December 2008
Girl, Interrupted
Aqsa Parvez had a choice: wear a hijab to please her devout family or take it off and be like her friends. She paid for her decision with her life. When her father and brother were charged with her murder, it raised the spectre of religious zealotry in the suburbs. Is this the price of multiculturalism?
Over the fall of 2007, Aqsa Parvez shuttled between friends' houses and youth shelters. She was afraid to go home. Her father, Muhammad, was enraged because she refused to obey his rules. He swore he would kill her.
On the morning of December 10, Aqsa huddled in a Mississauga bus shelter with another Grade 11 student, a girl she had been staying with for the past couple of days. They had plenty of time to make it to their first class at Apple wood Heights Secondary School.
As they waited, Aqsa's 26-year-old brother Waqas, a tow-truck driver, showed up at the bus stop. He said that she should come home and get a fresh change of clothes if she was going to be staying elsewhere. Aqsa hesitated, then got into his car.
Less than an hour later, Muhammad Parvez phoned 911 and told the dispatcher that he had killed his daughter. Within minutes, police and paramedics arrived at 5363 Longhorn Trail, a winding suburban street near Eglinton and Hurontario, and found Aqsa unconscious in her bedroom. The 16-year-old wasn't breathing. The para medics started CPR, found a faint pulse, and rushed her to Credit Valley Hospital, 10 minutes west. A few hours later, she was transferred to SickKids and put on life support. She died just after 10 that evening. The official cause was "neck compression"—strangulation.
On the morning of December 10, Aqsa huddled in a Mississauga bus shelter with another Grade 11 student, a girl she had been staying with for the past couple of days. They had plenty of time to make it to their first class at Apple wood Heights Secondary School.
As they waited, Aqsa's 26-year-old brother Waqas, a tow-truck driver, showed up at the bus stop. He said that she should come home and get a fresh change of clothes if she was going to be staying elsewhere. Aqsa hesitated, then got into his car.
Less than an hour later, Muhammad Parvez phoned 911 and told the dispatcher that he had killed his daughter. Within minutes, police and paramedics arrived at 5363 Longhorn Trail, a winding suburban street near Eglinton and Hurontario, and found Aqsa unconscious in her bedroom. The 16-year-old wasn't breathing. The para medics started CPR, found a faint pulse, and rushed her to Credit Valley Hospital, 10 minutes west. A few hours later, she was transferred to SickKids and put on life support. She died just after 10 that evening. The official cause was "neck compression"—strangulation
In the days following her death, Aqsa's story was widely reported in the Canadian media as well as on CNN and the BBC. Was her murder an honour killing or simply a gruesome case of domestic violence? Worldwide, an estimated 5,000 women die every year in honour killings—murders deemed excusable to protect a family's reputation—many of them in Pakistan, where the Parvez family had emigrated from.
Canada prides itself on its multiculturalism and, to varying degrees of success, condemns institutionalized patriarchy. But there is growing concern that recent waves of Muslim immigrants aren't integrating, or embracing our liberal values. Aqsa's death—coming in the wake of debates about the acceptability of sharia law, disputes over young girls wearing hijabs at soccer games, and the arrest of the Toronto 18—stoked fears about religious zealotry in our midst. Is it possible that Toronto has become too tolerant of cultural differences?
When police arrived in answer to his 911 call, Aqsa's father, who worked as a cab driver, was arrested and charged with second degree murder. Waqas was charged with obstruction. The charges against both men were changed to first degree murder in June, after police decided her death was a planned and deliberate act.
Canada prides itself on its multiculturalism and, to varying degrees of success, condemns institutionalized patriarchy. But there is growing concern that recent waves of Muslim immigrants aren't integrating, or embracing our liberal values. Aqsa's death—coming in the wake of debates about the acceptability of sharia law, disputes over young girls wearing hijabs at soccer games, and the arrest of the Toronto 18—stoked fears about religious zealotry in our midst. Is it possible that Toronto has become too tolerant of cultural differences?
When police arrived in answer to his 911 call, Aqsa's father, who worked as a cab driver, was arrested and charged with second degree murder. Waqas was charged with obstruction. The charges against both men were changed to first degree murder in June, after police decided her death was a planned and deliberate act.
The Parvez men are being held in a cellblock at Maple hurst Detention Centre in Milton. They will be tried together at the Brampton courthouse sometime next year. If convicted, they face automatic life sentences without the possibility of parole for 25 years. Aqsa's mother and the rest of the Parvez family will likely be called as material witnesses.
At the southern end of Hurontario Street, Mississauga's main drag, there's a stretch of squat, low-income housing where many new Muslim immigrants settle. As you drive north, you see stores offering halal meat, instant passport photos, Thai food and Pakistani takeout. Dental and legal clinics advertise in Perso-Arabic script. By the time you hit Burnhamthorpe Road, the strip malls have been replaced by green glass condos and ele gant medical clinics. East and west of Hurontario are expensive subdivisions with garage-fronted homes, most of them less than a decade old. This is where the Parvez family lived.
Mississauga's population has tripled in the past 30 years. Today, there are more than 700,000 people living in the country's sixth largest city, and half of them are visible minorities. South Asians outnumber the second largest visible minority by almost three to one. They form what StatsCan calls an "ethnic enclave." Slightly more than half of all minority households don't speak English at home. The city's planners expect these numbers to rise steadily over the next two decades.
Applewood Heights is a typical Mississauga public high school at the grittier, eastern edge of the city. There are just over 1,100 students, and nearly half speak a first language other than English. Vietnamese is the most common non-English language, followed by Urdu, the language spoken by the Parvez family. Ebonie Mitchell and Ashley Garbutt met Aqsa in Grade 9 and were two of her best friends at school. On the Friday before Aqsa was murdered, Ebonie shared a pizza lunch with her, then headed off to their last class. On Sunday night, just hours away from her death, Aqsa talked with Ashley on the phone about how she was still scared to go home. Before she hung up, Ashley told her to be careful and that she loved her.
