Dec. 26, 2004. 08:16 AM
Couple celebrate new life, new land |
| BERNARD WEIL/TORONTO STAR |
| Nida and Asim Bukhari pose playfully in their basement apartment. A year after their arranged marriage in Karachi, Nida finally joined Asim in Pickering. Now, after six months, Nida is pregnant and they are excited about their future. |
CATHERINE PORTER
Six months ago, she walked through the gate at Pearson International to be reunited with her husband, and to start a new life in Canada.
Today, she wakes up in a two-bedroom basement apartment in Pickering, with a foot of snow piling up outside her door. She is homesick and nauseous.
That's the good news. She's pregnant and the new life growing inside her gives her great hope for the future.
Life could not be more different for Nida Bukhari.
This will be our last visit with Asim and Nida Bukhari, whose search for each other and marriage was documented by the Star in a nine-part series. It began two years ago on New Year's Eve, when Asim was pinched in the back of the family minivan between his nieces on the way to the Nathan Phillip's Square celebrations. His New Year's resolution was to get married.
But he didn't want to marry a Canadian. He wanted to go back home and find a Pakistani bride, the traditional way — an arranged marriage.
Like most immigrants, it was the hope for a better life that spurred Asim to Canada six years ago. He was following in the footsteps of his older brother Faheem, who had arrived a decade earlier and managed to build a successful business, family and home in Pickering.
Asim moved into Faheem's house, studied accounting at Centennial College and worked at Faheem's electronics store.
All that was outstanding was a wife.
He put himself in the hands of his six sisters, still living in Karachi.
In the summer of 2003, he flew back to the flooded, sweltering streets of his childhood. Within two weeks, his sisters had settled on a candidate — Nida Shakir, the daughter of a childhood friend of Asim's older sister, Aapi. Although 10 years younger than him, she was deemed bright, strong and mature — a perfect balance for Asim's chronic indecision and sensitive nature.
As was customary, the first time the couple met in person was at their wedding. When Nida now thinks back on that night, she remembers how tired and nervous she was. After that moment, she'd be leaving her family and joining his — first in Karachi and then on the other side of the world, in a place she only knew of as cold — Canada.
Asim has one distinct memory — after all the photos and food and nasal flute playing and more photos, as they were being whisked out of the wedding hall to their bridal car, he reached down for Nida's hand.
"I couldn't find it," he giggles.
Like most marriages, the tender beginnings of their life together have been rife with challenges. But add to it this: after only a month together in Karachi, Asim flew back to Canada with plans to find a new job and save money to quickly sponsor his wife.
Things didn't go as planned.
After a short part-time accounting position, Asim was again unemployed. He couldn't find a permanent job. So, instead of saving money for Nida's airfare and sponsorship papers, he fell into debt. For months, he sent out resumés and brooded, wondering if he had made a mistake. In Aapi's home in Karachi, Nida fasted for him, praying to be reunited soon.
They spoke once a week on the Internet and MSN chat. But often, Asim would run out of things to say. He still didn't know his new bride.
Finally, last May, he was hired by a large development company as a junior accountant. It was his first full-time job in Canada.
Two months later — and almost a year after their wedding — Nida packed her bags. Her family jammed into two rented vans that weaved their way around potholes and donkeys toward the Karachi airport.
She was so overwhelmed by the tearful farewells that she hadn't been nervous about her first trip on an airplane. She sat on board for two long flights, the red bridal henna dye deepening on her hands and the jasmine bangles browning around her wrists, wondering what her new life would bring and desperately lamenting the one she was leaving.
She had never been away from her parents and three siblings before. The farthest she had ever ventured from their home in Karachi was Hyderabad, 175 kilometres away.
"I left my family. That was the first time for me," she says, from her perch beside Asim on the couch of their sparse apartment. "It was so terrible."
Asim was nervously waiting for her at the airport gate, with a fresh haircut and new shirt. She hardly recognized him. "I was very surprised because Asim was getting fat and his colour was dark," she says, laughing.
"She looked nervous. She was almost shaking," Asim recalls.
