In 2004, reporter Marina Jiménez and photographer Louie Palu accompanied a family of Afghans from Peshawar to Islamabad and on to Canada. Now, The Globe and Mail revisits the Dosts, who arrived as penniless refugees but have forged successful, if complex, lives in Winnipeg
Home at last
In northeast Winnipeg, in a five-bedroom bungalow with an angel ornament on the front stoop, a family of Afghan-Canadians is preparing to host a party that would have once seemed unimaginable.
More than 200 guests have been invited for dinner in a rented community hall, in honour of Farhan Dost’s first birthday. There is nothing the family won’t do to make the celebration complete.
Farhan’s mother, Nargis, 28, her three sisters and their mother, Lailoma, have been cooking for 30 hours. They have peeled heads of garlic, skinned bags of carrots and pistachios, fried up nine legs of lamb, 18 chickens and 400 kofta meatballs, and carefully hand-rolled multiple trays of mantu dumplings. Now, with hours to go before the party starts, all that’s left to cook is 50 pounds of rice. Lailoma carries bowls of water into the garage and dumps them into an industrial pot as big as a rain barrel that sits on a propane cooker. “Who is going to do the work if I sit here and talk?” says the 50-year-old, immaculately groomed even as she works.
From the archives: The Dosts in 2004
The culture shock begins in London’s Heathrow Airport, where the family has a six-hour layover. Chinese punk rockers, blondes with jeans slung so low their belly buttons show and hippies in tie-dyed shirts with long curly hair all lounge in chairs, waiting for connecting flights. The Dost sisters stare into stores such as Hackett and Harrods, filled with silk ties and exquisitely tailored shirts, and are astonished to see a liquor store as big as the Peshawar market.
“What are those animals painted on that girl’s arm?” asks Khatool, pointing to a tattoo. She and her sisters marvel at the scantily clad women in tube tops, tight jeans and high heels, clinging to the arms of their boyfriends. No one casts a second glance their way.
“Why is everyone so sloppy with small, small clothes?” Mahnaz asks. “Is it good to kiss in public like that?” It dawns on the Dost sisters that here in the West, people have the freedom to dress badly, and behave rudely. They are suddenly shy about their own appearance, and fasten their chadors more tightly. Suddenly the clothing they were so anxious to be rid of is a much-needed protective shield.
Air Canada Flight 859 to Toronto arrives just past midnight July 1. Mr. Dost has pinned a tiny Canadian maple leaf to his lapel collar: “Happy Birthday, Canada,” he says as he steps off the plane into the cool night. “I feel as if I’ve just been given the whole world.”
The five Dost brothers are also doing their part, the older ones picking up the rented sound system, while the youngest, Waheed, 23, decorates the hall with streamers and giant red and blue helium-filled balloons.
Their boundless hospitality is a way of rejoicing in how far they’ve come. The Dosts arrived in Winnipeg 11 years ago as refugees from Pakistan, with no more than the clothes and dishes they could cram into their suitcases. For the first few years in this prairie city, the Dosts and their nine children shared a two-bedroom apartment. The children slept on the floor, worked as convenience store cashiers, and tried to adapt to a new society that was different in every way.
“The family is so happy to be hosting this party,” says Said Azim Dost, the 59-year-old patriarch. “When we left Pakistan, we were crying to leave our old friends even as we were happy to get out, and now we are so grateful. We have a new life and a new community.”
The Globe and Mail accompanied the Dosts on their 2004 journey, from Peshawar to Islamabad and then on to Winnipeg. The family has made remarkable sacrifices to get where they are today. Tajiks from Kabul, they were forced to flee their homeland in the 1990s, after Mr. Dost fell on the wrong side of a warlord. He was imprisoned and Lailoma had to sell their home to pay a bribe for his release. The family then escaped by bus to nearby Peshawar, a conservative and often violent city in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province. There they lived for more than 10 years, the children unable to go to school, the girls forced to wear chadors in public, the father fearful he’d be killed. The city was – and is – wracked by sectarian violence and Taliban suicide bombings. Often, they had no electricity or water, and had to carry tubs of water up four flights of stairs to their rented apartment.
