Nomadic life…

IN 1992, the Shafias fled Afghanistan and the conservative mujahideen regime that had taken Kabul during the civil war. With their three children and Rona in tow, Mohammad and Tooba crossed the border into Pakistan. They would stay there for the next four years.

According to Mohammad, he never felt his family was safe in Pakistan because of Pakistani support for the Taliban. By 1995, a repressive Taliban regime was in power in Kabul, and "liberal" people like his Afghan family were easy targets for persecution. Children were being kidnapped and held for ransom. Shafia was a wealthy man and had reason to fear such a thing.

They moved to Dubai in 1996, where Shafia's electronics business flourished. He became the top Panasonics dealer in the country, one time receiving a $50,000 bonus from the parent corporation. Shafia still held property and stocks in Afghanistan and the family remained prosperous — so much so that in 2008, after he had been in Canada for a year, he sold one of his two houses in Kabul for $900,000.

In 2000, he decided to try his fortune in New Zealand. The Shafias applied for visas but Rona's didn't clear for medical reasons. At the prompting of one of Shafia's business associates, they applied instead to Australia and were successful. What happened in Australia and why the Shafias left after a year is the subject of conflicting stories. Rona claims in her diary that the Australian government declared Shafia undesirable — that he hadn't created any wealth for Australians, only for himself, and that he disregarded the rules of his visa by purchasing property. At his trial, Shafia contended he was out of the country for much of the time on business trips and that Tooba was feeling isolated and alone in Australia. It was Tooba, he insisted, who pressed him to return to Dubai.

By the time the Shafias arrived in Canada in June 2007, the family of 10 had travelled more than halfway around the world and lived in five different countries. The older children were being educated in an English-speaking American school in Dubai. But university would be a more expensive proposition for Shafia's growing family, so they looked to Canada. Tooba had family in Montreal and they launched a two-year application process to move to Canada.

Again, Rona would be the sticking point with immigration officials. She spent several months back in Europe after the family left for Canada, staying with her sister in France and Tooba's brother in Germany, before getting a visa. Polygamous marriages are not acknowledged in Canada so they concocted the story that Rona was a relative who helped with domestic chores around the house.

In her diary, Rona describes the last 24 hours the family spent together in Dubai, on the verge of their new life in Canada. Mohammad had already arranged to ship the family's kitchen supplies, bedding, and other household goods to Montreal. This was a family used to being on the move.

"The night of our departure, I cleared out and cleaned the kitchen and no one slept," Rona writes. "Finally, after morning prayers, everyone got up at five in the morning and prepared to leave. We had some 10 pieces of luggage and departed to the airport in two taxis. My flight was at 8:30 and theirs was at 9:00." Rona flew seven-and-a-half hours to Paris; the nine Shafias travelled 16 hours to Canada with a stopover in London.

Later, in September, Mohammad and Rona reunited in Dubai. He arranged for Rona's three-month visa to Canada and they flew to Montreal on November 6, 2007.

Until she was left behind on this latest move, Mother Rona had never been away from the family; the separation from Sahar, her own daughter adopted within the family, would have been especially hard. And though the reunion in Canada was largely a happy one, Rona describes a frosty reception from Tooba, who soon informed Rona she should have stayed with her family in France and that her time in Canada probably wouldn't last long.

For years, Tooba had worked to wrest control of the family finances from Rona and supplant her in Mohammad's bed. The few months already spent in Canada, where Tooba was officially listed as Shafia's only wife, had cemented Tooba's matriarchal dominance in the household.

"She would make me so miserable and upset," Rona writes in her diary. "Sometimes she wouldn't speak to me, so I would go and speak with her because she had my passport. Tooba used to say, 'Your life is in my hands.'"