At the age of eighteen, Behnam married her Saudi Arabian cousin, Zakaria Siddique Bundakji and moved to Bombay.[10] The marriage was short-lived, when her husband abandoned her and moved to South Africa and remarried.[11] Behnam returned to Karachi, where in 1944, she gave birth to their son, Essa.[12] After she filed for an annulment which took seven years to obtain,[13] she returned to school in Bombay and then matriculated in Lahore in 1946,[14] becoming the first woman in her family to graduate from a public school.[8]