Fatima Zaidi's suburban dream is almost complete. She and her husband recently bought a big, new house in Richmond Hill with a backyard for their two kids -- a boy and a girl. The downside is that her husband lives in Saudi Arabia.
Originally from Pakistan, the family didn't plan it this way. Given that her husband is a skilled engineer, Ms. Zaidi assumed that they would settle into a comfortable, middle-class existence when they emigrated to Canada in 1997. Now, Ms. Zaidi has the middle-class life, but it's courtesy of the Saudi Arabian economy. After her husband failed to get a job in his field -- electrical engineering -- they decided the only way the family could afford to stay in Canada was if he took a job in the Middle East. He landed a position as an engineer with an American oil company in Saudi Arabia and left Ms. Zaidi here to live in one of Toronto's begum pura.
That's an Urdu expression used to describe the places where South Asian women like Ms. Zaidi live with their children while their husbands work in the Middle East or the U.S. to support their families. It's the converse of the age-old immigrant story -- instead of sending remittances back home to support family members left behind in developing countries, these new Canadians are relying on cash sent to them from other parts of the world to maintain their lifestyles here.
Pockets of begum pura, which translates as "women's colony," are scattered across the Toronto suburbs. In Mississauga, there are so many women living on these remittances that the entire city is sometimes referred to by South Asians as a begum pura -- that, or "Mrs. Agha," a reference to a common South Asian surname. The term begum pura was probably first used in Toronto to describe a tower near Square One where the wives of Pakistani pilots who flew for Middle Eastern airlines in the late 1990s chose to live to stick together in their new homeland. This particular group has since moved out, but the term endures.
" Begum is a title. It's like 'Mrs.' -- it's very prestigious," explains Neelam Bangash, a graduate student at York University who researches the integration of Muslim women in Canadian cities. "It is someone who is affluent. It's not just anybody. Pura is just a place. So begum pura would be a place where ladies dwell."
Although the expression conjures up notions of status and luxury, the reality is that the begum pura exist out of financial necessity. The majority of their residents are Pakistani Muslims who have been living in the Middle East, where the men held high-skilled positions in the booming oil economy. Ms. Zaidi and her husband spent several years living and working in Saudi Arabia, but decided to leave their comfortable life to come to Canada for the sake of their children's future. In countries like the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, children of foreign workers aren't eligible for citizenship, and educational opportunities past Grade 11 are few.
So families like the Zaidis arrive in Canada with ample savings and credentials that they hope will find them similar employment, only to discover that the type of work available is as security guards in the same kind of companies where they used to be engineers or systems analysts.
"We have to live; we have to survive," Shagufta Khan says. Her husband couldn't find an information-technology job after they arrived two years ago. So he left indefinitely to work for the government in Abu Dhabi. "With four kids, it's hard to come here and do odd jobs. One has to sacrifice for the sake of the children."
But it's hard living far away from your spouse, says Ms. Khan, who says her husband calls at least three times a day from the United Arab Emirates -- "he even knows what we're eating," she says. She misses his physical presence, especially during the holidays, like this month of Ramadan. Her husband wanted to fly home from the UAE for a four-day visit to celebrate Eid last week with his family, but they decided it was best to save the plane fare for a longer stay.
Ms. Zaidi also finds it challenging to take care of all the household business on her own. She must drive the kids to school, do the groceries, cook the meals as well as pay the bills and deal with a builder to make sure all the work gets completed on the family's new house. Her husband is allowed three trips a year back to Canada and they spend their summers in the company compound in the Emirates, where they are guarded by men with machine guns, but it's just not the same as living together.
Then again, it's not always a bad thing to have a long-distance husband. Lubna Chaudhry lives with her four kids in Mississauga while her husband works in an IT job in the United States. Because he doesn't live with them full-time, she says, it eases the domestic responsibilities. When he's away, she'll make one meal with enough leftovers to last two or three days. But when her husband returns, she's back in the kitchen, cooking the dishes he enjoys, such as kebabs and biryani.
And, she confesses, giggling as she speaks, it's good for the love life. Even though the couple have been married for decades -- they tied the knot when Ms. Chaudhry was just 16 -- they now talk on the phone as if they're dating and she looks forward to his trips home.
But the excitement lasts only as long as the visit. For most of the year, these women live alone with their kids, isolated and away from regular contact with other adults. It's for this reason that the begum pura comes together. Among newcomers from the same country who share the same religion and language, the bonds form quickly, Ms. Bangash says. And these friendships are often centred around child-rearing. Ms. Chaudhry regularly pitches in to take care of her neighbour Farhee Asghar's children, sometimes picking her daughter up from school. And when something comes up unexpectedly, Ms. Asghar knows there is always someone down the street to help.
It's not just the families who are suffering from not having the men around, says Usma Shakir, executive director of the South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario, an agency whose clients include women of the begum pura needing help with matters like citizenship. By not hiring new, highly educated immigrants, Canadian employers are also fuelling a migration that's tantamount to a brain drain to the Middle East.
"They become economic migrants," Ms. Shakir says. "We are actually sending these people out into the global economy. Canada is losing out on a global edge which is an internationally global resource: education."
And because the men are residents of another country, they are not required to pay income taxes here. (Canadians who live outside the country for 183 days of the year or more don't have to pay income tax.)
"It's not just that you want people here to come to make babies. Making babies isn't the end goal," Ms. Shakir says. "The goal is to have a thriving economy that will sustain a standard of living. We are losing out."
Neither Ms. Chaudhry nor Ms. Khan nor Ms. Zaidi know when -- or if -- their husbands will live with their families again in Canada.
Many of the women of Toronto's older begum pura, tired of living apart, have now moved back to the Middle East to join their husbands. But often that can mean leaving older children here to attend university, which means sending back remittances to pay for tuition. And the family is split up again.
"I feel very bitter," Ms. Khan says. "But the future is very good . . . for my children. That's why we moved over here."