At the southern end of Hurontario Street, Mississauga's main drag, there's a stretch of squat, low-income housing where many new Muslim immigrants settle. As you drive north, you see stores offering halal meat, instant passport photos, Thai food and Pakistani takeout. Dental and legal clinics advertise in Perso-Arabic script. By the time you hit Burnhamthorpe Road, the strip malls have been replaced by green glass condos and ele gant medical clinics. East and west of Hurontario are expensive subdivisions with garage-fronted homes, most of them less than a decade old. This is where the Parvez family lived.
Mississauga's population has tripled in the past 30 years. Today, there are more than 700,000 people living in the country's sixth largest city, and half of them are visible minorities. South Asians outnumber the second largest visible minority by almost three to one. They form what StatsCan calls an "ethnic enclave." Slightly more than half of all minority households don't speak English at home. The city's planners expect these numbers to rise steadily over the next two decades.
Applewood Heights is a typical Mississauga public high school at the grittier, eastern edge of the city. There are just over 1,100 students, and nearly half speak a first language other than English. Vietnamese is the most common non-English language, followed by Urdu, the language spoken by the Parvez family. Ebonie Mitchell and Ashley Garbutt met Aqsa in Grade 9 and were two of her best friends at school. On the Friday before Aqsa was murdered, Ebonie shared a pizza lunch with her, then headed off to their last class. On Sunday night, just hours away from her death, Aqsa talked with Ashley on the phone about how she was still scared to go home. Before she hung up, Ashley told her to be careful and that she loved her.
Over the previous year, the girls had become a tight trio. Most days it was Ebonie, Ashley and Aqsa walking down the hall together, a black, white and brown snapshot of Applewood Heights. Before they became friends, they knew Aqsa as a quiet girl who dressed like her older sister, in plain, loose-fitting pants, non descript tops and a hijab. To Ebonie and Ashley, she was just another South Asian girl, and there were lots of those at Applewood.
Ebonie is 17 years old, barely five feet tall and probably doesn't weigh 100 pounds. She has a soft voice and tiny teeth, but if you look through her smile, you'll see some hardness, too. When I met her this past summer, she explained that she wasn't living at home because she'd been bucking her mother's rules. Like Aqsa in her last year, Ebonie was bouncing from one friend's couch to another and dreaming about getting a place of her own with a couple of other girls. She was working the summer at Ontario Place for mini mum wage, catching kids that came sailing down the water park slide and praying for thunderstorms so she could go home early. She was heading into her last year of high school and had no plans beyond graduation.
Ebonie is 17 years old, barely five feet tall and probably doesn't weigh 100 pounds. She has a soft voice and tiny teeth, but if you look through her smile, you'll see some hardness, too. When I met her this past summer, she explained that she wasn't living at home because she'd been bucking her mother's rules. Like Aqsa in her last year, Ebonie was bouncing from one friend's couch to another and dreaming about getting a place of her own with a couple of other girls. She was working the summer at Ontario Place for mini mum wage, catching kids that came sailing down the water park slide and praying for thunderstorms so she could go home early. She was heading into her last year of high school and had no plans beyond graduation.
It was during gym class in Grade 10 that Ebonie saw Aqsa's personality begin to evolve. "We were changing one day when we saw her hair," she remembers. "It was long and beautiful, and everybody was like, 'Oh, your hair is so beautiful. Why don't you show it off?' And she said, 'I'm not allowed to, but I wish I could.' Then, like less than a week later, she was taking the hijab off." This opened the door to hoodies, tight-fitting jeans and fights with her family. According to Ebonie, Aqsa's mother agreed to buy Western clothes for her on the condition that she also wear her hijab. "But as soon as she started wearing our clothes, she wanted more freedom," Ebonie says. "After school she was supposed to go straight home, but she started to stay out later and hang out with us. Her father was angry and told her, 'Black people do bad things and they'll change you.' " Ebonie shrugs her shoulders and then presses her lips together: "We didn't force her. She knew what she wanted to do." Every school has its story, and for Grade 10 and half of Grade 11, Aqsa Parvez was the story at Applewood. Ebonie says other students were getting into Aqsa's business and telling her what she should and shouldn't do. There were boys who would tell her she should put her scarf back on, that she was disrespecting her family and culture. They weren't even Muslim, Ebonie tells me, they were "just stupid." On the flip side, there were kids who would keep watch for Aqsa and warn her if her father or brother showed up at school to check on her, allowing her to race to her locker and put her hijab back on. And there were a few girls who confronted Aqsa's more conservative older sister in the bathroom, accusing her of having ratted out her own sister for not following her family's rules. But even without the drama, Aqsa was captivating. Ashley laughs when she remembers how clueless Aqsa could be, how she didn't understand that she should be discreet about breaking rules. She'd shout down the hall, "Hey Ashley, I'm skipping history. Wanna come?" Her friends talk about how energetic she was and the wild crush she had on a boy named James; he liked her back, but not enough to step into the craziness of her family situation. To her friends, there was something endearing about Aqsa's naked attempts to fit in. The trio cut classes to go to the mall, swapped clothes and talked about fashion. Ebonie and Ashley schooled Aqsa on the finer points of Western fashion, coaching her to ease up on the cleavage a little so no one would call her a slut. Aqsa showed her friends some traditional Indian dances that Ebonie said looked like a cool mixture of hip hop and Bollywood. [To read the rest of the story, click here: http://www.torontolife.com/features/girl-interrupted/ ]