For months, Bahar Ebrahimi had been rebelling against her parents, complaining their Afghan culture and Muslim religion were suffocating her. “I want to enjoy my life. I want to feel what the other ones feel,” she told them, according to her mother’s statement to police.
It was June, 2010, Grand Prix weekend in downtown Montreal, and on two straight nights the 19-year-old stayed out past dawn against her parents’ wishes.
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As her crying husband spoke to Bahar in the basement of their Dorval home, Ms. Kaleki went upstairs and grabbed a large knife from the kitchen counter, the one she used to chop meat, she recounted. “I said, ‘This is the time.’ ”
She hid the knife under her T-shirt, returned to the basement, and told her husband the problem would best be resolved between mother and daughter. “Just leave us alone for five minutes,” she said she told him. “Don’t come until I call you.”
He left and she cuddled her first-born and told her to lie on her stomach so she could give her a back massage. “Then I stab her, stab her neck,” she confessed. “She said, ‘No Mom!’ I said, ‘It’s for your good. Let me finish.’ ”
Earlier in the interrogation, Sgt.-Det. Bertrand has asked whether the knife blade was sharp. “No, it wasn’t,” she replied. “I wish it was. I wanted to give her the peace that she needed.”
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Bahar survived the attack, suffering serious knife wounds to her head and shoulder. Ms. Kaleki, 40, is charged with attempted murder, aggravated assault and illegal use of a weapon.
Her husband, alerted by Bahar’s screams, rushed downstairs and grabbed the knife from Ms. Kaleki, the court heard. “I said to my husband, let me finish her.’ ” She tried to choke her daughter, she said, and after Bahar escaped, she chased her upstairs and tried to break down the locked door to the bedroom where she was calling 911.
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“I hope she gets well,” she said referring to her daughter. But she did not want her to emerge unscarred.
“She live with that wound,” she continued, pointing to her neck, “she remembers me.” The experience “will make her strong and give her wisdom. . . . It means she will give up her ways of living.”
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