Honour on Trial (8 page)

The social workers at Passages didn't know what to make of this lovely, open young woman with apparently ample spending money and nice clothes. "She wasn't our typical clientele. She seemed to be well off. She came in with expensive clothing. She was very friendly," said Bumbray.

Zainab was admitted to Passages, underwent the standard search of her luggage, and was read the house rules. The instructions on her admittance sheet stipulated no communication with family members. Ammar was listed as her emergency contact. For Zainab, the experience was liberating. She could come and go as she wished. Ammar acted as the go-between with her family.

The scene at rue Bonnivet, meanwhile, was deteriorating. Four of the Shafia children had learned of Zainab's sudden departure on April 17 through a phone call from their mother. Feeling anxious and upset, they walked up to a stranger on the street and said they were afraid to go home and that their lives were in danger. Police were called and officers arrived to speak to the children before driving them home around 4 pm.Tooba and Hamed were at the house. Police were concerned about the report they'd gotten from the four children but Hamed and Tooba were preoccupied with Zainab's disappearance.

Earlier in the day, at 3:52 pm, Hamed had placed a call to the 911 Montreal police emergency line to report Zainab missing. In the call, Hamed tells the 911 operator that his sister was 19 years old, had been gone since the morning, and had left a note saying she was going away and not returning.

The operator asks Hamed if his sister has been having problems. His answers are vague, and police are dispatched to the house to talk to him.

At 4:06 pm, Hamed called the 911 line again: "Hello, uh, I just asked for the police car, uh, police cars and, uh, they didn't come yet," he says.

Again he explained that his older sister, who wasn't suicidal and didn't take drugs, simply walked away from the house that morning and left a note saying so. In a city of more than two million, this incident had to be low on the police list of priorities.

Later that evening, while everyone was in the living room with the police, the children revealed they were suffering abuse and violence in the home. Sahar, Geeti, and two of their other siblings were brought outside by police, one at a time, to talk.

Constable Anne-Marie Choquette, one of the investigating officers, supplied an agreed statement of fact for the trial. "Geeti disclosed an incident that had happened the week before, when she and her siblings had been at a shopping centre and were coming home late," Choquette wrote. "She told police that her father had pulled her hair and hit her on the face. She told police that her brother Hamed hit her in the eye with his fist. Geeti also told police that her father often threatened that he was going to kill them. No marks were observed on Geeti."

The revelations began pouring from Sahar and Geeti: slapping by Hamed and violence against Zainab by their father. Sahar and Geeti said they wanted to be taken out of the home because they feared their father.

Then Mohammad Shafia arrived home. "The demeanour of the children changed when Shafia arrived home," wrote Choquette. "After his arrival, the children stopped talking. Some of the children were crying." He spoke to the children in Farsi, which the officers could not understand.

At around 9 that night, a child protection worker arrived at the home. The discussion continued for some time, mostly in English, occasionally in French, with the children translating for the parents.

At around 11 pm, Child and Family Services chose not to take action. Despite all they had seen and heard, the social worker decided that the children would stay in the home for the weekend and the interviews would resume on Monday. In Quebec, criminal charges in such situations are determined by Child and Family Services workers. No charges were ever laid. Two and a half months later, Montreal police would be assisting in a mass murder investigation.

Questions would be asked after the trial about whether Montreal child protection services could have acted differently, perhaps by intervening and removing some of the children from the home. In what was clearly a sensitive situation involving a clash of cultures, were case workers being too respectful of authoritarian traditions and behaviours? Was it a mistake to ask the children to explain their situation in the presence of their parents, especially when they had stated they were afraid of their father?

The Shafia case, in which a conflict between teenagers and parents emphasized competing cultural values — with the daughters choosing to behave in a more modern Canadian way than their parents could tolerate — has fuelled concerns about the reluctance to adapt by some more conservative immigrants, and the need to move forward and take action even if the family isn't willing to accept intervention.

Zainab would stay at passages for two weeks. Meanwhile, Hamed and Mohammad were beside themselves. They desperately wanted to find Zainab and bring her home.

