Hope and Despair

by Monia Mazigh

  For my children, Barâa and Houd

  Verily, along with every hardship is relief.

  THE QUR’AN, CHAPTER 94-AL-SHARH [SOLACE], VERSE 6

  Contents

  Foreword

  1

  Tunisia

  2

  Back in Canada

  3

  The Battle Begins

  4

  The Silence of Words

  5

  Politicians Get Involved

  6

  Torture and Lies

  7

  Interest Grows

  8

  Home at Last

  9

  Doubts and Hopes

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  FOREWORD

  My decision to write a book has not been easy. First, while my life has become public and people recognize me in the street, I’m still a shy person who deeply values her privacy. To speak about oneself, for me, means in a way revealing oneself to others, means something like standing naked in the town square, and I have always before refused to get involved in this dangerous exercise.

  Another thing that has held me back until now is my children. I have always thought that writing a book would mean putting not only my own life on view but also my children’s lives. Later on, would they agree with the choice I had made? They might be critical, asking: Why didn’t you simply turn this painful page? Why write a book and lay out our lives for the world to see? These possible questions always worried me.

  But, pondering all this, I came to the conclusion that writing a book would in a way be assembling a family album, like making a collection of photographs of a certain stage of our lives. It’s important for my children to know how we lived together while their father was in prison. When they grow up, they will understand better what happened. I hope that this book will help answer their questions, and even if they don’t agree with my choice, at least they’ll be able to read about this distressing period of their lives and know that their mother wrote the story, not someone else.

  I have continued to work since the beginning of the Maher Arar affair. I have divided my life between work and my family for the last five years, with practically no respite in which to relive the facts and digest all that has happened to us. Now, in order to devote more time to writing, of my own volition I have left my job as assistant professor at Thompson Rivers University.

  Writing is helping me to accept my new life. It’s a remedy for the speed and strength of the change that has affected our lives. When there’s a new birth in a family, it takes months for all the family’s members to adapt to the new routine. When one of the parents loses his or her job, it takes months, sometimes years, for the whole family to recover from the psychological and financial pressures of such a loss. In my own case, in the last five years I have seen my husband disappear in circumstances akin to a thriller novel, then reappear, but changed forever. I have seen myself become a single mother living on welfare, then, very recently since the compensation, considered by people around me to be an exceedingly rich woman. I have seen myself change status from victim and wife of a presumed terrorist to modern-day heroine of the likes even of Laura Secord. All these fast and volatile changes have affected not only me personally but also my husband and my children; none of us have escaped untouched. By writing, I hope to give myself an opportunity to “taste” the flavours of these changes, reflect on them, and finally come to accept them. Although I’m not suffering from any illness, this will be a process of healing and recovery.

  One day I was appearing as a witness regarding my husband’s case before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs. I had prepared a page that I was to deliver before the parliamentarians. I was nervous and there were a lot of journalists there that day. I knew certain of the Members of Parliament present, like Alexa McDonough, Marlene Catterall, and Irwin Cotler, but most of the others were strangers. I was telling myself that I must deliver that page from memory. I didn’t know that even the most seasoned bureaucrats habitually read their notes prepared in advance. I wanted to do my best. For me, it was an opportunity to plead my husband’s case before these MPs, and I did not in any way want to blow this chance.

  When the time came, I began to speak slowly; I was no longer nervous, I had become calm, but suddenly, halfway through, my tears began to fall. I couldn’t stop them. I wanted to impress the MPs with my courage, and my body betrayed me. I remember Marlene Catterall (the Member of Parliament for my riding) telling me later that day that this was the first time she had ever seen me cry, and it was true, because I had never cried in public, or wept to draw sympathy. It was as if my tears had been dried up or imprisoned, and there, suddenly, in front of all the Members of Parliament, journalists, and parliamentary clerks, they came out as though set free, to show everyone that above all I was a human being.

