FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. — When she was 7 years old, Rahila Muhibi was engaged to her 8-year-old first cousin. The betrothal was arranged, in the Afghan custom, by her father.
When Muhibi was ready for high school, her father fended off relatives who demanded that the marriage take place. He thought she was too young, and instead helped her win a scholarship to attend school in Canada.
Last month, Muhibi, 24, graduated from tiny Methodist University here. Her father now says the time has come for Muhibi to return to Afghanistan and marry her cousin.
She has refused, setting up a test of wills with her father and a challenge to the societal customs that require women to be obedient daughters and wives.
Muhibi wants to go to graduate school in the West and continue running a small nonprofit literacy program she founded for Afghan women. But for the program to flourish -- and for Muhibi to reconnect with a family she misses terribly -- she must return home.
"It's hard for me to say no because my father has helped me so much," Muhibi said, speaking flawless English while chatting with fellow students on campus. "But I refuse to be submissive."
Muhibi said she didn't care for her cousin when they were children growing up together in a village in northeastern Afghanistan. She cares for him even less now, she said, calling him "my supposed fiance."
She has told him more than once that she has no intention of marrying him. When he telephoned her to congratulate her the day she graduated, she drove home the point.
"I told him to find someone else," she said. "I said I didn't want him blaming me for making him wait. He treated it like a joke. He said he didn't believe I would really say no because it would bring such dishonor."
Muhibi's father, Abdul Ghaffer, is 63 -- a tall, bony white-haired man. (Some Afghans choose surnames from other family members. Muhibi's father chose his grandfather's surname; she chose her grandfather's.)
A retired government clerk, he and his family rent a simple mud brick house on a rutted side street in Kabul, Afghanistan. He is proud of his daughter's educational accomplishments, he said, despite the criticism he has endured from friends and relatives over allowing her to attend school overseas. But now that Muhibi's education has been completed, he said, she must honor her obligations.
