Couple's future in balance as Hafsa expects first baby

Hafsa Khan is expecting her first baby on August 13.

The trouble is, she is married to a Pakistani and faces deportation to her native India if the couple loses a legal battle in the courts of Peshawar, near the Afghan border.

"I really don't know what will happen to me and my baby," said the dark-eyed 25-year-old from the Indian state of Kerala, clad in a red and orange shalwar kameez, the baggy dress commonly worn in the South Asian region.

"I knew that relations between Pakistan and India were not good, but I never dreamed this would create such a problem," she said at the home of her parents in-law in Hoti, a village on the outskirts of Mardan, 120 km northwest of Islamabad.

Their lawyers say the couple are the innocent victims of the political reality of South Asia; that India and Pakistan do not trust each other after decades of enmity and war, despite embarking on a tentative peace process.

The case of Hafsa and her husband Aman Khan comes to light as foreign ministers from the nuclear-armed neighbours prepare for a meeting in Islamabad this week to discuss where the roadmap to peace is leading.

Pakistan's interior ministry rejected a request by Aman Khan to grant his wife Pakistani citizenship and ordered her to leave the country before her visa expired in March.

But Aman Khan challenged the order in the high court in the northwestern city of Peshawar and secured a stay. The case is expected to come to court in the coming weeks, when the couple will discover their fate.

"Our life hangs in the balance. I don't know what will be the future for me and my family," said a visibly distraught Aman Khan, sitting beside his wife. "I feel totally vulnerable."

Khan fell in love with Hafsa at first sight while they were studying medicine together in Ukraine. Her name was Diviya before she converted to Islam.

"I liked her very much when I saw her wearing traditional dress in Europe. She looked totally different from the other girls," said Khan, a strongly built, handsome Pashtun.

He abandoned his studies and came back to Pakistan, but their romance continued.

In Pakistan's conservative Pashtun society, where most marriages are arranged and conversations between girls and boys before marriage are considered taboo, the two used to speak for hours by telephone.

"She used to speak with my grandmothers and grandfathers and parents and they never minded," Khan said.

After completing her studies, Hafsa flew to Karachi and the two tied the knot in August 2003.

Marriages between Pakistanis and Indians are common, but most took place between families divided by the partition of the subcontinent in 1947. Love marriages between people from the two countries are relatively rare.

Lawyers and human rights activists say that under Pakistani law any foreign woman married to a Pakistani man is entitled to citizenship and Hafsa Khan should be no exception.

"It's a simple love marriage and nothing more," said Rakhshanda Naz from the Aurat Foundation, a women's rights group.

Mohammed Usman Turlandi, Aman Khan's lawyer, said the interior ministry gave no reason for rejecting Hafsa's case. "It appears that the only reason behind not giving her citizenship is that she is Indian."

But interior ministry spokesman Abdul Rauf Chaudhry said it was up to the discretion of the government to grant citizenship.

Khan has a message for leaders of the two countries. "We have taken a bold step for peace and love between the two countries and they should also show the same."

The two say they will have to move to a third country if their governments fail to accommodate them.

Aman Khan said the couple were afraid to try to move to India, because of the threat of violence from extremists there. "We are fearful of extremists. I need security."