“There are some who bring a light so great to the world that even after they have gone the light remains.” — Unknown
The next day I came home early to be able to have supper and head out to meet with the social service folks at Bathurst Street 7:00PM. There were three people from their office in the room but the woman who spoke to Lynda on the phone was controlling the conversation. Initially, they asked me when did I come to Canada and what did I do for a living. Their emphasis of the discussion was on to find out if I married to Lynda to get the immigration in Canada. We explained to them briefly how we met and how things developed to the extent that we started living together. She started talking about the sensitive situation from a religious point of view and we both tried to understand that. However, it was upsetting for me when she said – It doesn’t matter whether you like it or not, your son is a Jew by birth. While it wasn’t news for me, I just wanted to upset her by saying – not according to my religion. She turned around and asked whose religion you are going to follow if you continued to live together and my answer to that question was why we can’t follow the both religions.
We met with them the next day again and it appeared to us that Maxine had provided them with very detailed information on a number of selected conversations which were very upsetting for her. They started asking us specific questions on those conversations and we had no idea what they were talking about. In the end, Lynda told them not to believe everything they heard from Maxine. Mir may have told her off for not keeping her room clean or not helping me with the dishes and vacuuming or fighting constantly with her brother but he never stopped giving her pocket money, buying cloths, having birthday parties and slipovers or seeing her father and sister. He never ever mistreated her.
We went there several nights essentially to rehashing the same points. Every night they were propelling me to say something against Lynda. Consequently, I ended up saying something silly, controversial, and annoying to Lynda and we started fighting in front of Adam. I also demonstrated irritation about the whole situation which didn’t help either. Poor Lynda was totally consumed with their conversations and she wasn’t sure how to handle them. At the same time she was so annoyed with me that she stopped looking at me when she spoke.
The social worker who was leading the meeting was a nasty piece of work. At one point she told Lynda that you should have thought about your kids before you decided to marry a Muslim. Lynda got furious and I thought she was going to get up and punch her face.
What really bothered us was the fact that they insisted us to keep Adam in the room all the time when we were arguing with each other. Every single night when we went for those meetings, we didn’t get back home before 9:00PM and it was way too late for Adam to be in bed.
The bottom line was that they were asking Lynda what’s more important to her, her daughter or her husband which was an entirely imprudent question to ask. They told her that Maxine doesn’t like to come home if you continued to live with your husband. In that case, they will have to find a foster home for Maxine as her father is not interested in taking her back either. They gave Lynda one week to get back to them with her decision. In the meanwhile, Maxine was going to stay with them.
When we got back home Lynda put Adam to bed and went to bed without saying anything to me. Obviously, she was totally infuriated with me.
I lied down on the couch in the living room and waited for the sun to rise. It was a Saturday. I got up early in the morning to take a shower and pack a few things in the suitcase. Once Lynda came down to make tea, I said to her that I better find a place to stay until you make up your mind. Once you are ready to talk, please call me at my office. She was a very proud woman. She didn’t say a thing. I recognized that instead of sticking around and facing the situation together, it was the cowardice decision I ever made to run away and I was ashamed of myself. However, in my defence, it will provide her with the space she needed to make her decision without any interruption or influence from me.
She called me on Tuesday to ask me to come home for a chat.