  This book is by no means a glorification of what I accomplished in the space of a year, or a dry recitation of facts. It’s just a story, but a true story for which I have done my best to remember dates, names, and words spoken. My notebook has helped me throughout to recall certain occasions and certain incidents. Sometimes it has been enough to see someone’s name scribbled in tiny letters in some out-of-the-way corner of that notebook to remind me of the meeting that followed or the telephone call I placed. When my memory failed me, I would run to the newspaper clippings I had kept or the letters and emails I had written or received. Then, uncannily, my scattered or tangled memories would come together and I could continue writing my story.

  I was lonely through all of this year, not only with the obvious loneliness of being without my husband, but most of all feeling alone in this battle against gigantean foes. I would very often feel despair winning the upper hand. But then, softly at first, a glimmer of hope would shine through, grow, then almost force itself upon me, making me more determined than ever to win the battle. This is why I have given this book the title Hope and Despair.

  In these pages I have named individuals and organizations who have helped me in my struggle, and to them I shall be eternally, infinitely grateful. They are not alone, however. Other individuals and organizations, some of whom I know and many I don’t, have also helped me in their own ways: with their prayers, their presence, their letters and emails, the kindness or encouragement in their eyes; they will be in my heart and my thoughts forever.

  — 1 —

  TUNISIA

  the end of the dream …

  SEPTEMBER 25, 2002. It was a hot, humid, heavy September day. I woke up that morning with Houd beside me. I had taken him from his little bed just before dawn and nursed him; he had gone straight back to sleep. Now he was snoring gently, content to be close to me. I looked at this plump, healthy eight-month-old boy and felt both happy and tired. Houd had been a colicky baby since he was born in Ottawa. He would cry almost constantly for no apparent reason. Things were better now, but he had become very attached to me, maybe too attached. I couldn’t leave him for long with his father; he would soon start to cry and want me there with him. Barâa, our five-and-a-half-year-old daughter, was sleeping peacefully in the bed on the other side of the room. There was a faint smile on her lips, and her long hair framed her round face like a halo. The sounds of me moving around were sure to waken her.

  Our family’s sleeping quarters, which had been my parents’ bedroom, reminded me of a hotel room with its three beds. Maher was already up and about, packing in the next bedroom, which had been mine from the age of nine until I was twenty-one. I loved the little white room. As a teenager and then a young woman, I had never dreamed that my own children and my husband would one day be sleeping within the same walls that had seen me grow up.

  After almost ten years
away, I’d arrived last June to spend my summer vacation in Tunisia. I found a country that had changed, far different from the one I’d left to emigrate to Canada. Now the urban landscape seemed overwhelmed by freeways, interchanges, and overpasses. Small cars, which everyone called “the people’s car,” filled the main streets and the narrow lanes. Tunis “the green,” as it once was known, looked like a metropolis, with its endless traffic jams and the stifling summer-long heat that would often leave me cloistered behind the walls of my little room. But most of all, the people had changed. I couldn’t recognize anyone: ten years is a long time. My schoolmates and university friends were working now. Some had emigrated to France or the United States; others were simply caught up in their family or professional lives. When I took my children out on short expeditions or for a stroll, I would look into people’s eyes in the hope of recognizing an old friend, an acquaintance, a familiar face. But I found no one but strangers. As people rarely pushed their babies in strollers on the narrow sidewalks of Tunis, I was an object of curiosity. All around me cars sped by, horns blaring. It didn’t take me long to realize this was not the best thing to do.

