August 2001 there was an international
kerfuffle between Australia and Norway over a group of mainly Hazara Afghani refugee-asylum
seekers who were rescued by the container ship Tampa, which tried to land them on Australian territory. The Australian
government didn’t want a bar of them, so for a time there was an impasse.
Helen Clark the New Zealand prime minister,
accepted one hundred and fifty of the asylum seekers and most were eventually
granted citizenship which allowed a ‘reunification of families’. This allowed a
young man, Abdul-Qader, to bring his parents and his three brothers into the
country with a smooth path to citizenship.
Apparently this family were hard working
and retained contacts in the Middle East so were able to set up a business
exporting certain recycled goods. The business thrived and Abdul-Qader’s
younger brother, Ahmad was put in charge of a branch of the business, which
proved quite successful.
From a different direction, through a bit
of luck and a little help an orphaned East African girl, Zuri, arrived in New
Zealand to study and through her own hard work, she coped with the change in
culture and forged a modest life for herself, formed relationships, found a
good job and was granted New Zealand citizenship.
Ahmad met and took a fancy to Zuri and a
relationship bloomed and flourished. Ahmad was attentive to Zuri and was
generous towards her but his parents threw a spanner in the works and told
Ahmad that they didn’t approve of the relationship! The main issue was that Ahmad
and his family are Islam and Zuri is Christian. Or was it that Zuri had no
connections to be taken advantage of? Ahmad seemed not to take notice of his
parents and did not appear to follow Islam closely. The relationship continued
for over two years much to the chagrin of his parents who often voiced their
objection.
Ahmad was often called up to the family
home for business and family meetings but of course Zuri never afforded the
opportunity to meet his parents. After one of the family meetings Ahmad returned
to tell Zuri that his parents had chosen a wife for him in Afghanistan. Zuri
wanted to finish the relationship there and then, but Ahmad wanted to continue
and asked his brothers if he could possibly resist his parents. The reply was a
flat, ‘No!’
The relationship began to falter as least
as far as Zuri was concerned, but not completely. Ahmad, together with his
family went for a prolonged business trip back to Afghanistan. During this
visit, Ahmad married Razia but returned to New Zealand alone because there were
still formalities to be worked through regarding the New Zealand Immigration
Service.
Ahmad did not to come clean to Zuri at
first, but she heard through a mutual friend. Ahmad saw it as no constraint to
his marriage should Zuri remain as his concubine, so expected the relationship
to continue. Zuri had more sense and walked away, after telling him what she
thought of him. Ahmad, presumably pining for Zuri, began drinking and causing
bar brawls, especially if he knew Zuri was within the vicinity. If this was
meant to impress her, it failed miserably.
After the immigration formalities, Razia
arrived, knowing nobody in the city, except for Ahmad and she possessed only
rudimentary English. Ahmad did not stay by her side, but tried still to court
Zuri and continued with his drinking and brawling! Razia found Zuri’s phone
number from Ahmad’s phone and whenever he was ‘missing’ she texted her with
abuse! Zuri put a stop to that by threatening Ahmad with police action that
would likely be detrimental to his business.
This whole scenario has left three people
unhappy with their lot! But it raises some questions.
·
If
the family were refugees, how come it was so easy to go back to Kabul for the
wedding?
·
If
there was coercion on behalf of Ahmad’s parents to force him to marry, it is
illegal under New Zealand law. So should we as a nation accept that this goes
on?
·
Was
Ahmad gutless in not standing up to his parents? Or was he wanting the best
from both worlds anyway?
·
By
forcing the wedding, Ahmad’s parents are sticking with Afghani culture. Should
refugees encompass a host nation’s ways and ethics? Aren’t refugees escaping
from their old ways?
·
Ahmad
boozes, which is apparently forbidden in Islam, which begs the question, are
Ahmad and his family taking advantage of New Zealand freedoms on one hand and
being strict Muslims when it suits their purposes?
·
The
average Kiwi would not be happy with Ahmad and his family. Does that matter?
Zuri never followed her Christian religion
closely, and whether or not Ahmad was truly irresolute about Islam is difficult
to know, certainly his parents would have caused friction had the relationship
continued. Religion can become an intense subject but at least here in New
Zealand over the past thirty years, antagonism between main Christian religions
has almost disappeared, so we don’t want it all to start over again with other
religions! There are more important issues in life. When it comes down to it,
everyone has a right to believe and pray to or for whatever they like, but the
big rider is: as long as they don’t interfere anyone else. Belief is an
individual thing and therefore who does a public display of it benefit?
The bottom line in all of this is that,
sad as it was for Zuri at the time, she is now better off through not
associating with Ahmad!
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