'I was married at 12, a mother by 14 and a widow before I was 19'

Mina Khanoom is a woman who grew up in the most rural and conservative of communities in Iran and her tragic story of child marriage shines a light on some of the horrors happening in the country to this day.

Award-winning journalist Tara Kangarlou's book The Heartbeat of Iran carefully captures the real-life stories of everyday people living in the country. From environmental activists living within the poorest part of the country to a transgender woman in Tehran, each chapter reveals the complexities of life in their homeland, and Mina's is just one of them.

At just 12 years old, Mina was forced into a marriage with a then 30-year-old man. While this fact seems ludicrous to even begin to imagine here in the UK, in many parts of the world – including the Middle East, Asia and Africa – this still happens.

Mina said: “My parents were illiterate and didn’t know any better. Back then, a lot of poor and illiterate families would marry their girls off at that age."

This lack of understanding and education impacts over 700 million women around the world who married when they were still just children.

And this issue also impacts countries in the West. In the U.S. the minimum age for marriage is 18 but with that comes the exemption it can take place at an earlier age with parents' permission and if a judge grants consent. With this in mind, shockingly, in 2025, child marriage is legal in 34 states, while only 16 have now banned underage marriages, with no exception.

Countries such as South Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Equatorial Guinea, Gambia, Somalia and Yemen have no legal minimum age for marriage whatsoever.Meanwhile, in Iran the legal age for marriage for girls is 13 and 15 for boys, although large numbers of these child marriages are not registered.

Mina shared her story of her marriage to her late husband, explaining: "I was scared of him."

As a child, her mother would put her to bed, and once she'd fallen asleep, her adult husband would then come into the room. At just 14, Mina became pregnant with her first son, and she recalled the moment so vividly.

“One day I felt something moving in my stomach, and I started crying and ran to my husband’s aunt. I was screaming, ‘Abji Shirin, Abji Shirin (meaning sister in Farsi), a mouse has gone into my stomach. See, it’s moving." The young girl had no idea what it meant to carry a child, and four years later, she gave birth to her second son.

Within a year, when she was 19, Mina's husband died suddenly in a car accident, making her a teenage widow. Following his death, the financial responsibility was left solely to her, and with no support from either side of the family, all she had left was hope.

“I don’t know what it was, but I’ve always had hope,” she said. “I swear to God, sometimes I think ten grown men could not have survived my life—but somehow I did, and I think it was all because of my never-ending belief in the power of hope."

There were endless opportunities for Mina to remarry, which would have been the traditional route for her, but most of these involved saying goodbye to her two children.

She explained: “Sure, my life could have become better, but almost all the men who wanted to marry me were forcing me to choose between marrying them or keeping my boys.”

Many men in these dire situations see children as nothing more than more mouths to feed and therefore expect their new wives, in these desperate situations, to give their children up.

Mina was now a widow and with no schooling or education behind her wanted to find a job so she could support her family.

“My boys were my life; they were my everything. All I wanted for them was to live a good life. I wanted them to grow up like other children—go to school, eat well, play well, learn well, be kind, and become good boys," she shared.

After much struggle and many letdowns, in the dark beginnings of the Iran-Iraq War, which went on to kill almost a million Iranians, the mother-of-two found herself a job at the army hospital. For the next four years, Mina did just about everything she could, from washing patients to cleaning floors, assisting surgeons and working night shifts.

In the years that followed the war, Mina continued her work at the army hospital alongside her cleaning job and babysitting for upper-class families in Northern Tehran. This area is the most affluent part of the city, where she had once dreamt of raising children of her own. While that dream never came, her determination gave her sons a life they may have never had.

Bijan and Hooshang, Mina's two boys, are much older now, and while they never had the opportunity to go to university as she had hoped, they are "healthy boys" with jobs in Iran. She said: “I still think I can learn things and educate myself.

“My dream is to leave Iran and maybe live in another country. There is still so much I can do, so much I haven’t done.”