The family is eternally grateful to Mr. Dost’s nephew, Said Ahmadi, their Canadian angel. He brought them here under Canada’s private refugee sponsorship program, agreeing to support them for a year, and giving them a one-in-a-million chance to rebuild their shattered lives. (After three decades, more than 1.5 million Afghan refugees remain in Pakistan, despite efforts by the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees to repatriate them or convince Western countries to grant them asylum.)
Outwardly, the Dosts’ transformation from refugees to Canadians has been successful. Everyone except Lailoma is a citizen. The children have all graduated from high school and have jobs – except for Sheela, 16, who is an advanced placement Grade 10 student. The parents own their home. So does son Jev, 27; Mahnaz, 30, and Nargis have bought one together.
But the internal transformation is more complex. When the Dosts departed Pakistan, they didn’t just leave behind their rice cookers and mantu pots, but their very identities. Forging a new one is a journey that never really ends. For some, like Mr. Dost, who doesn’t speak English and has stage four diabetes, the scars of war and terror remain. The warlord who threatened his life has since died in a suicide bombing, but he still has nightmares. He is always smiling and dapper, but his hands tremble as he sips his tea and watches TOLO, an all-news Afghan TV channel. He frets over the Taliban’s latest attacks in Kabul. Lailoma, who also has diabetes, spends her days cleaning and cooking and caring for her husband and his 83-year-old infirm sister. Every weekend, the entire clan gathers for dinner at home base.
For the Dost children, the shock of moving as teens from Peshawar, a city with sharia law and 40-degree Celsius days, to multicultural Winnipeg, with its long winters and windswept streets, took months to overcome. At school they were outsiders, with unfashionable clothes and strange lunches. Slowly, though, their outsized personalities and charisma broke through the culture barrier.
Yet even as they move beyond their past, there is a need to honour it. Some of the children yearn for the rich traditions they left behind. For others, there are only new people to meet and new adventures to be had: skateboarding, ice skating, snowboarding. Canada has been good to them.
“Here you can sleep in peace, wake up the next morning and know you’re still going to be alive,” says eldest son Wais, 29. “Life is really sweet and you should take every advantage to live it. You can achieve your dreams here.”
‘Freedom clothes’
Now that the cooking is out of the way, the four Dost sisters are primping for the birthday party at the home of Nargis and Mahnaz. A makeup artist fastens false eyelashes on Khatool, 31, and pencils in dramatic grey eyeshadow and eyeliner to draw out her brown almond eyes. A Bollywood film plays in the background, while a visiting aunt from Calgary carefully irons a tiny linen shalwar kameez sent from Kabul for baby Farhan. The girls all have form-fitting, glittery long gowns for the occasion, six-inch stiletto heels and designer handbags. Nargis wonders if she should wear a violet camisole underneath her gown so she doesn’t reveal too much cleavage.
“We never wore freedom clothes before,” says Nargis, laughing. “You know, low-cut blouses, form-fitting pants and short skirts.” Embracing femininity and style is a deliberate choice. “Honey, I do what I want now,” says Nargis, who sports a silver nose ring and Ray Bans. “Nobody tells me what to do. I am my own boss.” The sisters curl their hair, reapply nail polish and final dabs of bright red lipstick. Nargis has two gowns: a sequined silver and purple one, and a grey one she will change into partway through the evening.
At 6:30 p.m., the invitees begin to arrive at nearby Holy Eucharist Parish hall, with photos of both Queen Elizabeth and the Pope adorning the walls. Almost all the guests are Afghans, and the Dosts stand in a receiving line, kissing each one three times, in the traditional way. Male relatives are welcome, and so are female friends and their children, but they have been gently told to leave their husbands behind. “This party is really kind of a ladies’ party,” Nargis explains.
It’s a way to respect the gender sensitivities of their Muslim faith, while also creating a space for the women to have a good time and dance to modern Afghan music.
