Noor's new home was a four-bedroom house on the outskirts of Amsterdam, where Munir lived with his family. On Noor's third morning there, her father-in-law asked her to prepare a meal. Noor, showing a glimpse of her old self, told him that she couldn't cook and that he should ask his own daughter to do it. Except for a single conversation with an aunt, Noor was not allowed phone calls. "After five days, I was so depressed, I felt like killing myself," she says. Munir's advances became more determined, and Noor was exhausted from lack of sleep.

After Noor had been there for about a week, she was home one afternoon in a nearly empty house when her sister Aziza called. "I'd tried to ring and they'd told me that she was out, even though I heard her shouting that she was there," Aziza recalls. They spoke for a few moments until Noor's father-in-law forced her to put the phone down. "I didn't want to get married, and I'm going to run away," Noor told him. The family decided to consult with Ali by phone. He threatened to get on the first flight to the Netherlands and kill her. According to Noor, her father-in-law told Ali that he and his family would support whatever course of action Ali took.

Noor sat and waited for what seemed like hours, pleading with her father-in-law and expecting her brother to burst through the door. A knock finally came, but it was the Dutch police. "I was so happy, so relieved, I just stood there. I wouldn't even move to go with them," she says. The police told her to gather her things.

Aziza had overheard Ali's end of the conversation in Bradford. Although she had never discussed it with Noor, she too had been forced into marriage several years before during a trip to Pakistan. "I didn't know how unhappy she was; we never talked about it," Noor explains when asked why, given her sister's experience, her own marriage came as such a shock. "I didn't talk about it with anyone," says Aziza, who returned to the U.K. without her husband. But she resolved to rescue her sister. "I'm going to get you out of there, don't worry," she told Noor during their brief exchange. Aziza eventually got in touch with Balmforth, the West Yorkshire community officer for forced marriages, who in turn contacted the Foreign Office.

The law is a woefully blunt instrument when it comes to domestic violence of all kinds. Some have suggested tweaking immigration laws to reduce forced marriages. Legislation introduced by Denmark's right-leaning government last May raised to 24 the minimum age at which a spouse can sponsor a partner for immigration. But that kind of broad-brush approach only undermines basic civil liberties, says Siddiqui of Southall Black Sisters. After the fact, police can invoke a range of laws to extract women from forced marriages. (Forcing someone into marriage is not a crime in the UK, but since the cases often involve underage brides and violence, related charges like child abduction, assault or unlawful imprisonment can be applied.) But after marriage, most women or girls are too ensnared to seek help.

Balmforth, who has worked on more than 2,500 forced-marriage cases, is empowered to act only when a specific request has been made. And he still sometimes encounters cultural landmines: "People do say that [because I'm not Asian] I just don't understand. I tell them there's nothing in the Koran that says forced marriage is allowed."

Prevention would be far better, of course. And there are the first sputtering efforts of such a campaign. The Community Liaison Unit of the Foreign Office deals with some 200 forced-marriage cases a year, many of which involve the repatriation of a UK national who has been taken abroad against her will. Tying the Knot?, an educational video produced by the unit, has been screened at dozens of schools. "Marriage is your choice," the voice-over intones, adding that "If you find that you are being forced into marriage, you can get help." Teachers can potentially learn to spot signs that girls are being forced into marriage, says Fawzia Samad of the Community Liaison Unit. A sudden loss of interest in schoolwork, for example, can be telling. Why bother to study if you know your school days are about to end?

Efforts to help women escape forced marriages still suffer from a lack of organization and funding. In June, the Foreign Office will sponsor a conference on forced marriage with representatives from eight European countries, Turkey, the U.S and Canada. But any action governments take is susceptible to accusations of cultural bullying. It is perilously easy for white Western Europeans to reflexively judge all arranged marriages — forced and voluntary — as wrong. Last year, UK Home Secretary David Blunkett clumsily suggested that, in the interest of integration, British Asians should try to find partners in Britain rather than entering into arranged marriages with spouses from abroad. Several Asian community leaders were outraged. Others, like Manzoor Moghal of the the Muslim Council of Britain, who defends arranged marriages that "happen with the free will of the young people," conceded that Blunkett had a point.

In reality, as is so often the case for children of immigrants, life usually becomes a series of compromises — made day by day, individuals sacrificing more or less autonomy in order to stay connected to their families and maintain a slippery sense of cultural identity. The choices can be diabolical.

After spending her first night of freedom at a police station in Amsterdam, Noor flew back to the UK She was initially housed in a women's shelter near London. She soon left to stay at a friend's flat in Bradford but, unable to contribute enough to the rent, moved to a hostel for battered and homeless women after a few months. Bradford is small enough that Noor often runs into people she knows and sees family members from afar. But for an 18-year-old without a diploma or a salary, it is hard for her to imagine how to create a life anywhere else. She is trying to get a job, but has had little luck. Her only source of funds is a fortnightly allowance of $100 in government aid, a third of which goes to the hostel. A year ago, she hoped to someday go to university, but she does not talk of that anymore.

Noor's marriage was never valid under English law, since the statutory notice was not given to civil authorities and there was no registry service. But if she chooses someday to have a Muslim wedding, she would have to have her first marriage annulled or dissolved by a Shari'a court. And the rest of the slate is not so easily cleansed. Noor has stayed in close touch with Aziza, but resisted any real contact with the rest of her family. Then she heard that her brother Ali was hospitalized. Despite everything, she rushed to visit him last week. Groggy with medication, Ali seemed pleased to see her. So has all been forgiven? "No," says Noor. "Too much has happened." Though she hopes relations with her family continue to improve, she knows that what happened last year means things will never be the same. And so Noor remains torn between two worlds.

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