Honour on Trial (9 page)

"The father was speaking very loudly in my office and saying, 'What can we do? What can we do?'" said Laramée. The children were interpreting for their father but she noticed he kept saying something about "police." When the parents left, the brother explained that the police had been at their house on April 17 — but that things at home were improving.

When the brother left the office, Laramée recalled the conversation taking "a different bent" once more. Sahar and Geeti accused their brother of not telling the truth about how things were at home. Sahar told the vice-principal she didn't translate everything her father was saying because of his lies. "My sister and I are afraid in the house," Laramée recalled Sahar saying to her.

The vice-principal also told court about another perplexing incident that April. Sahar was supposed to go on a school trip to a sugar bush. She showed up late and refused to go along. Sahar told Laramée that Zainab had been in a car accident.

"Sahar explained to me that she was very preoccupied that her sister Zainab had been hospitalized and she was very worried about her," Laramée said. "She wished also to go see her. She did not want to take part in the sugar bush activity."

Of course Sahar would be worried about Zainab and want to see her. But it was a lie. Her older sister wasn't in hospital, but had been hiding out at the women's shelter, leaving the family in total flux.

On May 11, Geeti was expelled from school. She had had a run-in with her teacher and Laramée went to talk with her. "It was a hard lunch hour because Geeti was crying," Laramée said. "Geeti was very angry with her teacher." The teacher had spoken with Sahar who revealed a plot the girls had hatched to leave their home and go live on their own. When the teacher explained that it wasn't possible, that Geeti was too young, Geeti exploded.

Thirteen-year-old Geeti, Mohammad and Tooba's sixth child (two other children, who cannot be named, were born between Sahar and Geeti), was the most defiant of the Shafia sisters. Closely resembling her mother Tooba in looks, Geeti also seemed to have inherited Tooba's strong will. She had told police she wanted to be out of the house and she wanted to be able to go out freely like her friends. She even asked to be placed with a foster family.

The 75-minute interview with Geeti was difficult for Laramée. "I was also crying because I didn't know what to do anymore," she said. "Many events were piling up on each other."

Over the course of the 2008-09 academic year, Geeti had missed 40 classes and was late 30 times. She had to be sent home one day for wearing a revealing sweater, makeup, and earrings considered inappropriate for a 13-year-old. "She was failing in all of her courses," said Laramée. "Things were going downhill fast. Geeti was practically not going to school."

Geeti only wanted her freedom and to be with her beautiful older sister Sahar. The youngest of the four victims, Geeti was very close to Sahar. At the trial, the Crown presented a page of messages Geeti had written to Sahar, tragically poignant in hindsight: "i wish 2 god dat till im alive i'll never see u sad," she wrote. "i dont know if one day you leave this house wat am i gonna do????" "i promise before dying i'll make all ur wishes cum true one by one." As for the message in the centre of page, Geeti ultimately got her wish: "i hope we'll never be separted [sic]."

There were even darker family dynamics at play, inside and outside the home. Sahar told Laramée that her younger brother was spying on her at school. He didn't like her friends and threatened to tell their father "she was a whore." Sahar would leave the house in the morning wearing long sweaters and modest clothes. At school she would put on makeup and earrings and more revealing clothes. She changed again before going home in the afternoon.

Antonella Enea was one of Sahar's teachers during the 2007-08 school year at Antoine- de Saint-Exupéry. She was with Sahar and the vice-principal when the girl made her disclosures of abuse and the suicide attempt. It was at Enea's prompting that she did so. Enea had become Sahar's confidante and was extremely concerned for the girl.

"At one point in time she told me no one spoke to her at her place," said Enea. "She said she couldn't have a normal life of a young girl, see her friends, things of that nature." Sahar also told Enea that nothing could be done to help her as she talked about the ostracism and physical abuse she was experiencing.

"It was during that time that she also told me she had taken medication — lots of medication," said Enea. One of the sisters was at home and went to their mother to tell Tooba about the trouble Sahar was in. Tooba told the sister not to bother her about Sahar. It was her "aunt" who came to her assistance — Rona, her adopted mother. According to Rona's diary, Tooba said, "She can go to hell. Let her kill herself." The story was enough for Enea, who took Sahar to Vice-principal Fortin to make the report to social workers.