The food is plentiful and delicious: butter chicken, meatballs, rice decorated with pistachios, samosas, lamb, a spinach dish, watermelon, grapes and strawberries, and flats of cream soda, Fanta and Pepsi, though no alcohol, in keeping with their religion. Wais is here, chasing his two young children as they tear gleefully around the community hall. His wife, an Afghan-Canadian he met while working at Subway, is beautifully turned out in a fashionable pantsuit and blue stiletto heels. For years, Wais played the role of family worrywart. Today, he is at peace, as proud as if he’d raised eight children, instead of eight siblings. “As soon as my brothers and sisters reached a certain age, I could let go. Everyone could stand on their own two feet,” he says. While he regrets he didn’t have a chance to go to university, he is proud of all he has accomplished: He lives in a bungalow with his in-laws and is a crew leader at MX Group, a restoration company.
After platefuls of food, the women get up to dance, swirling around like so many colourful flowers in front of the stage. So, eventually, do the men. Waheed, dashing in a traditional shalwar kameez and gold shoes, looks like a whirling dervish, gracefully moving his hands and arms around in circles, then his whole body, with a subtle flirtatiousness.
Only brother Jev doesn’t join in, joking: “I’m too masculine to dance.”
Now: “I am what I dreamed of. I have a small additional family. I see a bright future. I want to make sure my two kids get an education that I never had the chance to get.”
Growing up fast
Through crisis comes reinvention. And the Dosts are nothing if not driven. Since the day they arrived, all the children except Sheela have worked: at their uncle’s restaurant, Flying Pizza, at Subway, Chicken Delight and 7-Eleven. They have saved, they have travelled across Canada, and they have shopped: a house for their parents; several 60-inch televisions; a $2,000 BMX bicycle for Sheela; a variety of Ford vehicles; $200 Steve Madden designer shoes; game consoles, iPads, phones and watches. Lots and lots of watches.
“I have 13,” says Jev, showing me a $500 Burberry model. Of all the Dosts, Jev, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Prince, stands out as the most “Western.” He changed his name from Javid to Jev because he was tired of being mistaken for David, and wanted a short, memorable moniker. He lives alone in a house decorated with leather couches and a modern coffee table, has a Siberian husky named Tyson, and is an exercise fiend with long, styled hair and a carefully trimmed beard. “I adapted so fast to Canadian culture. I really broke outside my community,” he says. “We all chose a different path.”
He traces his metamorphosis to a pivotal moment 11 years ago when he was a poor Afghan teenager at London’s Heathrow Airport, en route to Canada. “I saw a man I’ll never forget. He was sharply dressed in a black suit. And he looked like he knew where he was going. He looked happy. Right there and then, I thought, I am going to be that man. I always want to look sharp, and I always want to pursue my passions.”
After high school, Jev moved to Toronto to study marketing and real estate. Partway through his program, his mother called him. “My father had just had a heart attack,” he says. “And she asked me to move back.”
Jev didn’t hesitate. It was important that his parents, who had suffered so many hardships, not feel abandoned. It was also time for Jev to take over the mentoring role of elder brother Wais, who was now too busy with his own life to care for all of his siblings. “We had to grow up so fast. I broke the mold, but I am a still a family guy,” Jev says.
He quickly found work, and his own Canadian mentor: Ryan Monczunski, general manager at River City Ford. Mr. Monczunski saw a glimmer of ambition and determination in the eyes of his new employee. “Jev wasn’t afraid of me at all. In fact, he would argue with me. I thought, here is a leader,” he recalls.
“Slowly Jev has learned to focus on other people’s success and not just his own. He has a reason to work hard and he does. I know he won’t be here forever.”
Jev has been promoted several times and is now the floor manager, in charge of 16 employees. Through Ford’s leadership training courses, he has learned how to read introverts and extroverts, risk takers and plodders. He is comfortable chatting with anyone. He has recruited two brothers to the dealership, Farhad and Nazir, 24. They have worked hard to adapt, taking time to learn about hockey and asparagus farming. “Watch TSN, attend live Winnipeg Jets games,” Farhad’s action plan reads. He admits he had to change his tone when he started here. “I was too dictatorial. Now I give people 100 per cent of my attention and expect nothing in return.” With his matinee-idol looks and flowing hair, he is often confused with Jev.