On April 19, two days after the interview at rue Bonnivet, Constable Choquette arrived at the police station to find the two men waiting for her. Did she have any information about Zainab's whereabouts? Hamed said he had managed to get Ammar's cellphone number but that Ammar wasn't answering.

"They wanted something to be done. They absolutely wanted to find Zainab," Choquette testified. She said she would try Ammar's number.

When Choquette talked to Ammar, he assured her Zainab was fine and that her departure was entirely voluntary. She was of age, after all.

The phone calls continued. Ammar stalled. Mohammad and Hamed grew more impatient. "At one point," Ammar said, "the father said, if you don't tell us where she is, we're going to go to the police to make a complaint against you." That's when Zainab and Ammar made a trip to the police station for her to report in person that she was safe and had left her home because she didn't want to be there. Police told the Shafia men to back off.

The wedding…

THE parents' and Hamed's strategy then shifted. They decided to let Tooba negotiate with Zainab. A meeting was arranged between mother and daughter at a neutral location, the old courthouse in Montreal. Ammar also went. This 19th century monument to justice, on rue Notre-Dame in Old Montreal, seems like an odd place to set the meeting. However, it is a very public area, near souvenir shops, a tourist information office, and two public squares, Place Vauquelin and Place Jacques-Cartier. Perhaps Zainab hoped her mother would contain her emotions, surrounded by tourists and strangers, or perhaps she feared being dragged off by her angry father and brother, and chose to take no chances.

Tooba pleaded with Zainab to come home. Zainab refused, knowing how angry her father would be. Tooba told Zainab and Ammar that she would get an apartment so she and her daughters could move out of the house. Despite Zainab's suspicions, Ammar thought Tooba was sincere. "A mother's always a mother," he believed.

Then Tooba upped the ante. If Zainab came home, she would help arrange her marriage to Ammar. Zainab stayed at the shelter for another week. On May 2, she went home. Not coincidentally, her father had left the day before on another one of his extended business trips to Dubai. He would be gone for several weeks.

May 18 was set as the date for Ammar and Zainab's wedding, though no one in the family liked the idea of her marrying outside the Afghan community, especially to a young man who had no job, no money, no apparent family support, and what they suspected was a problem with drugs and alcohol. They had also heard a rumour that Ammar was engaged to a young woman in Pakistan, arranged by his family. Ammar has always denied this.

In order to have a religious wedding in the Muslim tradition, Tooba and Hamed would have to find a mullah to conduct the ceremony. Because they did not attend a mosque, they had to enlist the help of Tooba's uncle, Latif Hyderi, who lived not too far from the Shafias. This was a delicate business within the family system, however. Not long after the Shafias came to Montreal in June of 2007, Latif had suggested an arranged marriage between Zainab and his own son, Hussain. Zainab and Hussain were second cousins. The arrangement was rebuffed. Tooba told her uncle that Zainab was too young to marry and needed to finish her education.

Though the two families had limited contact after that incident, the Shafias were now desperate. Uncle Latif agreed to help. He even went to the mosque on May 18 with Tooba and Hamed to see Zainab and Ammar being married. Latif's other son, Reza, was there as a witness.

Following tradition, the celebration was to take place the next day at an Iranian restaurant booked by Tooba and Hamed. The family took Zainab back home that evening where the scene was anything but joyous.

"Everybody, their hearts were bleeding," said Latif. There were concerns about Zainab marrying "a foreigner." Latif tried to lighten the mood by putting on some music and exhorting everyone to dance. "I told her I'm happy and congratulated her."

More trouble was brewing, however. Ammar had warned Zainab that his family was also unhappy about the marriage. Tooba and Hamed asked Ammar who from his family would be at the celebration. No one, he said. The Shafias, once again, went into crisis mode. Family honour would be at stake when relatives started to ask questions about the groom's family. Tooba told her uncle that Hamed was so upset she feared he would hit someone.

"Hamed tried to find someone," Ammar recalled. "He asked me to find someone that could act like my family." Hamed even suggested someone could play the role of Ammar's parents for the day. Remarkably, no one seemed concerned about the most glaring absence of all — the bride's father, Mohammad Shafia, who was paying for the wedding but was out of the country and totally out of the picture.

