Honour on Trial by Paul Schliesmann Read Free Book Online Page B

another wife, what can I do?'"
    Rona offered to share her home with another wife so that Shafia could have children. He accepted this and insisted he would continue to pay for fertility treatments. Then she learned that Shafia had been quietly making arrangements with Tooba's brother-in-law for a second marriage.
    The second wedding was also held at the Intercontinental. The photos of the day are unusual by Western standards: Mohammad, serious-looking in a dark suit, his hair and moustache thick and black, is flanked by his first wife on his left arm, and his new bride, Tooba, resplendent in a white gown, on his right. They look stiff and awkward on what should have been a day of celebration.
    Just three months after this second marriage, Tooba discovered she was pregnant. They travelled to India where Zainab was born on September 9, 1989. Rona was treated once more for her infertility, but the doctor this time said Rona would need surgery to assist with pregnancy. But the family had to return to Afghanistan so the procedure was never performed. Just over a year after Zainab's birth, Hamed was born, on December 31, 1990, and Rona's importance in the household began to rapidly diminish.
    Her position was further weakened by an unfortunate incident that took place shortly after Hamed was born. The family was lounging on the rooftop of their home. Rona was holding baby Hamed when she stood up and tripped. Both Rona and Hamed were injured, the baby requiring hospital treatment, some of it provided by Mohammad's brother, a doctor and medical professor in Kabul. Mohammad was livid, though Rona protested that it was an accident and she had been hurt, too.
    "I suffered so much until his son got well again that I could not even think about my own condition," Rona writes. "[My husband] did not treat me and my family decently until Hamed was well again."
    By this time, Tooba was pregnant with her third child, Sahar. Despite Rona's bleak descriptions of her life in the polygamous arrangement, there was one bright spot. Out of the blue, Tooba offered to give the baby she was carrying to Rona to raise as her own. This is a custom in some Afghan households where one wife is unable to have children. Rona was delighted and took over the care of Sahar when the baby was just 40 days old.
    They would be together 17 years later in the back seat of the Nissan Sentra at the bottom of the Rideau Canal — inseparable victims of a horrible crime.

Nomadic life…
    IN 1992, the Shafias fled Afghanistan and the conservative mujahideen regime that had taken Kabul during the civil war. With their three children and Rona in tow, Mohammad and Tooba crossed the border into Pakistan. They would stay there for the next four years.
    According to Mohammad, he never felt his family was safe in Pakistan because of Pakistani support for the Taliban. By 1995, a repressive Taliban regime was in power in Kabul, and "liberal" people like his Afghan family were easy targets for persecution. Children were being kidnapped and held for ransom. Shafia was a wealthy man and had reason to fear such a thing.
    They moved to Dubai in 1996, where Shafia's electronics business flourished. He became the top Panasonics dealer in the country, one time receiving a $50,000 bonus from the parent corporation. Shafia still held property and stocks in Afghanistan and the family remained prosperous — so much so that in 2008, after he had been in Canada for a year, he sold one of his two houses in Kabul for $900,000.
    In 2000, he decided to try his fortune in New Zealand. The Shafias applied for visas but Rona's didn't clear for medical reasons. At the prompting of one of Shafia's business associates, they applied instead to Australia and were successful. What happened in Australia and why the Shafias left after a year is the subject of conflicting stories. Rona claims in her diary that the Australian government declared Shafia undesirable — that he hadn't created any wealth