A House on Water

A House on Water is a book that explores the social and psychological impacts of temporary marriage and religious concubinage in Iran, researched and coordinated by Kameel Ahmady, a British-Iranian anthropologist and social researcher. The book is based on a research project that Ahmady and his team conducted between 2017 and 2018 in three major cities of Iran: Tehran, Isfahan, and Mashhad. The book aims to provide a historical overview of temporary marriage in Iran and the world and to examine its prevalence among different social groups and its consequences for those who choose this type of marriage.

Background
While Ahmady was researching female genital mutilation (FGM) and child marriage in 2016, he noticed a connection between the age of people and their lived experiences. He believes that when he was studying child marriage and FGM, he realized that most of those who married in childhood were likely to have temporary or religious concubinage marriages and that there was a link between the two phenomena. Therefore, Ahmady and his colleagues decided to investigate the how's and whys of temporary marriage in Iran after completing their research on child marriage.

Content
A House on Water is a book that presents the findings of a research project that Ahmady conducted in 2016 on temporary marriage and religious concubinage in Iran. He and his colleagues used different methods to collect data from people in Tehran, Mashhad, and Isfahan. They discovered that this phenomenon was driven by the desire for pleasure and the ease of child marriage, which had harmful consequences for women's reputations and men's view of permanent marriage. Ahmady criticizes Iran's laws on religious concubinage, which allow early marriage and cause problems for young girls and boys, but have been overlooked and have contributed to child marriage.

Ahmady and his team proposes some ways to make temporary marriage with less social and personal harm. The solutions include such measures as increasing the minimum age of marriage for girls and boys to 18 years old to break the connection between child marriage and temporary marriage, ensuring free education for all children, helping divorced and widowed women, and educating people about the rights and duties of temporary marriage.

Republication
Shiraz Publishing House originally published A House on Water in 2017. In 2021, Avaye Buf reprinted the book in Denmark and released electronic and audiobook editions, bringing the work to new audiences and formats.

The English translation of A House on Water was first published in 2019 by Mehri Publishing House in London. Lambert Publishing House released a German edition in 2022, which included updated research and statistics on child marriage and temporary marriage. In 2023, Daneshfar Publishing House published a Kurdish translation in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan. Through multiple languages and editions, the book has reached wider audiences and incorporated the author's latest findings on key social issues.