Rishta in Sheffield

Reading a Sheffield profile properly

Reading a Pashtun profile: qaum, khel and Pashto

Most of this site talks about biradari and zaat, which is Punjabi and Kashmiri vocabulary. A Pashtun family does not organise itself that way, and in Sheffield that matters, because there are enough Pashtun households here that a Punjabi family will meet one sooner or later.

The unit is the qaum, the tribe, and below it the khel, the sub-clan — Yusufzai, Afridi, Mohmand, Shinwari, Khattak, Bangash, Orakzai, Mahsud, Wazir, Durrani, Tareen, Kakar, Niazi and a great many more. A Pashtun profile that says only Pathan has given away almost nothing; writing the qaum, and the khel if your family uses it, is what lets another family place you properly. Write the district too — Peshawar, Mardan, Swabi, Charsadda, Nowshera, Swat, Bannu, Kohat or Dera Ismail Khan — because those are very different societies from one another. Our Pathan rishta pages exist for exactly this reason.

And use the mother tongue field honestly. Pashto is on the form, as is Hindko for the Hazara districts, and so are Balochi, Sindhi, Saraiki, Potohari and Kashmiri. A Pashtun household that writes Urdu because it looks more formal has thrown away the single most useful filter available to a family looking for exactly them. Note also that Pashtun does not mean Pakistani: a great many Pashtun families in Britain are Afghan in nationality, and the nationality field is a separate question from the ethnicity.

Where a proposal crosses between a Punjabi or Kashmiri family and a Pashtun one — which happens in this city constantly and produces many good marriages — the honest work is in the assumptions, not the principle. Expectations about a bride's movement and visibility, about how much she mixes at functions, about whether she will work, differ from household to household, and on average Pashtun families lean more conservative on some of it while plenty are entirely otherwise. So do not guess from the ethnicity: ask the household. Language at home, food, which functions she will attend, who she travels with, and how the children will be raised. And be aware that hospitality and honour are taken seriously in a way that can make it harder for a Pashtun family to say no plainly — so give them room to decline, and read a long silence as an answer.

One thing to say firmly, because this page would be dishonest without it. The practice of giving a girl in marriage to settle a dispute or a blood feud — swara, vani, by whatever name — is a criminal offence in Pakistan and is condemned by scholars without qualification. A marriage is a contract requiring the free consent of both parties. It is not compensation and it is not a settlement, and no family offering or accepting such a thing has any business on a matrimonial site.

If she is a professional, she will work with men

Sheffield has two universities and a very large teaching hospital trust, and a great many of the women on this page are doctors, dentists, pharmacists, nurses, teachers, solicitors and engineers. Which means a thing that families leave unspoken until it is too late: in those jobs she will work alongside men, every day.

A hospital doctor will be on a night shift with male colleagues. A pharmacist will be alone in a dispensary with a male locum. A teacher will sit in a staff meeting; a solicitor will meet male clients; an engineer will go to a site. None of that is unusual, improper or avoidable in those professions, and a woman qualified in them is not going to be able to arrange her working life around a family that has not thought about it.

So say where you stand before the nikah rather than after. If a family would not be comfortable with a daughter-in-law working in a mixed environment, that is a position it is entitled to hold — and it should say so clearly at the proposal stage so that a woman with a career can decline and look elsewhere. If a family is comfortable with it, say that too, because a great many professional women on this site are quietly worried about exactly this and will be relieved to hear it. What is not acceptable is accepting a pharmacist and then objecting to the dispensary six months later, which happens, and which is simply a man changing the terms after he has got what he wanted.

The same applies to the practical edges, and they are easy to settle. Night and weekend shifts — who looks after children, and is anybody going to complain? Travel for training or conferences. Whether she will be expected to stop at a certain point, and if so, whose decision that is. Her own transport. And on-call, which in medicine is not negotiable. Four minutes of conversation now; four years of resentment otherwise.

