Alisha’s story
Alisha Arshad was born Maryam Chowdary in the quiet village Dhall Kaka Pakistan. She grew up surrounded by love in a warm, bustling household with her mother, younger sister, aunt, uncle, and cousins. “We were raised like siblings. That closeness, the shared meals, the laughter, I miss it every day.”
At 14, everything changed. She and her six-year-old sister were told they would be moving to the UK to live with their father, whom she’d spent little to no time with, “Before we boarded the plane, my mum said to me, ‘You’re her mum now.’ I’ll never forget that. My sister had never been apart from her.”
Landing in a country whose language she didn’t speak, with a family she didn’t know, was terrifying. And just two years later, she made a decision that would define the rest of her life—she left. It was the only way she knew how to defend herself from a marriage she was not ready for that had been arranged for her. “It was decided long ago, but it wasn’t what I wanted. I’d watched my mum’s marriage. I knew I needed something different. I wanted to choose my own path.”
The day she left, she was only 15. “I was in the middle of my GCSEs. I packed my school bag like any other day, but inside were photos, a diary, and a letter for my sister. I woke her up. I told her I was going and wouldn’t be coming back. She cried, then fell back to sleep. I didn’t sleep at all. That night broke me.”
The boy she was meant to marry, her cousin, is kind. “I still care for him deeply. He protects me, even now. But we were family, not partners. It wasn’t what either of us wanted. Arranged marriages can work, if there’s consent. The problem is when you’re not allowed to say no.”
She knows the difference between forced marriage and arranged marriage is still misunderstood. “Consent is everything. Without it, it’s not culture—it’s control. If a girl today is going through what I did, she should know where to turn. We must make those paths visible—in schools, mosques, communities.”
Placed into care, she was placed with a foster family in North Wales. “We drove past signs in Welsh and I panicked. I was just learning English, how would I survive another new language?” Her foster family was kind, but everything was unfamiliar. “They were white, British, not Muslim. I didn’t see myself in them. I didn’t see myself anywhere.”
She changed her name to Alisha, trying to start again. “I wanted to cut all links to the past. I looked different, sounded different. I remember writing down words because people couldn’t understand me. I was so alone.”
Racism was constant. “They called me names. Laughed at my accent. There were days I thought, ‘Should I just go back? Get married? End this loneliness?’”
She celebrated birthdays and Eid’s alone. “I’d sit in my room crying, remembering my family. In my culture, you don’t call people by their first name, you say auntie, uncle, mum, dad. I lost all those words, and with them, all those relationships. It felt like I lost myself.”
But she kept going. “You don’t think you’ll make it. But you do. Not because someone saves you, because you save yourself. The courage comes from within.”
Still, what she longed for most wasn’t just survival. It was belonging. “That feeling didn’t come, not for a long time. I was trying to be someone I was told to be, how to talk, sit, behave. I carried all of that with me.”
To help back then she believes simple things would have helped her settle more “Let me wear my clothes without judgment. Let me eat my food without stares. Let me hear someone say Eid Mubarak, not Happy Eid. That’s not just a phrase, it’s home.”
Social services did their job. “They protected me. But they hadn’t seen a case like mine before. No one around me looked like me. No one spoke my language. No one could say, ‘I get it. You’re not alone.’”
Now, as a mother of two, Alisha makes sure her children know the truth. “I tell them about racism. About the names they might be called. I wish I didn’t have to. But I want them to know they are not the problem. They are the light.”
Today she works with people new to Wales, people who feel lost, like she once did. There is no one better placed than her for her role.
“When I say to someone, ‘You belong here,’ I mean it. Because I know what it feels like not to.”
To her, real inclusion isn’t just policy it’s lived action. “If I fostered someone from another culture, I’d learn their words. Cook their food. Celebrate their holidays. Not because I have to, but because that’s how you show someone they matter.”
She still remembers how back then, people didn’t always understand her, but they tried. “There was more tolerance then, I think. Now we know more, but we accept less. We need to get back to seeing each other with human eyes.”
Representation is the bridge to belonging. “We need people in schools, hospitals, councils, leaders, who look like us, sound like us, understand us. When someone sees themselves reflected, they believe: ‘I belong here too.’”
Her message is simple but powerful: “Inclusion isn’t ticking a box. It’s opening a door. It’s saying: you are not just tolerated, you are valued.”
And after all the loss, fear, and silence, Alisha now says the words she once couldn’t:
“I am Pakistani. I am Muslim. I am Welsh. I am all of it. And I am enough.”
Stori Alisha
Alisha’s journey began in Pakistan, in a home full of warmth. At 14, she moved to the UK with her younger sister to join a father she barely knew. “Before we boarded the plane, my mum said, ‘You’re her mum now.’ I’ll never forget that.”
Two years later, she made a decision that would define the rest of her life—she left. It was the only way she knew how to defend herself from a marriage she was not ready for that had been arranged for her.
At just 15, Alisha entered foster care in North Wales, still learning English, overwhelmed by Welsh signs, and utterly alone.
“They were kind, but I didn’t see myself in them. I didn’t see myself anywhere.”
Now a mother of two, she helps newcomers feel seen. “When I say, ‘You belong here,’ I mean it. Because I know what it feels like not to.”
After years of rebuilding, today she stands proud: “I am Pakistani. I am Muslim. I am Welsh. I am all of it; and I am enough.”
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