Fair – Rishta Center

Muhammad Ibrahim Farooq 24 Years, Sheikh Groom

Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.

Ahmad Ali 24 Years, Rajput Groom

Zil 28 Years, Awan Bride

Shehryar Aziz 26 Years, Kashmiri Groom

Shehryar is a cybersecurity analyst working remotely for a Singapore-based firm — his entire career has been self-built through certifications, GitHub contributions, and competitive hacking on platforms like HackTheBox, where he currently holds a rank in the top 500 globally. He never completed a formal CS degree (he dropped out of a Rawalpindi university in second year to pursue certifications full time) but now earns more than most of his degree-holding peers. He is aware this sounds impressive on paper and deliberately does not lead with it in conversation. He would rather be known for his dry wit, his obsessive chai-brewing rituals, and his habit of reading one book a week. He is from Mirpur AJK, visits his family monthly, and sends a fixed portion of his income home every month regardless of expenses. Privately devout, he prays, fasts, and reads Quran regularly but considers faith a personal matter and not a performance.

Noor ul Huda 27 Years, Awan Bride

Ayesha is a development economist working with the Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund in Islamabad on rural household income analysis. She graduated from LUMS with a distinction in Economics and won a competitive fellowship to complete a master’s at the University of Edinburgh. She returned to Pakistan on purpose her thesis was on agricultural income diversification in southern Punjab and she wanted to do the policy work that came after the research, not just write about it from abroad. She is from Narowal originally, comes from a conservative but educated family, and wears hijab by choice rather than family pressure. She is intensely analytical about almost everything once, apparently, she built a spreadsheet to evaluate holiday routes — but she is also warm, prone to laughing at herself, and genuinely interested in people. She is learning to cook properly (with moderate success), runs 5km three times a week, and is re-reading the complete works of Intizar Husain.

Rida Qamar 35 Years, Khokhar Bride

Rida is a social entrepreneur who founded a women’s vocational training NGO in Multan six years ago it now operates three training centres, has certified over 800 women in tailoring, digital literacy and beauty therapy, and placed 60% of graduates in employment or self-employment. She was married at 24 and divorced at 28 after a relationship that was fundamentally incompatible at a values level; she has a daughter aged 6 who lives with her and is, in her words, ‘the funniest, most opinionated person she has ever met.’ Rida herself is all of those things. She holds an MBA from IBA Karachi, speaks confidently in front of government ministers and equally confidently in Saraiki with the women she trains. She is observant — hijab, five prayers, halal — and has a particular dislike of people who confuse performance of religion with its substance. She is not bitter about her divorce; she is simply clearer now about what she needs and what she will not accept.

Iqra Shahid 31 Years, Sandhu Bride

Iqra is a paediatric surgeon in her second year of fellowship at Children’s Hospital Lahore, having completed her FCPS I and II in record time. She is one of the youngest women in her specialisation in the country. She grew up in Gujranwala in a modest household — her father drove a taxi to fund her medical education and she has never forgotten it. She prays Fajr before every shift, keeps a photograph of her father in her locker at the hospital, and donates 15% of every salary to a children’s welfare fund without announcement. In the operating theatre she is known for calmness under pressure. Outside it, she is warmer and more self-deprecating than her CV would suggest she laughs easily, gets genuinely enthusiastic about good biryani, and has strong feelings about the relative merits of different cities’ chai. She wears hijab fully and considers it non-negotiable. She is close with her two younger sisters and speaks to her parents daily.