Nazir, who trained to be a train conductor, quit his job with CP Rail in Medicine Hat, Alta., earlier this year because he found it difficult living apart from his family. “I would call my parents every night. I was lonely,” says Nazir, describing himself as the shy one in a family of extroverts. “Now I’m living back at home, focused on learning about sales here at Ford and saving up for a house of my own.”
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Now: “The things I want, I can get here, because I work. I have applied to have my own business. I want to buy a Subway restaurant franchise and maybe eventually open a bed and breakfast with my husband.”
The sisters’ hopes
For the Dost sisters, work and personal life are more deeply intertwined. While their parents support their independence, they also want to honour the old traditions, including an openness to arranged marriage. A few years after arriving here, Said and Lailoma received proposals for Khatool and Mahnaz from local families in Winnipeg with relatives back in Kabul. The sisters were considered good catches, not just because of their beauty and industriousness, but because they could bring their husbands to Canada under the spousal sponsorship program.
Their father resisted the matches at first, but finally in 2010, with the sisters’ blessing, he consented. The mother and sisters flew to Kabul, where they hired security and rarely strayed from the compounds of relatives. Khatool married on July 10, 2010, Mahnaz seven days later. The following year, Nargis returned to Kabul to marry a young man she had met during her first trip. “For me, I needed to see my husband beforehand. I needed to watch his reactions before I could agree to marry,” she says.
The celebrations brought tears of joy, as well as sorrow. After so many years together, it was heart wrenching for the Dost sisters to break away. The delay in the husbands’ arrival also caused difficulty.
Khatool had to wait 16 months for her husband, a physician, to get his visa. She went through childbirth and the first seven months of her daughter’s life without him, relying mainly on her mother and sisters. Once her husband arrived, in 2012, she had to help him adapt to a new society where men also wash dishes and vacuum. Now they have a second child and her husband is working towards rebuilding a medical career here. He wants Khatool to go to college, but she is tired out. Coming to Canada opened many doors, but her daily reality is one of a stay-at-home mother. “I still have lots of hopes. I still have a wish list,” she says. “Working in an office, travelling.”
Mahnaz, whose husband arrived in 2013, decided to delay having a family, and focus on building a nest egg. For the last decade, she has worked as a manager at a Subway in a mall near her house. In charge of six employees, she does the paperwork, inventory and scheduling. She prefers the 6:30 a.m. shift, when she puts in the first batch of cookies and bread of the day. A regular customer in work boots and a fluorescent construction vest comes in, his order scrawled out on a piece of cardboard: “I’ll have three wraps and a foot-long,” he says. “Only four today?” teases Mahnaz, whose earrings match her forest green uniform. “He usually orders 10.”
One day, she’d like to buy her own franchise. But for now, she is waiting for her husband to return from Kabul, where he has been for the last three months, looking after a hotel his family owns. “Yeah, I’m sick of him being away,” says Mahnaz, sighing. “It’s time he came home.”
The boundaries of culture
A curious mix of rebel and watchful observer, Sheela has had a different life trajectory than that of her siblings. She speaks English without an accent and has never felt alienated at school, instead hanging out with the so-called popular kids and with girls whose families are also first-generation immigrants. “I’m not going to be stuck at home with kids, or marry young. I want to do my own stuff, live my own life,” says the teenager, dressed in sweats, with a choker around her neck.
Her family expects her to go to university, and she aims to fulfill that ambition and become either a journalist or a flight attendant. For now, though, the youngest Dost is focused mainly on sports, and plays on her school’s badminton and volleyball teams. Every Sunday, she goes swimming, and even took up boxing for a while, until a male competitor knocked her out with such force she ended up in the hospital.
She can press 180 pounds with her legs and secretly signed up for an auto mechanics class at school (not that her parents minded, but she was afraid her brothers would object). The purple walls of her bedroom are decorated with posters of a cheetah, and a sketch of Muhammad Ali.
