Life
In July 1995, Ahmed arranged for the 15-year old Zaynab to marry an Egyptian man named Khalid Abdullah in December, and Maha began preparing an apartment for the couple in the family's house.
On November 19 Ayman al-Zawahiri bombed the Egyptian Embassy in Pakistan, and Zaynab's fiancé went into hiding, named as one of the conspirators. When police arrived to arrest her father on suspicion of involvement eight days later, Zaynab took her father's rifle and held it over her head screaming, while her mother barricaded the door.
Zaynab recalled celebrating the engagement of Umayma al-Zawahiri at her family's house for an all-day party, and her father Ayman al-Zawahiri knocking softly at Umayma's door asking the two girls to please keep their singing and partying quiet as it was nighttime.
Her fiancé re-surfaced in Tehran in October 1997, and contacted the family to try to re-schedule the wedding he had missed. Ahmed agreed to bring his family on a long vacation culminating in the city for a farewell to the reluctant Zaynab as she started a new life with Abdullah.
Six months after the couple began living in a rented Tehran apartment, Abdullah phoned his father-in-law to report that Zaynab was inconsolable at being separated from her family, and the marriage was not working out. She returned to live with her family.
Read more about this topic: Zaynab Khadr
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