  Today, Maher was returning to Canada. Philippe, his former colleague at The MathWorks, had called him a few weeks earlier to tell him there was a real possibility of a contract. Maher was delighted; he didn’t want to miss the opportunity to get back into his business. The last two years had been rough for the high-tech sector: the euphoria of the 1990s was over. The astronomical profits evaporated and jobs vanished. The wave of recruitment had carried us along to Ottawa; we had moved there from Montreal in late 1997. Maher had just completed his master’s degree in communications and had found a job as an engineer in his field. We settled in Bayshore, like so many other Indian, Chinese, and Arab immigrant families. At the time, Bayshore was a modest middle-class suburban neighbourhood in Ottawa’s west end. Rents were still low. I had always lived close to downtown, so for me our move was one of the worst things that could have happened. In Montreal, I had lived in Côte-des-Neiges, I was close to the university, there were shops nearby, I could go to my classes by bus. I loved going into shops that sold exotic products and discovering other people, other cultures, other smells. In Bayshore, all the houses around us were the same. The husbands left in the morning to go to work for Nortel, NewBridge, and other trendy companies, while the women stayed home or formed little groups according to their race and language, a segregation they often seemed unaware of. However, I gradually adopted Bayshore; slowly I adapted to the new suburban lifestyle. My own studies kept me busy, and the multitude of activities available to young families like ours helped me change my mind.

  Maher worked hard. He loved what he was doing. Sometimes he would work on weekends. His dream was to develop a high-tech product of his own, to become a successful businessman. We were almost the same age, we were both immigrants, and we had both come to Canada to build a better future. But each of us had an ideal. I was born in Tunisia; Maher in Syria. Tunisia is part of the Maghreb, the west of the Arab world, while Syria is at the very heart of the Machrek, the “east.” Two Arab, Muslim, and Mediterranean countries so different politically and economically. My homeland is open to the world. Its pro-Western policies and liberal economic outlook have won the recognition and appreciation of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. I never experienced bread or sugar shortages, or midsummer blackouts. I grew up watching Italian TV, which all households could receive, and sometimes also French TV. The Tunisian intellectual elite was influenced by French universities; French was spoken almost everywhere. The women enjoyed rights of which their sisters in other Arab countries couldn’t even dream. Maher had known nothing of such openness. Syria was a country at war with Israel. Its economy, cut off from international loans, was primitive by comparison. Hafez al-Assad, the Syrian president-for-life, had rejected almost all attempts at peace negotiations in the region. Sometimes when we were feeling homesick, Maher would tell me about the years of food rationing, blackouts, and the patriotic and nationalistic songs and slogans at school. Syria’s intellectual elite looked to other Arab countries such as Egypt and Iraq. At the universities, in business, and in social settings, people spoke Arabic.

  But for all the differences, both of us had lived under repressive political regimes. Before coming to Canada, we had both, in our own ways, dreamed of freedom and emancipation. Maher had arrived in Canada with his parents at age seventeen and had never been back. His whole family had settled in Montreal; he was the youngest in a family of six boys and one girl. None of his brothers or sister had gone on to more advanced studies. But Maher had other plans: he wanted to study, to go far in life. He didn’t want to go back to Syria for his compulsory two-year military service; he didn’t want to live in a country where one’s religious practices could be a cause for suspicion and where intelligence agencies spied on everything people did, particularly the younger generation.

  On that September day, Maher, at age thirty-two, was keen to seize the opportunity to restart the consulting firm that had been unsuccessfully seeking contracts for months. My own feelings were mixed. On the one hand, I wanted Maher to regain his confidence in his chosen field; on the other, I didn’t want to remain alone in Tunisia with Barâa and Houd. And as Houd’s temporary passport had expired, we couldn’t all travel together. We had decided that Maher would take Houd’s passport with him. He put it in one of his suitcases, along with his personal effects, saying, “I’ll renew his passport in Ottawa, it will be faster.” The three of us would then be able to leave for Ottawa a month later. We were already looking forward to our new future. Our vacation in Tunisia had become rather long and monotonous; I wanted Barâa to start school in Canada.

  Two days before, we had gone to the supermarket that had recently opened in my parents’ neighbourhood. Maher wanted to buy some small gifts for his mother and our friends in Canada. We bought some beautiful tea glasses, decorated with gold oriental motifs. Tunisians love to drink mint tea with their meals, the kind served in decorative glasses such as these. Because they were fragile, he now put them in his small black American Tourister carry-on bag, into which he also put a light jacket, his shoes, and some underwear. I helped him finish packing his other things in the blue suitcase. Barâa was now awake; she seemed sad to see her father’s luggage almost packed, but she soon slipped away to play in the garden. Houd looked on with his mischievous eyes, not understanding what was going on around him.