So far, Sheela has no appetite to test the boundaries of her culture, and readily accepts her sisters’ ban on parties, dances and dinners out. “I am adventurous,” she says. “At the same time, I embrace family values. I ask permission before going out. I help my mother clean the house. Sometimes I can’t believe how rude my friends are to their parents.”
She is closest to brother Waheed, who taught her to play soccer. Reflecting on his own teenage years, Waheed says he definitely felt like a fish out of water. “I had never talked to girls back home and I was afraid to approach them,” he recalls. “Then I got over my shyness, and by the middle of Grade 8, the tables turned. I changed my hairstyle and the way I dressed and suddenly, from a nobody, I become a popular kid. All the girls had a crush on Farhad [his brother]. I spent a lot of time out of the house for a while. Then, I came around and found the middle path.”
Today, Waheed is the most religious of all the Dost children, and regularly posts sayings from the Prophet Mohammed on Instagram, and practises the tabla and harmonia in his room in his parents’ basement, which is decorated with Afghan carpets, sleeping mats and cozy blankets brought over from Peshawar.
The Dosts miss the relatives they left behind. They send money and offer support. But no one wants to move back to Afghanistan. Since they left in 2004, conditions have only deteriorated.
While U.S. forces continue to support the country’s National Unity Government, the Taliban commit what seems like weekly terror attacks. So, increasingly, do foreign jihadis, trained by Islamic State. In March of this year, a mob brutally attacked and killed a woman near a shrine in Kabul, falsely believing she had burned a copy of the Koran.
Neighbouring Pakistan is almost as bad. Sectarian violence and Taliban suicide bombings have escalated, leaving, by some estimates, as many as 25,000 dead in the last decade. In the worst attack in the country’s history, Taliban gunmen slaughtered more than 140 people, including 132 children, at a school in Peshawar last Dec. 16.
“We are so glad we have left that all behind,” says Wais.
Now: “In Canada, you are totally free. Whatever you want to do, you’re allowed to do it. It’s you who can make your life better every day.”
All in the family
On the Sunday afternoon after Farhan’s big party, the family has gathered in Lailoma and Said’s living room to sip tea and reminisce. They look at photographs taken 11 years ago of their old flat, and their journey to Canada. Waheed is moved to tears, as he gazes down at images of his scruffy brothers sleeping on the floor of their home on the fourth floor of Peshawar’s El Sayeed plaza, their feet streaked with dirt. “I did nothing there but play. All the responsibility was on my brothers,” he says.
Wais too sheds tears thinking about many hardships. “I can’t believe eight-year-old children have to work in Peshawar selling bread to support their parents,” he says.
Jev remembers leaning out over the balcony, bored and trapped, staring down at the cars in the street below.
“We used to rip up pieces of paper and pretend it was money and barter and trade with one another,” Farhad says. “Sometimes we would put our faces in a bucket of water and hold our breath and pretend we were swimming. Or we would play a game to see who could remain the longest time without smiling. Wais always won.”
Wais breaks into a grin at this, and the family’s mood lightens. The brothers talk about the night Farhad broke his arm in an argument with Nazir over 50 cents. “Can you imagine?” he says, laughing. The parents nod and laugh too, Lailoma saying: “Thank God you all changed. No one was good-looking back then except Sheela and Nazir. Look how skinny you were.”
Said Azim Dost sits on the floor in the centre of his family, in a freshly ironed shalwar kameez, smiling gently, while his wife hops up to make more tea, offer fruit and nuts, and ensure everyone has what they need.
Despite the immense hardships the Dosts have been through, they have always been able to count on one another. Maybe it takes escaping a war, not once, but twice, to forge such unbreakable bonds of loyalty and unity. It is surely something other families would envy.
“My parents taught us simplicity, and that we all have each other,” says Khatool. They all nod in silent agreement, as Lailoma pours more tea.
Marina Jimenez is a Toronto-based writer and editor.
