We Have Always been Here - Samra Habib - Part 2 of 4

2020 Reading Challenge - Day 202

July 22, 2020

Book 56 - We Have Always Been Here
Samra Habib
 Part 2 - pages 43-105
Reading Time - 60 minutes

Due to increasing persecution in Pakistan against their Muslim faith (Ahmadi), the family decides to move to Canada. Samra's father came several months later and never fully adjusted to life in Canada. He had been an engineer in Pakistan and his inability to find fulfilling work in Canada, meant he spent a lot of time sitting on the couch watching TV. He rejected the idea that he go out and get a low-paying job like taxi-driver or bus-boy. Samra's mother, on the other hand, eventually opened her own salon and helped keep the family on its feet. It was a hard transition, going from being relatively well-to-do in Pakistan, to relying on welfare in Canada.

Samra herself had to deal with racism at school, being called "Paki" by other children. She was one of the only children-of-colour in her final grades of elementary school, but in high school, she ended up at an urban school with mostly children of colour from around the world. As I read about her experience in school, I thought back to my own time in school. In elementary school, I was surrounded by mostly white kids, with a fair smattering of Portuguese and one girl who I later learned had an Indigenous mother. I don't remember knowing that at the time, I just thought that she was a darker skinned Portuguese kid! And in high school, there were more kids of colour. I had several friends who were Chinese and East Indian but I don't ever remember them getting bullied. Mind you... I wasn't them, so what do I know. Maybe the fact that my parents had immigrated from Germany instilled in us less of a tendency to cast stones whilst living in a glass house.

And then... Samra's life diverges in a drastic way. At the age of 13, she learns that she has been promised in marriage to her first cousin (ten years her senior) and, at the age of 16, she is actually married to her first cousin in a religious ceremony. When Samra confronted her mother about the planned nuptials, her mother told her that "I know best". And yet, as Samra muses at some length, her mother did not know best and yet Samra was just a pawn.

At some point, Samra hears stories of domestic abuse from within the Pakistani community and when she questions her husband about his own views... he says he thinks its OK in some cases. That tips the apple cart for Samra who wants out. Her marriage was annulled at the local mosque and, after high school graduation, Samra left home to move in with a boyfriend from school.