Shireen Karim

Name: Shireen Karim
First Appeared: 21st June 1988
Last Appeared: 21st June 1990
Played by: Nisha Kapur

Shireen Karim made her entrance in Walford as a teenager in 1988, quickly befriending Diane and Ricky Butcher. Sparks flew between Shireen and Ricky, but their romance was cut short when Shireen’s stern father, Ashraf, found out and forbade her from seeing Ricky. Determined to uphold traditional values, Ashraf decided that Shireen would enter an arranged marriage. In a humiliating move, he demanded that Doctor Harold Legg perform a virginity test on her, which Doctor Legg refused.

In a bid to keep Shireen away from undesirable influences, Ashraf sent her to a boarding school. However, Shireen hated it and ran away, citing racist bullying as her reason. Ashraf had no choice but to bring her back. Despite the family drama, Shireen had a brief date with Trevor Short in 1989, but it didn’t go anywhere as she was already betrothed to Jabbar Ahmed. Initially opposed to the idea of an arranged marriage, Shireen’s feelings changed when she met Jabbar and fell in love with him. Their engagement was abruptly cancelled when Jabbar’s family discovered Ashraf’s affair with a white mistress, leaving Shireen heartbroken.

Before the Karim family moved to Bristol in 1990, the women of the Karim and Ahmed families met in secret to discuss the possibility of Shireen and Jabbar continuing their engagement.