orded Shafia a chance to get a good look   at 
 strapless lace   wedding dress the girl that his mother had selected for him.Rona's elder   brother asked her if she would accept the proposal to marry Shafia.Rona didn't   fully comprehend what it would mean to become a wife, but she recognized that it   was her fate to be given away to a man she did not know or love.And so Rona's   family investigated Shafia.They learned that his father, Akbar, had died in a   car crash when Shafia was only two.Related'He's going to kill everyone here':   Zainab Shafia on wedding nightKilled Because They Were Girls: An ebook from   Christie BlatchfordShafia trial timeline: From 'where to commit murder' Google   search to convictionsSee Shafia had completed Grade 6, but in the absence of a   patriarch in his family, and out of economic necessity, he was thrust at a young   age into a position of leadership and responsibility.He began apprenticing with   extended family, learning to repair televisions and radios.By the time Shafia   was a teenager, he had opened a small electronics shop with a loan from his   grandfather.Shafia proved adept at electronic repair and was soon able to open a   larger shop in downtown Kabul.He expanded from selling primarily radios to   importing and reselling other electronics.an acceptable suitor.With the blessing   of her family secured, the bright young high school student who had just   completed Grade 11 was betrothed to a stranger seven years her senior.In a   country where girls as young as two were offered up by their families as wives   for men in their sixties and seventies, it was a reasonable arrangement viewed   as a highly compatible match.And so, in 1978, Rona and Shafia were wed,   beginning their new life together in the same year that Afghanistan began its   descent into three bloody decades of war and chaos that would reduce Kabul to   rubble and displace millions of Afghans.President Daoud Khan was assassinated in   a coup in which thousands died.War planes fired on the presidential palace in   Kabul as   military 
 beach   style wedding dresses units loyal to Daoud battled troops sympathetic to   the Soviet Union, which had long provided financial and political support to   Afghanistan.Rona and Shafia were still relative newlyweds when Soviet troops   invaded Afghanistan in December 1979.Soviet commandos stormed the palace and   killed the president, setting the stage for the installation of a puppet leader   and a deadly, decade-long occupation that would see one million Afghans die.In   the Shafia home, an unexpected problem was festering: Rona could not get   pregnant.At first, Shafia was not troubled by her failure to give him a child.He   was busy with his expanding business empire.He launched a company, Babul Ltd.to   import and distribute products from Japan.Rona visited several doctors, received   injections and assurances, but still failed to conceive.Shafia took her to India   for treatment from experts, but the expensive intervention did not help.After   several childless years, Shafia began to hear derisive jokes from his   acquaintances and business associates.People were ridiculing him for his failure   to impregnate his wife.Maybe something was wrong with him, they were   saying.There were crude taunts about farm animals.Shafia trained his anger upon   his barren wife.He began to snipe at Rona and became more controlling, telling   her to stop leaving the home to visit her mother.Rona would write in her diary,   years later.Until that point, she had considered his treatment of her to be   kind.But Shafia could not contain his growing bitterness over his wife's failure   to give him children.Rona's younger sister Houma arrived for an overnight   visit.She was sitting with Rona when Shafia came into the room and snapped at   his wife.You cannot give me kids.Shafia, you shouldn't say these kinds of things   to my sister.Rona would not let the slight pass.she implored, challenging her   husband.Shafia stepped forward and began slapping Rona on the face.Horrified,   Houma retreated to her room.She did not confront Shafia and she never spent the   night at her sister's home again.Houma feared for Rona but custom dictated that   she should   not 
 simple beach   wedding dresses meddle in the affairs of another family.Rona's frustration   with her husband's resentment and anger led her to a distasteful but, she   believed, necessary decision.Feeling there was nothing else she could do, she   told Shafia to marry again.Shafia said, promising to continue to seek a medical   solution to Rona's infertility.As Shafia recalled it, he did not have to look   far for a second mate.The wife of his longtime friend Aziz visited the couple's   home in Wazir Akbar Khan, an affluent Kabul neighbourhood.She noted that the big   house Shafia had built was quiet, devoid of the sounds of scampering little feet   on the tile floors.The woman suggested her seventeen-year-old sister Tooba would   make a good bride and mother.The educated girl, one of seventeen children of a   well-to-do pharmacist, met with the suitor in a restaurant, according to Tooba's   recollection years later.If you're not in agreement, no one can force you and I   don't want this marriage to be forced.million, and the two principals are both   pretty high wattage celebrities with veritable teams of assistants at their beck   and call.Like, sometimes there is a chance that Sharon, your wedding planner,   has completely forgotten that you wanted the cake layers to go red velvet,   vanilla, chocolate, because it was supposed to look like Neapolitan ice cream,   because that was Jessica s favourite ice cream when she was little, and this   whole wedding is supposed to be childhood-dreams-coming-true-themed and GOD   DAMMIT, BULLDOG, AM I GOING TO HAVE TO FINISH YELLING AT HER MYSELF, OR DO I NOT   PAY YOU TO BELITTLE MY OTHER UNDERLINGS FOR ME?IT S LIKE EVERYONE WANTS ME TO   FAIL.Thank god, then, that Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel have great friends   to support them through all this, friends who know just what the harried young   newlyweds need to celebrate their special day.Things like that extra compliment   on the custom-designed dress you re