In 2008-09, Enea had less contact with Sahar, though she did occasionally teach her. In June of 2009, she found Sahar to be desperately afraid. "She told me that her father was supposed to come back from a trip and she was afraid her brother … was going to tell her father she was a whore," said Enea. "I said, 'Do you want me to do something?' She said, 'Yes.'"

Enea called child protection authorities once more. The agency told her to take Sahar to the school psychologist and arrange to find her a shelter. Enea said they found some shelters but, for some reason, Sahar never went to one. The school year was winding down fast and, when Sahar met with a school psychologist, the talk turned to how to get a job, not about finding a safe place of refuge.

Sahar's boyfriend…

WHY would Sahar's younger brother accuse her of being a whore? By June of 2009, Sahar had a steady boyfriend named Ricardo Sanchez whom she had been dating for about four months. Sahar saw Ricardo as her ticket out of the oppressive household. There had already been suspicion about whether Sahar was dating. Sometime during the 2007-08 school year, Tooba went to the school to talk to teacher Claudia Deslauriers. One of Sahar's younger sisters was there to translate for their mother.

"The mother came to see us to determine if Sahar had kissed a boy — whether she had a boyfriend," Deslauriers recalled. "She seemed to be really angry."

Deslauriers had seen Sahar at school with a boy but she was concerned about giving Tooba this information. The teacher and Sahar had already spoken on one occasion about bruises and scratches she had seen on the girl's arms and told her no one had a right to harm her. Deslauriers weighed how forthcoming she should be with Tooba.

"I told her that no, she didn't kiss any boy. I didn't want Sahar to encounter any problems after our meeting," Deslauriers said. "The mother said to us that she did not accept that her daughter would have kissed a boy, as it was not falling within the parameters of her values."

By June 2009, Sahar was in a full-blown relationship with Ricardo, a native of Honduras and about three years her senior. Zainab knew Ricardo from night school, where they were learning French, and had introduced him to her sister.

Ricardo's nickname for Sahar was "Natasha." That's what she told him her name was when they first met and it was some time before she revealed her true name.

One time he, too, noticed bruises on Sahar's leg and arm. She said she had fallen at school but Ricardo wasn't buying her story. He thought the marks looked like they had been produced by a blow — "like when somebody hits you." Sahar never told Ricardo the same stories of abuse she had told her teachers. All he knew was that their relationship had to be a secret, owing, he thought, to their religious differences.

Their time together was also limited by the curfews Sahar's parents had placed on their children. She was frustrated and hatched a plan with Ricardo to run away to Honduras and live with his family — even though he realized his Catholic parents would be as upset about his marrying a Muslim as Sahar's would be about her seeing a Catholic.

One person who learned of the depth of Sahar's concern about her parents was Ricardo's aunt, Erma Medina. For quite a while, Medina also believed Sahar's name was Natasha, until the girl told her otherwise. She wanted to know more about this beautiful young woman her nephew was dating, and one day she asked Sahar about her home life.

Sahar told Medina that "the day her parents knew about her relationship with Ricardo she would be a dead woman. She told me several times. All the time she was talking to me, she was serious."

In April 2009, at a birthday gathering with Ricardo's family, Sahar had revealed she was going to tell her parents about her boyfriend and their plan to move to Honduras. Medina was asked in court why Sahar would do so, knowing it would cause serious trouble for her. "Because she loved Ricardo," the aunt replied. "She told me she would love him until death."

There was a particularly close call one day as the couple was sitting in a restaurant with a girlfriend of Sahar's. In walked Sahar's younger brother, whose identity cannot be revealed due to a court publication ban.

"I was embracing Sahar," Ricardo recalled. "When she saw he was coming she said to stop embracing her because this boy didn't know about our relationship. He arrived and he started to ask if Sahar was my girlfriend. Later I told him she wasn't my girlfriend — that we just met."

Sahar looked scared. Her girlfriend told the brother that Ricardo was her boyfriend, not Sahar's. But that wasn't good enough. The boy was suspicious — and persistent.

"He told me I had to prove it," said Ricardo, who described him as "really pressing, like a kid that needs candy."