The celebration was anything but celebratory. It was, in fact, a total disaster. Ammar arrived with another young man of indeterminate status, which didn't appease anyone. Extended Shafia family members began whispering, scandalized by the non-appearance of Ammar's family. Tooba was beside herself with embarrassment. "Tooba was under pressure. She was crying," said Latif.

Zainab started crying, too, and that was too much for Tooba, who fainted. Zainab told Latif the only reason she was marrying Ammar was to get out of the house, away from the abuse, with a plan to then take her sisters away, too. She said: "Uncle, this boy doesn't have money and he's not handsome. The only reason I'm marrying him is to get my revenge. I will sacrifice myself for my sisters. At least they will get their freedom after me." But the scene with Tooba in the restaurant broke her resolve.

"Zainab, she threw herself on the chest of her mom and was crying," Latif recalled. "She said, 'I reject this one. I will reject this boy.'"

By now, the mullah who had married the couple was also asking why there was so much confusion. They explained that Zainab wanted to annul the marriage. He agreed to undo it, but by then Ammar was nowhere to be found. Zainab had already told him she couldn't go through with the marriage.

"She was crying," Ammar recalled. "I just told her I completely respect [it] if that's what you want. We'll break off the marriage. I just left."

This created more confusion. If the marriage was to be annulled, the groom had to be brought back to the restaurant. Hamed jumped in the family car and went searching for him. Hamed wasn't about to let this opportunity pass — a chance to get rid of Ammar, the Pakistani interloper, once and for all.

Hamed found Ammar at a subway station and dragged him back to the restaurant where the mullah presided over the annulment of the brief marriage. To make it official, Ammar and Zainab merely had to repeat the word "divorce" three times. They did and it was all over.

Food was served but no one had an appetite. Family gathered at the Shafia home to console Tooba. Eventually, the food went to the Hyderis and everyone went there to eat. During the bitter feast, Hussain Hyderi arrived home, oblivious to the mayhem that had just occurred. According to Latif, Tooba said to Hussain that it was he who should have started a relationship with Zainab. Hussain told his cousin he would consider it, but only if Zainab were agreeable. "I have to talk to the girl personally. If we agree, both of us, I will marry her," Latif recalled his son saying.

A couple of days later, Latif and Hussain went to the Shafias. "He's a shy boy. He's not a boy who went out with the girls," said Latif.

Hamed was clearly the Shafia power broker in his father's absence, announcing that he was prepared to start the engagement process. The family went outside so Zainab and Hussain could talk. After about 20 minutes, the young couple announced that the engagement could move ahead. No one really knows what was going on in Zainab's mind at this point. Did she really want to marry her cousin Hussain, or was this just another way for her to get out of her father's house with a more acceptable husband?

There was only one thing left to do: the fathers, Mohammad and Latif, would talk. Latif got Mohammad's phone number from Hamed so he could make the call to Dubai. The response wasn't what Latif had expected.

Sahar and Geeti…

IN February 2009, troubles flared up once more at Antoine-de Saint-Exupéry school for Geeti and Sahar. This time, Vice-principal Nathalie Laramée was in charge of their files. Laramée had taught a class for immigrant children coming to Canada who needed to study in French. She knew four of the seven Shafia children — Sahar, Geeti, and two other siblings who cannot be identified because of an ongoing court ban.

The school had been trying to set up a meeting with Tooba and Mohammad to discuss the girls' behaviour, particularly their chronic lateness and absenteeism. When she met with Laramée, Tooba said she was at a loss as to what to do with the girls.

"The mother asked me to help her out," said Laramée. The vice-principal warned Tooba that child protection workers would be called again if there was no change. Attendance improved for a couple of months.

By April, the situation had deteriorated once more with Zainab's disappearance. A family conference took place at the school involving Mohammad, Tooba, Sahar, Geeti, and the younger brother. As well as the girls' usual absenteeism, the brother wasn't completing his homework. Laramée recalled Mohammad Shafia's anger.