Culture Crash

It is a dreadful horror story of a family under duress.  The parents both physically ill, one mentally ill as well, attempting to raise six children within the remnants of their culture while living in an alien country, neither able to work to gain a living for their brood.  This is what Canada inherited, a family of two dysfunctional, argumentative parents, and four dependent children.

Originally from Afghanistan by way of India, finally settling in Canada.  Both parents were unable to learn English despite taking language lessons, so they were further vulnerable and alienated.  Both parents were dependent on disability benefits.  Obviously, money to support a large family (by Canadian standards) was scarce. 

But it was the clash of cultures that brought them to a catastrophic end.

The mother, Randjida Khairi, 58, suffered from epilepsy, and she was being treated for tuberculosis.  The father, Peer Khairi, 65, had been involved in a car crash he had barely survived.  It left him a legacy of mental disequilibrium.  The mother informed her husband she mean to leave him, a statement overheard by their oldest daughter, a threat she had heard in the past, when they argued.

Giti Khairi, now 29 years of age, said her father told her he felt as though his brain was "broken", after that devastating car accident.  He had tried to commit suicide.  "I'm not happy with my life", he said to his daughter.  He often fought with his daughter about her spirit of independence, refusing to be married to a cousin, choosing instead to go out with another Afghan immigrant her parents did not know.

But Giti's mother Randjida, defended her daughter against her husband's accusations.  And she supported all of her children in their wish to be free of their Afghan culture and adapt to Canadian ways, another bone of contention between the parents.  How common a situation this represents among people coming from tribal, religious cultures...?

Mr. Khairi is now pleading innocence of the charge of murder brought against him by the Crown.  He was friendless, unable to communicate in a strange country, desperately losing control of the authority he had over his six children, anticipating the sundering of his marriage, agitated and behaving in a strange manner, according to his daughter.

But he did kill his wife.  He stabbed her repeatedly in the throat and in her neck, using two knives, nearly decapitating her in the frenzy of his attack.