Almost everything in her new home was unfamiliar — the big front lawns and empty streets in Pickering were so unlike the crowded sprawl of concrete and mud of Karachi. Women here wore shorts and belly-tops, not burkhas. Men did not sell fruit and vegetables from small wooden stands on the side of the road. Instead, you could buy everything in a giant, chilled supermarket.
"It's so beautiful," Nida says.
And the traffic looked like it was being operated by remote control — all the cars spaced out and keeping to their own lanes. "Pakistani traffic is all so jammed," she says.
Instead of the teeming three-bedroom apartment she had lived in with her siblings and parents, she now moved into a sparse basement apartment that Asim had rented for them alone.
To pay off his debts, Asim took up a night shift at Faheem's store, leaving Nida alone most days from 8:15 in the morning till after 9 p.m.
She had gone from a crowded life to complete seclusion.
"It's a classic immigrant story," comments Faheem. When his wife Tabassum arrived in Canada 11 years ago, she was so startled and homesick, she spent months crying in their bedroom, too frightened to even answer the doorbell.
"Typically, an immigrant comes here with a lot of hopes from watching Hollywood movies," says Faheem. "Then when they get here, they have to face reality."
But, Nida proved to be resilient. Asim taught her how, unlike Pakistani buses that can be flagged down anywhere, Canadian buses have fixed stops and routes. He helped her to decipher the schedule and she began travelling during the day around Pickering.
"This is easy for me," she says.
She discovered the library, the mall, the community centre, where Asim helped her enrol in an English as a second language class to bolster her confidence speaking English. She had never driven in Karachi. But here, she passed her written driving test and, when Asim took her to an empty parking lot to practise, she found that easy, too.
After a couple of months, she compiled a resumé with Asim's assistance and dropped it off at nearby stores.
She was immediately given three offers. She accepted a position as a cashier at a Pakistani-run bulk store.
But by then she was pregnant. Even today, her morning sickness is so bad, she can't brush her teeth. The minty smell of toothpaste makes her gag. Her stomach curls when she tries to fix Asim's breakfast, so she's taken to lying in bed instead. And the nausea lasts all day — it sent her running from the till to the store's washroom between customers. She quit after a week.
"I dropped her off one day and had only returned home, when she called me and asked me to pick her up. She said she was dying," Asim says. "She's like me. When she's sick, she feels like she is going to die."
Over the months, they've grown from veritable strangers into a true couple.
She's learnt that he's a spendthrift and hopeless when it comes to fashion. But also that he manages difficulty easily and never gives up.
"He's a good partner for me," she says.
He's learnt that she is independent, confident and strong-willed. And that, like him, she has a fiery temper.
"She's not one of those girls who takes everything. She fights back," Asim chuckles. "I like that."
The night that Nida was sick and he leapt from bed to find her some Aspirin, Asim knew that feelings stirring inside him were love.
"She's actually a wonderful woman," he says, smiling at her beside him on the couch. "If any other girl would be here, I don't know what she'd do with me. I'm very difficult."
They are proof of what the Pakistani matchmakers say: that arranged marriages follow the opposite path of Western "love" marriages. First comes marriage, then love follows.
Nida is three months pregnant now. And despite the nausea, she is thrilled.
"I am so happy," she says.
But she admits the transition to her new life has been difficult.
"Sometimes I feel so lonely. I am crying. I miss my whole family. I pray to my God, for my parents and sister."
Now that winter has arrived, they've packed up the badminton racquets and stopped their evening strolls along the waterfront. Nida doesn't want to even venture outside. She had never seen snow before. Even in the middle of winter in Karachi, she only wore a sweater.
After Asim leaves in the morning, she will pass 12 hours alone in their apartment, cooking, cleaning and watching Indian dramas on television.
But she knows the isolation will soon be over. In the New Year, they plan to move into his sister Saima's nearby house, so she'll have someone to spend the days with. And come July, she will have permanent company.
"When my baby is born, I will feel better than these days," she says, smiling. "I think I will not feel alone."
Additional articles by Catherine Porter