by SDAMatt2a on Jan 9, 2012
To borrow from Tooba Mohammad Yahya, by the time she finally finished talking and the day was blessedly over, everyone's heart was bleeding.
Well, for sure their ears were anyway.
As the Shafia murder trial resumed here Monday after a three-week break, it was to see Ms. Yahya take the witness stand to monologue in her own defence.
Over almost four hours of testimony, during which she frequently spoke of her bleeding heart or someone else's -- this is purportedly a common Afghan expression meant to convey emotional pain or upset — she barely paused for breath.
That was the day that a black Nissan was fished out of the locks at Kingston Mills, just outside this eastern Ontario city, with four female bodies in it -- those of sisters Zainab, Sahar and Geeti Shafia, respectively 19, 17 and 13, and 52-year-old Rona Amir Mohammad, Mr. Shafia's other wife.
It was in Montreal the sprawling clan -- Mr. Shafia, the two wives and Ms. Yahya's seven children -- settled when they immigrated to Canada in 2007 after stints in Pakistan, Dubai and Australia. They left their native Afghanistan in 1992.
All three are pleading not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder.
Ms. Yahya is the second of the accused trio to take the stand, following her 59-year-old husband there. His defence was completed just before court broke for the Christmas holidays.
Her version of events was much the same as her husband's: But for the normal minor problems of any family, they lived in in a veritable state of bliss. She and Ms. Amir, she said, got along swimmingly, even though Ms. Amir by any measure was in a rather tough position, being the barren older wife, in the country illegally (Mr. Shafia had described her essentially as a domestic servant on his immigration declaration), the only Sunni Muslim in a family of Shia Muslims (Ms. Yahya said there is "no difference" in the two major denominations of Islam, which surely will come as news in some parts of the world) and apparently denied Mr. Shafia's sexual favours.
Her lawyer David Crowe once asked her with great delicacy, as though Ms. Yahya were a creature of unimaginable refinement, "What nighttime arrangements for sleeping were there?"
Once she married him, Ms. Yahya replied serenely, "I didn't see Shafie [the family endearment for the master of the house] to sleep with Rona or to have any husband/wife relationship with her."
Ms. Amir railed about this in her diary, which is an exhibit at trial, but according to Ms. Yahya, the three got along like a house on fire but for normal human quarrels, which passed quickly.
Just as easily did she dismiss accounts Ontario Superior Court Judge Robert Maranger and the jurors have heard from a dozen witnesses, most of them teachers or officials from the deceased girls' school, of the suffocating restrictions put upon the teens by their parents.
These witnesses painted a picture of the dead girls as having lived in fear of their father's wrath, and sometimes Hamed's, and of a dysfunctional household where siblings spied on one another.
And certainly, it is not in dispute that months before her death, Zainab ran away from home and lived for about two weeks in a shelter or that she defied her father and insisted on marrying a Pakistani boy, then changed her mind and agreed to annul the marriage the same day; or that Sahar and Geeti were considered by their teachers as miserably unhappy and frightened girls desperate to get out of the house, or that school officials were so concerned they twice called in Quebec child-welfare authorities.
Yet Ms. Yahya, like Mr. Shafia before her, insisted all was well in the house, that they were a liberal family who valued education and didn't impose the hijab on the girls.
Well, for sure their ears were anyway.
As the Shafia murder trial resumed here Monday after a three-week break, it was to see Ms. Yahya take the witness stand to monologue in her own defence.
Over almost four hours of testimony, during which she frequently spoke of her bleeding heart or someone else's -- this is purportedly a common Afghan expression meant to convey emotional pain or upset — she barely paused for breath.
That was the day that a black Nissan was fished out of the locks at Kingston Mills, just outside this eastern Ontario city, with four female bodies in it -- those of sisters Zainab, Sahar and Geeti Shafia, respectively 19, 17 and 13, and 52-year-old Rona Amir Mohammad, Mr. Shafia's other wife.
It was in Montreal the sprawling clan -- Mr. Shafia, the two wives and Ms. Yahya's seven children -- settled when they immigrated to Canada in 2007 after stints in Pakistan, Dubai and Australia. They left their native Afghanistan in 1992.
All three are pleading not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder.
Ms. Yahya is the second of the accused trio to take the stand, following her 59-year-old husband there. His defence was completed just before court broke for the Christmas holidays.
Her version of events was much the same as her husband's: But for the normal minor problems of any family, they lived in in a veritable state of bliss. She and Ms. Amir, she said, got along swimmingly, even though Ms. Amir by any measure was in a rather tough position, being the barren older wife, in the country illegally (Mr. Shafia had described her essentially as a domestic servant on his immigration declaration), the only Sunni Muslim in a family of Shia Muslims (Ms. Yahya said there is "no difference" in the two major denominations of Islam, which surely will come as news in some parts of the world) and apparently denied Mr. Shafia's sexual favours.
Her lawyer David Crowe once asked her with great delicacy, as though Ms. Yahya were a creature of unimaginable refinement, "What nighttime arrangements for sleeping were there?"
Once she married him, Ms. Yahya replied serenely, "I didn't see Shafie [the family endearment for the master of the house] to sleep with Rona or to have any husband/wife relationship with her."
Ms. Amir railed about this in her diary, which is an exhibit at trial, but according to Ms. Yahya, the three got along like a house on fire but for normal human quarrels, which passed quickly.
Just as easily did she dismiss accounts Ontario Superior Court Judge Robert Maranger and the jurors have heard from a dozen witnesses, most of them teachers or officials from the deceased girls' school, of the suffocating restrictions put upon the teens by their parents.
These witnesses painted a picture of the dead girls as having lived in fear of their father's wrath, and sometimes Hamed's, and of a dysfunctional household where siblings spied on one another.
And certainly, it is not in dispute that months before her death, Zainab ran away from home and lived for about two weeks in a shelter or that she defied her father and insisted on marrying a Pakistani boy, then changed her mind and agreed to annul the marriage the same day; or that Sahar and Geeti were considered by their teachers as miserably unhappy and frightened girls desperate to get out of the house, or that school officials were so concerned they twice called in Quebec child-welfare authorities.
Yet Ms. Yahya, like Mr. Shafia before her, insisted all was well in the house, that they were a liberal family who valued education and didn't impose the hijab on the girls.
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