Casualties of War

In a rented basement room in Burnaby, a group of Afghan women—many of them widowed and illiterate—are building a small business, a sense of community and a brighter future

By Cori Howard; portraits by Gregory Crow

HOW GULALAI HABIB ENDED UP in a brightly coloured Burnaby basement is a story as long and circuitous as the mountain roads of her native Afghanistan. It involves a charmed life in Kabul working as an engineer and computer programmer and, later, working with Iranian and Iraqi refugees on behalf of the United Nations. It involves living through war and making a harrowing nighttime escape, two small children in tow, through the mountains on a bus with no brakes. It involves seven years in Pakistan working, once again, for the UN on dangerous cross-border missions aimed at persuading the warlords and the Taliban to involve women in Afghanistan’s reconstruction effort.

It was one of those cross-border missions that changed the course of her life. Just after the Taliban takeover, in October 1996, there were public hangings in the streets of Kabul and women weren’t allowed outside their homes unless accompanied by a man. Habib was warned by friends and family not to go back into Afghanistan, but she went anyway. On this trip, she had to pretend not to be Afghan. She didn’t wear the burqa. She couldn’t see friends or family. On the street, the few women who were outside came up to her begging for food and money in broken English. “It was heartbreaking not to speak in my own language to my own people,” she recalls. She met a woman who had lost her family and had to lock her three grandchildren in the house while she went to work. That’s when Habib started to question her role with the UN. A sister living in Vancouver convinced her to move here, and she ended up working as a counsellor for the non-profit Immigrant Services Society, helping Afghan refugees adjust to Canadian life.

The Malalay Afghan Women’s Co-op is the first refugee women’s co-op in Canada. It grew out of conversations between Habib and some of the women she was meeting in her work. Many were mothers with husbands dead or missing because of the war, women whose illiteracy and multiple children made finding work, and getting off government assistance, impossible. “It’s hard to find a job if you can’t introduce yourself,” says Habib. “It’s hard to communicate with the schools and the teachers. By the end of their year of government assistance, they’re highly stressed by the many barriers to entering a normal life.” Seeing them become cleaners or go on welfare motivated Habib to start a sewing co-op. Sewing is a skill every Afghan woman possesses, she says, and it’s accepted by the men in the community.

For the last three years, Habib’s passion has been this rented space in the basement of a medical-dental building in Burnaby, where Afghan women come to sew, chat and enjoy a sense of community. The co-op now numbers 43 refugee women, and it’s starting to get contracts from restaurants and non-profits to produce things like aprons, napkins, shawls and conference bags. Funding is an ongoing issue; they just succeeded in getting the financial commitments that will allow them to continue renting the basement space. They meet, sometimes every day, to brainstorm new ideas for products, to sew and to talk.

With orange and pink walls, and beaded vests and shawls on display, the space is full of warmth and lively chatter. “It has given them hope, despite the barriers,” says Habib. “They’re learning slowly. Business is complicated, even for Canadians. These women need support at every step. But it gives them a place of belonging—a purpose—and earning an income gives them a new power in their families and the community.”

A photo essay begins on page two.

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