Who pays for the visa, and what it actually costs

Families budget for the wedding down to the last tray of sweets and arrive at the visa application having given it no thought at all. For the many Sheffield families bringing a spouse from Pakistan, here is what is actually involved.

A spouse or partner visa carries a Home Office application fee, and on top of it the Immigration Health Surcharge, which is charged per year of the visa and paid in full up front. Together those two alone run into several thousand pounds. Then the extras: the approved English language test, the tuberculosis test certificate which applicants from Pakistan must obtain from an approved clinic before applying, certified translations of the nikah nama and other documents, attestation, photographs and courier fees, the optional priority service, and travel to the visa application centre. And at the far end, if the couple stay on the standard route, the extension after two and a half years and then the settlement application each carry their own fees, with the Life in the UK test as well. Fees and surcharge rates change every year, so look up the current figures on gov.uk rather than relying on what somebody paid in 2022.

Two things follow from that and both belong in the proposal conversation. First, agree who pays — the British side, the Pakistani side, or split, and in which currency — and write it down, because this is one of the commonest sources of bad feeling between two families in the first year. Second, understand that the fee is not refunded if the application is refused. A refusal over a missing document or a misunderstood income calculation costs the whole amount again, which is why it is worth either being extremely careful with the paperwork or paying for a competent immigration adviser once rather than reapplying twice.

And plan the cash flow honestly. A family that spends everything on the walima and then cannot fund the application leaves a newly married couple living in two countries for a year. If the money will be tight, a smaller wedding and a funded application is the better marriage — and anybody who tells you otherwise is not the one who will be waiting.

What actually predicts a lasting marriage

Families screen hard for salary, caste, complexion, height and the family's standing. Those are the things that are easy to put in a filter. They are not, on the evidence of the marriages that come apart, the things that decide whether two people are still glad of each other in fifteen years. It is worth saying what does.

Shared expectations, above everything. Not shared taste, not shared hobbies — shared answers to the practical questions: where you will live, whether she will work, how money is handled, how many children and when, how the children will be raised, how much the elders decide, and who you are each obliged to support. Couples who agreed on those in advance survive a great deal. Couples who assumed survive much less.

Then the behaviour of the two households. A family that is kind to its daughter-in-law and a family that does not interfere in its daughter's marriage are worth more than a large salary. Watch how each side treats the people already married into it, and how they behave when they want something — that is the most honest version of them you will see.

Then character in the ordinary sense: whether a person keeps their word about small things, whether they can apologise, whether they are decent to people who cannot do anything for them, whether they are honest about money. Those are visible if you look, and they are what you are actually marrying.

And then the thing our community is worst at valuing: whether the two of them actually want each other. A proposal that satisfies every family requirement and leaves both young people unenthusiastic is a worse bet than one that fits slightly less neatly and has two willing people in it. Consent is not a formality to be collected at the end — it is, along with honesty, the thing the whole arrangement is for.

South Yorkshire: Rotherham is six miles away

Sheffield families underuse their own geography, partly because the city is big enough to feel self-contained.

Start with the city and say which part — Darnall, Tinsley, Burngreave and Firth Park read very differently from Nether Edge, Crookes or Mosborough, and nobody outside Sheffield can tell. Then add Rotherham immediately: six miles, a sizeable Pakistani and Kashmiri community, and families who have intermarried with Sheffield for sixty years. Then Barnsley, Doncaster and Chesterfield, each inside half an hour, with smaller communities but real ones.

Beyond that, three directions. North to Huddersfield, Dewsbury, Bradford, Leeds and Halifax — forty minutes to an hour, and the biggest Mirpuri pools in the country. West over the Pennines to Manchester, Oldham and Rochdale, about an hour. And south into the East Midlands: Nottingham, Derby, Leicester and Birmingham, between forty minutes and an hour and a half, which is where a Pashtun or Punjabi family will often find the widest choice.

One point on the search order. Because this city holds several communities of origin rather than one, the fields that narrow it fastest here are mother tongue and qaum or biradari — more so than the city itself. Set those first, widen the geography second, and leave the age band generous.