsuitable match and there is nothing in the faith against it; the Prophet's own first marriage was to an older woman. Families who dismiss it out of hand are following custom, not religion, and they are shrinking their own options for no good reason.

The house in the village, and whether anybody will ever live in it

In a town like this, the sentence we have a house back home comes up in nearly every second proposal. It is usually true, usually represents thirty years of somebody's savings, and almost never means what the other family assumes.

So ask the four plain questions. Is it finished — walls, roof, water, electricity, actually habitable — or is it one of the many houses standing half-built because the money ran out at the second floor? Whose name is the property in, and if it is in a late father's name, has the inheritance been settled between the brothers and sisters, or is it one of those estates nobody will discuss? Who lives in it now: a caretaker, a cousin's family, nobody at all? And is there any dispute — over the land, the boundary, a sale that was half agreed in 1998 — because property disputes in Azad Kashmir and the Punjab run for decades and British families inherit them without knowing.

Then the question that actually matters for a marriage, and which nobody asks: does he intend to retire there? A great many men in this town fully intend to spend their later years in the village, and a great many British-raised women have no intention of leaving their children and grandchildren in England to do it. That is not a small difference of opinion to be discovered at fifty-five. Ask it during the proposal — where do you see yourself at sixty — and if the answers do not match, say so now while it is still easy.

And one point of fairness. A half-built house in Mirpur is not a reason to look down on a family, and nor is having no property there at all. What matters is honesty about what exists. Describing a plot with foundations as a house, or a shared inheritance as your own, is the kind of exaggeration that poisons the first year once the other family sees it for themselves.

Two passports: the paperwork on the Pakistani side

British Pakistani families are usually careful about the UK paperwork and completely vague about the Pakistani half of it, and then lose years to it. Pakistan permits dual nationality with the United Kingdom, and the documents that make that practical are worth knowing before the wedding rather than after.

For a Pakistani national living here, the NICOP — the identity card for overseas Pakistanis, issued by NADRA — is the basic document, and it allows entry to Pakistan without a visa. For somebody who is British and no longer or never was a Pakistani national, including a British-born spouse, the equivalent is the POC, the Pakistan Origin Card, which gives visa-free entry and is what makes holding property and dealing with banks and offices there straightforward. If a couple will be travelling back regularly, or if there is property in the family, getting the right card early saves a great deal of standing in queues.

Then the marriage itself. If the nikah is performed in Pakistan it should be registered with the union council and the nikah nama obtained properly, and for any use in Britain it will generally need attesting — the usual route being the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and then the British side — so start it while you are still there rather than from four thousand miles away. A spouse who holds a Pakistani CNIC should have their marital status updated on it. And children born here to a Pakistani-national parent can usually be registered with the consulate and obtain Pakistani documents, including a child registration certificate from NADRA, which matters later for inheritance and for travel.

Procedures and fees change, and the consulate is the authority rather than an uncle's recollection, so check the current requirements with the Pakistan High Commission or consulate before you plan around any of it. But do decide at the proposal stage who is responsible for this list, because the commonest outcome is that both families assume the other is handling it and nobody is.

How will you raise the children?

Couples discuss where they will live and what they will earn and almost never discuss this, and then discover at the birth of the first child that they want quite different things.

Four questions, and they are easy ones to answer in advance. Language: what will be spoken at home? A household where the grandparents speak only Pahari-Pothwari or Punjabi and the parents speak English to the children produces children who cannot talk properly to their own grandparents, and families regret that bitterly later. Deen: who teaches them, at what age, at which mosque or madrasa, and how much — and if one of you expects a hafiz and the other expects Saturday classes, better to know now. School: which one, and whether anybody is planning around catchment or a faith school. And who looks after them day to day if both parents work — a grandmother, a nursery, reduced hours, and whose hours.

Then the two harder ones. How will they be disciplined, because approaches that were normal in a village in 1975 are not lawful in Britain and are not the only way to raise a child, and parents who disagree about it argue in front of the children. And how much will the grandparents decide? A joint household where the elders overrule the mother on feeding, sleeping and schooling is a recipe for a miserable young wife, and a household where the grandparents are respected and consulted but the parents decide is a happy one. Say which you intend to be.

None of this requires agreement on everything. It requires knowing where you differ before there is a baby in the room.

Rochdale, Oldham and Bury: the pool, and the townships

The practical half. Rochdale sits in the middle of the densest Mirpuri belt in Britain, which is an enormous advantage if you use it.

Start with the borough itself and say which part — Deeplish and Milkstone, or Heywood, or Middleton, or out at Littleborough and Milnrow. Then add Oldham and Bury at once, because the three boroughs intermarry constantly and the biradari networks run straight through them, and Bolton just beyond. Manchester is twenty-five minutes on the tram. Then over the M62 to Huddersfield, Halifax, Bradford, Dewsbury and Leeds, and north to Burnley, Accrington, Blackburn and Preston. Every one of those is an ordinary drive, and because this is Kashmiri country on both sides of the Pennines, the closest matches by village of origin are frequently in Bradford or Blackburn rather than the next street.

Which is the argument for leading with the village of origin and the mother tongue rather than the city. In this town those two fields narrow a search faster than anything else on the site: a family from Dadyal will find other Dadyal families across four counties, and a household that speaks Pahari-Pothwari wants to know that the other one does too. Write them in. Then biradari and sect, then education and profession — and where two families are more than an hour apart, do the video sitting before anyone drives.