Voice of Rebellion. Roberta Staley
the hallway, and everyone took a seat. A secretary came out of a room and beckoned Bashir to follow her up another staircase, then down a long hallway. First, he looked back at Nasrin and nodded reassuringly. After all, they had been forewarned that they would be interviewed separately.
A slender middle-aged man in dress pants and a white shirt unbuttoned at the neck came out of an office. “Mr. Jamalzadah?” he said. “I’m an immigration official for the Government of Canada. Please come in,” he said, gesturing to a chair.
An interpreter, clearly Afghan, was waiting in the office, and Bashir and the man greeted each other in Farsi. The immigration official picked up a document that Bashir recognized as the long-form questionnaire he had sent in months ago. “It indicates here that you don’t need an interpreter,” the official said.
“No, I don’t,” Bashir replied.
“Good,” the man said, then directed his comment to the Afghan interpreter. “You can leave. Thank you for your time.”
The official moved around the corner of his enormous wooden desk and sat down. “So . . . tell me your story,” he said, looking keenly at Bashir. “What made you leave Afghanistan, and why do you want to emigrate to Canada?”
Bashir began his tale. He explained how he was a teacher at Kabul Pedagogical Institute and that his boss, Ghafoor Alipour, a PDPA Communist party supporter, tried to sign Bashir up for conscription to get rid of him. He talked about going into hiding and the desperate plan to flee to Pakistan through Logar province disguised as peasant farmers. He described how he and three other families bribed Afghan soldiers at checkpoints, how Commander Rawani housed and fed them, and how they narrowly escaped an aerial bomb attack at the commander’s headquarters. Bashir described the cold, cramped, bone-shaking journey in the back of the truck through the Paktia mountains, and how surviving the trip felt like a miracle. And although he was grateful to Pakistan for letting him and his family stay, he explained, the government would never grant them citizenship. He wanted a home for his three children, a place for them to grow up safely and get an education.
The official looked intently at Bashir as he spoke, never moving, never looking down at his papers. “Why did you apply to Canada?” he asked. “What do you know about the country?”
Bashir smiled nervously. He knew that the country’s capital was Ottawa. He also knew a bit about Montreal—how everyone spoke French. He also knew that Canada had universal health care and welcomed new immigrants. “It is a young country,” Bashir said. “It is peaceful. It welcomes refugees.”
The official smiled, got up from his chair, and came around the desk. “Well, I’ve heard enough,” he said, sticking his hand out to shake Bashir’s hand. “I won’t need to interview your family. Let me see you out.”
Relieved, but wondering if he’d said the right things, Bashir stood up and surreptitiously wiped his sweaty palms on his pants, following the official back down to the second floor.
The man shook his hand once again. “I will file my report. It’s up to the adjudicators whether to accept you into Canada—or not,” he said.
“Do you know when we will hear?” Bashir asked.
“I don’t know. We have a backlog of refugee applications. I wish you the best of luck,” the official said, turning away to trot back up the stairs.
“Let’s go,” said Bashir, turning to Nasrin and the kids. “You don’t need to be interviewed.”
“Oh,” Nasrin responded in a whisper, as they walked down the staircase into the main lobby of the embassy. “Is that good or bad?”
“I honestly don’t know,” said Bashir. “It’s a waiting game—a long one from the sounds of it. The man said there is a backlog of claims.”
Weeks later, the family had still heard nothing, aside from a request asking Bashir and the family to travel to Rawalpindi, a half-hour drive away, for a medical checkup.
After that, life resumed its normal rhythm. The summer monsoons came, turning roadways into streams. Bashir stopped wondering if a letter would arrive and began to think that the family had been rejected on medical grounds. He continued work as a translator and Farsi instructor at IMC. As fall approached, the weather cooled, and with it Bashir’s hopes.
Then, one October day, as he was working at his desk in the IMC building, he heard a soft knock at his office door. “Come in!” Bashir called, without looking up.
It was Nasrin’s seventeen-year-old nephew Najib from Islamabad. “What are you doing here?” Bashir gasped. “Is everything okay at home?”
“You have a letter, uncle!” Najib exclaimed. “It’s from the embassy. We decided to open it in case it was important. And it is! Very, very important!”
Bashir put his hand out to take the letter. He began reading: “Dear Mr. Jamalzadah.” His eyes went blurry and he had to reread the opening paragraph three times. His hands shook. He, Nasrin, and the kids were going to Canada. They would pick up their tickets at the airport this Friday.
Stunned, he put the letter on the desk. He had to take it to Todd Peterson, his boss at IMC. “Come with me, Najib,” said Bashir. “Thank you so much for opening the letter. I wouldn’t have been home until Friday and we would have missed the plane! But,” he added, “you could have called me!”
“We thought you should see the letter yourself,” Najib said, laughing.
Bashir strode down the hallway towards Todd’s office. His boss looked quizzically at Bashir, who was breathless with excitement. “Todd, this is Najib. He came here all the way from Islamabad today to deliver a letter.”
“It must be important,” Todd remarked.
“Here!” Bashir said, handing him the letter. “Read it!”
Todd read it slowly. “Congratulations!” he exclaimed, and got up out of his seat, moving around the desk to hug Bashir.
“I’ll take this as your resignation,” Todd said with a grin. “But before you jump on the bus, let’s get everyone together so they can say goodbye.” He strode into the hallway and began knocking on people’s office doors, telling them that Bashir was off to Canada and they were giving him an impromptu going-away bash.
Someone ran out to buy street food, and they all went into the lunchroom to sip soft drinks and eat fresh kebabs, chapati, and plump kachori dumplings.
Todd took Bashir aside. “Here,” he said, placing a stack of rupees in an envelope into Bashir’s hand. “The rest of this month’s salary plus one month extra. You won’t get out of Islamabad International Airport without paying bribes.”
Bashir laughed. “Thanks for letting me know.”
Todd chuckled. “As soon as this little party is over, I’ll take you and Najib to the bus station. Make sure that you write me when you get to Canada and let me know where you live, and tell me all about your new home. It’s pretty cold there, you know.”
“So I’ve read,” said Bashir. “We’ll survive. It gets cold in Kabul in the winter too, you know.”
“Not like Canada,” Todd said.
A short while later, with dusk falling, Todd dropped Bashir and Najib off at the busy bus station. After final handshakes, the pair climbed aboard the crowded bus, pushing past passengers with shopping bags and packages. Bashir kept his hand on the letter throughout the three-hour drive, opening it to reread it, feeling light-headed and giddy. He wanted to stand up in the bus and shout out to all the passengers that he—Bashir of Afghanistan—was taking his family to a new home called Canada.
PART 2
The Melting Pot
1991–2009
CHAPTER 5
Schoolyard