"I had to grab the other girl and kiss her in front of him."

There was some normalcy when the two couples — Sahar and Ricardo, Zainab and Ammar — double-dated, occasionally going out to a movie or to a restaurant. One time, Sahar even introduced Ricardo to Geeti at school as her boyfriend. "She was normal. She didn't say anything," said Ricardo of the little sister.

In court on November 29, 2011, Ricardo Sanchez was asked to read a sampling of the love texts he had sent to Sahar in the days and weeks before her death. They were recovered from Sahar's phone that was found in the Nissan Sentra after it was lifted from the bottom of the Rideau Canal.

Ricardo sent one of the texts to her just two days before she set out on the family trip. "The only thing I would wish in this world is to have you every day of my life. The world is very large and one day I could even lose you," the young man read in Spanish. "But in this world as large as it is there's a small heart and you can never get lost in that one heart because it's only for you, my love."

Ricardo was unable to read the entire message in the hushed courtroom without crying and stopping to control his emotions. Not a sound could be heard but the young man's quiet voice.

In the darkness of the back seat of the Nissan the night of June 29, as they drove toward home along Highway 401, Sahar texted Ricardo to say she was with Rona, Zainab, and Geeti. They were just two or three hours away from Montreal but the decision had been made to stop at Kingston for the night.

"Their father had told them they were gonna stop at a hotel because they were tired," Ricardo testified. "All she said was that she found it very strange they were in that car and their father was in a different car."

Zainab's engagement…

LATIF Hyderi made his courtesy phone call to Mohammad Shafia in Dubai in May 2009 — the father of the prospective groom paying his respects to the father of the bride and seeking permission to go ahead with the marriage arrangement. Everything seemed to be going well on the Montreal end. Tooba and Hamed were on board. The young people themselves seemed content. Hussain had a good management job at a Montreal grocery store. He could provide for Zainab. But what Latif heard over the phone from Dubai unnerved him.

"I [had] asked her hand for Hussain and they agreed. We are waiting for your [Mohammad's] opinion," Latif recalled telling Shafia. "He said, 'Just wait until I come.' He was angry."

Shafia, though indicating he was agreeable to the marriage, demanded that there be no contact between Zainab and Hussain for now.

Latif was stung. "Your honour is my honour," he pointed out to Shafia. His son was willing to marry Zainab who had shamed the family with her broken marriage to Ammar. Latif and his family, in other words, were doing Shafia a favour.

Shafia was preoccupied with Zainab's behaviour. Latif couldn't believe what he heard next. "He said, 'If I was there, I would have killed her.'"

Latif was perplexed. "Why do you want to do that? She is a child," he told Shafia. "Children make mistakes. Don't show yourself [to be] that angry. Your problem is solved." One way of restoring honour¹ to the family is by marrying the "offending" woman off. The marriage is supposed to be with the person who violated her honour — even if she has been raped by him — but marrying the woman to someone else is an acceptable alternative.

According to Latif, Shafia could not be appeased. When Latif persisted in seeking permission for the marriage arrangement, Shafia accused the older man of trying to get at his wealth through marriage.

"I said, 'I have no eyes for your money. It's just for the humanity of this girl and the honour of this girl,'" Latif replied.

According to Latif's account, Shafia abruptly hung up the phone. They never talked again about the matter.

"I was worried why Shafia … he's talking this way," Latif said.

Latif decided to go to Tooba's brother, Ahmed Javid, who lived in the same area of Montreal. Ahmed arranged for Tooba to come to his house for a meeting with Latif. Latif insisted that she come alone. He felt biased information was getting to Shafia. "Shafia used to get the message very fast," he said. "That's why I wanted to talk to Tooba alone. I had suspicion of Hamed."

When Hamed appeared for the meeting with his mother, Latif decided to tackle the problem head-on. He sat Hamed down on the verandah for a talk. You're really a good boy, he told Hamad, but your family is fixed on too many old traditions. He also knew that Hamed had too much control over the girls, including Zainab, who was older than her brother. "You have five sisters," Latif said. "You should make yourself friends to your sisters. You should work with your sister[s] like a close friend.