WHAT THE DOSTS SAID WHEN THEY TRAVELLED AS REFUGEES TO CANADA
MAHNAZ, 19
“I want to be a business person and start an import-export business. I will take off my chador.”
KHATOOL, 20
“I want to be free and take off my chador and go jogging. I want to go to school and meet famous people.”
WAIS, 18
When he boarded the plane in Islamabad and the family was told they had too much luggage, he chose to leave his clothes behind: “I don’t care about them. What are clothes compared to freedom?”
After the family first moved to Winnipeg: “Working in this pizza place is just the beginning. I would like to study computer technology or become a businessman. I know there are a lot more Canadian experiences for me.”
LAILOMA, 39
Lailoma took a job as a janitor when the family first arrived in Winnipeg: “I do this for my family. I know I have to learn English,” Mrs. Dost says. “Sometimes I miss my homeland. A country is like a mother. It’s always in your heart.”
WHAT THEY SAY TODAY:
SHEELA, 16
What do you like most about Canada? “I like human rights in Canada. Women can dress any way they want to. Lots of chances for education, and sports, which I am into. There are a lot of things. I am really glad I came here.”
Who are you now? “I think I’m a brand new person. Seeing my family in those photos travelling from Pakistan to Canada, they were themselves. They are still themselves. But since I came to Canada, I started off something else. I’m this brand new person who got to grow up here. I’m apart from my family. I’m someone new.”
WAHEED, 23
What do you like most about Canada? “I like the fact that you have your rights in Canada and you can express yourself and be yourself and practise whatever you want to practise here. I like the freedom and the fact that I have my own choices.”
Who are you now? “I am the person I used to be but I am more developed. I am older. I have wisdom from my past and I will use it for my future. It’s made me what I am. I am more educated and more free. My future is as bright as the sun.”
JEV, 27
What do you like the most about Canada? “I like the multicultural culture in Canada. People are from different backgrounds. People admire your background and conversations open up through that. I have had opportunities here I never would have had if we had stayed in Pakistan. My family is much happier.”
Who are you now? “Looking back in time, the same person still exists in me, but I have had a chance to develop my abilities and see how far I can go. I’m a different person. I got a dog, which would be unheard of in Afghanistan. I travel three or four times a year. I bought a house. I hang out with Canadians.”
NAZIR, 24
What do you like most about Canada? “People are nicer here. I feel safe. In Pakistan, there was a lot of kidnapping. I would never go back.”
Who are you now? “I want to be successful. Jev has been working hard and I look up to him. He is my role model.”
FARHAD, 26
What do you like the most about Canada? “In Grade 7, I was an outsider. Things got better once the kids got to know me.”
Who are you now? “Back home, I was just a kid with no goals or plans. In Canada, I am learning every day. I am a leader. My goal is to be a motivational speaker and I will get there.”
NARGIS, 28
What do you like most about Canada? “You are your own king in Canada. You’re your own boss. You can buy a house, you can work, you can make money.”
Who are you now? “Now I’m in Canada, I’m Canadian. I also belong to my family.”
WAIS, 29
What do you like most about Canada? “Here you can sleep in peace, wake up the next morning and know you’re still going to be alive. Life is really sweet and you should take every advantage to live it. You can achieve your dreams here.”
Who are you now? “I am what I dreamed of. I have a small additional family. I see a bright future. I want to make sure my two kids get an education that I never had the chance to get.”
MAHNAZ, 30
What do you like most about Canada? “Here, people are more friendly and we can talk to them. There [in Pakistan], we cannot talk to boys or men. Here, people are more open-minded.”
Who are you now? “The things I want, I can get here, because I work. I have applied to have my own business. I want to buy a Subway restaurant franchise and maybe eventually open a bed and breakfast with my husband.”
KHATOOL, 31
What do you like most about Canada? “In Canada, you are totally free. Whatever you want to do, you’re allowed to do it. It’s you who can make your life better every day.”
Who are you now? “I’m a 31-year-old woman. … I’m happy. I’m proud I have a big family, my parents. They’re advising me to be successful.”