Rona's diary…

THE information coming to police from family and friends of the Shafias revealed another shocking piece of information: Rona Amir Mohammad, the woman found dead in the back seat of the Nissan, was really Shafia's first wife. She was not merely a cousin or an aunt but Shafia and Tooba's partner in a polygamous marriage. Rona and Shafia had become husband and wife in an elaborate wedding ceremony in Kabul in 1978.

The relationship was confirmed beyond any doubt on July 21 when police searched the Shafia home in Montreal. In a closet they found a diary Rona had kept for a short time in 2008. Handwritten in Persian, it described her deteriorating relations with Shafia and Tooba as well as her ostracism within the family.

The memoir was like a voice from the grave. It painted a bleak picture of Rona's life in the Shafia household. She talked about going on endless walks around the Montreal neighbourhood to fill her days and escape abuse and about how she was being isolated from the children she had helped raise. Known to the world as her husband's cousin in order to hide their polygamous marriage, Rona's temporary immigration visa was firmly under Tooba's control. Rona, by her own account, was a woman without social standing, friends, or citizenship.

Rue Bonnivet neighbour Mary-Ann Devantro recalled one of the times several of the Shafia girls and Rona came to visit at her apartment. Believing Rona was, in fact, the children's aunt, Devantro asked why such a beautiful woman wasn't married. Maybe she would be some day, Rona replied wistfully, not daring to reveal the truth.

When Devantro commented on the delicately braided metal earrings Rona was wearing, Rona took them off and gave them to Devantro as a spontaneous gift. Today, they are Devantro's unhappy reminder of the beautiful woman with dark hair and sad eyes who suffered much and who, as it turned out, had ample reason to fear for her life.

The first entry in Rona's diary began with the Islamic incantation, "In the name of God, the Beneficent, the Merciful." Rona immediately launched into recollections of her early life in Kabul, about starting school at the age of five, and remembering her father, a retired Afghanistan army colonel. Rona had eight siblings — three step-sisters and two step-brothers from her father's first wife; and three sisters and a brother from the marriage between her father and her mother.

"We were a middle-class family. I had just finished 11th grade when my brother Noor married. Shirin Jan, who was a distant relative on my father's side, had come to my brother's wedding reception and saw me sitting there, quiet and subdued. She liked me and asked for my hand in marriage for her son from her first husband," Rona recalls.

That son was Mohammad Shafia, at the time a successful businessman growing his electronics sales and repair business in Kabul. Shirin Jan would visit Rona's home several times to get to know her prospective daughter-in-law. Rona definitely met with her approval. Then Shirin Jan invited the girl and her family to her home, Rona writes, "so that her son could have a good look at me. After our visit, her son announced his consent, so [they] stepped up the khwastgari." This is the ritual undertaken by the groom's family for completing an arranged marriage.

"I knew nothing about such things," Rona writes, revealingly, "so when my elder brother came to ask me whether I accepted the union, I said, 'Give me away in marriage if he is a good man; don't if he is not.'"

The family checked Shafia out, reporting that he was, indeed, "a good man but not educated," his schooling cut short with his father's death. The engagement would go on for two years, until Shafia and Rona were married in 1978 in Kabul's most opulent hotel, the Intercontinental, with a grand feast and celebration.

"After getting married, my lot in life began a downward spiral, right up to today [while] I am writing these memoirs," Rona writes in her diary.

Rona was unable to bear children. This was devastating news for the couple so they spent the next seven years travelling back and forth to India for fertility treatments. These were unsuccessful and, as a result, the relationship deteriorated.

"Finally, my husband started picking on me. He wouldn't allow me [to] go to visit my mother, and at home he would find fault with my cooking and serving meals, and he would find excuses to harass me," Rona recounts. "I had to say, 'Go and take another wife, what can I do?'"

Rona offered to share her home with another wife so that Shafia could have children. He accepted this and insisted he would continue to pay for fertility treatments. Then she learned that Shafia had been quietly making arrangements with Tooba's brother-in-law for a second marriage.

The second wedding was also held at the Intercontinental. The photos of the day are unusual by Western standards: Mohammad, serious-looking in a dark suit, his hair and moustache thick and black, is flanked by his first wife on his left arm, and his new bride, Tooba, resplendent in a white gown, on his right. They look stiff and awkward on what should have been a day of celebration.

Just three months after this second marriage, Tooba discovered she was pregnant. They travelled to India where Zainab was born on September 9, 1989. Rona was treated once more for her infertility, but the doctor this time said Rona would need surgery to assist with pregnancy. But the family had to return to Afghanistan so the procedure was never performed. Just over a year after Zainab's birth, Hamed was born, on December 31, 1990, and Rona's importance in the household began to rapidly diminish.

Her position was further weakened by an unfortunate incident that took place shortly after Hamed was born. The family was lounging on the rooftop of their home. Rona was holding baby Hamed when she stood up and tripped. Both Rona and Hamed were injured, the baby requiring hospital treatment, some of it provided by Mohammad's brother, a doctor and medical professor in Kabul. Mohammad was livid, though Rona protested that it was an accident and she had been hurt, too.

"I suffered so much until his son got well again that I could not even think about my own condition," Rona writes. "[My husband] did not treat me and my family decently until Hamed was well again."

By this time, Tooba was pregnant with her third child, Sahar. Despite Rona's bleak descriptions of her life in the polygamous arrangement, there was one bright spot. Out of the blue, Tooba offered to give the baby she was carrying to Rona to raise as her own. This is a custom in some Afghan households where one wife is unable to have children. Rona was delighted and took over the care of Sahar when the baby was just 40 days old.

They would be together 17 years later in the back seat of the Nissan Sentra at the bottom of the Rideau Canal — inseparable victims of a horrible crime.