  Maher’s flight was scheduled for the afternoon. In the course of his many trips to the United States as a MathWorks engineer, he had accumulated thousands of Air Miles with American Airlines. This trip he intended to cash them in. But there were no American Airlines flights from Tunisia, a former French colony. He would have to fly to Europe and from there to the United States before continuing on to Montreal, where we had left our car. From Montreal, it was a short drive to Ottawa. So he had a long journey ahead of him. Never, even for a minute, as I stood there with him that September morning, surrounded by suitcases and personal belongings, did I dream that I was not going to see him again for more than a year. Houd was sometimes in my arms, sometimes trying to crawl on the floor; Barâa had gone outside into the garden again to pick some bitingly sour grapes, which she deposited in an old basket and pretended to sell at the weekly street market.

  It was almost 11:00 a.m. The sun was now high in the sky. I was in the old kitchen of our family house, getting lunch ready. But my heart was not in it; I wanted to finish as fast as I could, then go and lie down in the bedroom in hopes of finding a little coolness behind the closed blue shutters. I could feel the sweat trickling down my back. Houd was beginning to whimper and I knew he would soon start to cry; then I would have to drop everything and take him in my arms to soothe him. Maher was checking his messages on the computer one last time. He was ready. His flight would take him from Tunis to Zurich, where he would stay overnight. The next morning, he would board American Airlines Flight AA65 to J
FK, and then on to Montreal.

  “I’ll call you tomorrow from my mother’s, from Montreal. I should be there around seven o’clock in the evening, one o’clock in the morning Tunis time. You’ll be awake, won’t you?”

  “All right,” I replied, “I’ll be expecting your call.”

  Maher went to the small bedroom, picked up his two suitcases, and took them as far as the garden door. I watched as he checked his Canadian passport. All his identification papers were in his black wallet. I stepped out into the garden with Barâa beside me and Houd in my arms.

  “I’m going to get a taxi,” Maher called as he closed the wrought-iron gate that led to the street. In Tunisia, people generally went outside to hail a cab. Hardly anyone used the telephone. I waited a few minutes. I was pensive. I wanted Maher to succeed, I wanted him to get the contract, but I felt a bit nervous. Suddenly, through the trees in the garden, I saw the yellow taxi pull up to the gate. Maher opened the gate, which gave a squeal that made me grimace; it was old and could use a drop of oil. He stowed his two suitcases in the trunk of the taxi. I was trembling a little and, stupidly, felt tears welling up. That’s odd, I told myself. Maher had gone off on trips dozens of times before and I’d never felt like crying; after all, travelling was part of his job, it had become normal in our life together. I wanted to be strong in Maher’s eyes, and in front of the children, so I fought back my tears. Maher kissed us all quickly and left without turning back. I heard the taxi’s engine start up and went back inside, almost running with the children to get us all out of the sun.

  The day was ending softly, a light breeze was blowing, which refreshed us after the suffocating midday heat. I spread a small kilim on the veranda at the back of the garden and sat there with the children, watching the magnificent colours of the sky. Houd was crawling after a toy, trying to grasp it. Barâa was playing with a collection of little plastic dinosaurs. Their names were a mystery to me, but she knew every one of them by their shape. When I was her age, dinosaurs didn’t even have a place in my imagination. Instead, my brother and I played with paper airplanes or balls, or spent hours playing “school.” My brother, Mourad, was now living in Hammamet, a small tourist town sixty kilometres from Tunis. He was a mathematics professor at a preparatory school for engineers. He had just called me to catch up on my news. He would be visiting us on the weekend. I thought of Maher; he must be in Zurich now. Tomorrow morning he will be leaving for New York; he will call me as soon as he gets to Montreal. I was impatient to hear from him. By now it was almost dark; time to get the children to bed. As usual, we were all going to sleep in my parents’ old bedroom, but tonight Maher would not be with us.