The Most Powerful ‘Daily’ Episodes From 2021 (Published 2021) (2024)

Hello?

Hello.

Hi. How are you?

I’m fine. Are you fine?

I am good. Thank you so much for asking. Thank you so much for your time. So I’m going to call you N. That’s OK?

OK, but my English is weak, and I have a little bit problem in English.

That’s no problem at all. I can speak —

Can you just tell me a little bit about yourself, as much as you’re comfortable with, how old you are, do you have any children, just a little bit about yourself?

OK, I don’t have any children because I’m single, and I’m —

And this was my third semester, but I can’t learn more because of Taliban. And they just locked our university and — wait a minute. Can I —

Sure. Sure.

OK.

I’m really sorry.

Oh, don’t be. No, it’s OK. Do you need to take care of something?

No, I was talking in English, and my mom’s come. I don’t want to — they know about that, so for this reason.

Ah, OK.

I told her that I’m talking with my friend, so —

OK, so where are you right now?

I’m at home.

Ah, OK. So your parents don’t know that you’re talking to me obviously.

Yes.

OK. OK.

I’m just — they want to give me to Talib because they think if I got married with a Talib, there would be a connection with Talib, then the Taliban will not kill or there will not be a danger for us. And every time I’m talking to my father that please don’t do this, we can fight against them like a family, but he’s telling me that, no, we can’t fight. They are stronger than us, and they will kill my sons.

And all of them are behaving bad, very bad to me because they are telling me that you’re not our sister or our daughter because you are not helping us. If you were a member of our family, then you will accept that. You will accept to marry a Talib. But I can’t. If I got married with a person who is very — who is against of me or who can’t accept me like a human, then how should I spend all my life with him?

I see. I see.

Now every day they’re beating me. At first, my father beat me, and then my brother, then another one. Then they start — all of them, they start beating me. They beat me with a pipe, so for this reason, I’m searching for a way to get out of this home because they’re not behaving good to me. But if I left this home, I can’t come back. Because if I come back, then they will kill me.

Your family will kill you?

Yes.

[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]

Is everything OK?

Yeah, can I — just — no, can I cut?

Hey, N.

Hello.

Hi.

Hi.

Are you OK?

Yes.

I’m talking not loudly because they are asleep, and for this reason, I’m talking — I’m not talking loudly.

OK.

When I was talking with you, my brother came to the room, and I think he was listening to me. So I’m really trying to keep it secret, because I know it has a risk.

Do you think — I’m just wondering if this feels like a good idea or if maybe — I don’t want to get you in any trouble if they hear you.

My little brother, he’s not at home tonight, so for this reason, I’m just talking with you. And smaller brother and father, they’re asleep on another floor. And there we have a basem*nt, so I’m in there. And there is a window that I can see if someone comes. I can see them from the feet, and I’m watching. I’m watching. I’m taking care about it. Yes.

OK, well, just tell me —

I guess I wanted to ask you what you remember of your childhood, just what it was like for you to be a little girl growing up.

Are you talking about positive memories or negative ones?

Oh, I mean, I think whatever comes into your mind first.

About my dad?

Yeah, and your childhood with him.

Every girl always love their father.

When I was thinking about my father, I was thinking that he is a hero, and I was always proud. I was feeling proud.

At the first period of Taliban when Taliban came —

And he doesn’t think about his life.

And he saved their life.

He started to run away from Afghanistan.

I remember all these days I was trying to be great child, great daughter.

When he was fixing a bicycle, or fixing the electricity, or other things, and I was watching what he’s doing.

My father was always saying that this girl, when I’m doing anything, when I’m fixing a machine or something else, she’s always stand in front of me and she was always searching that what I’m doing. She wants to know, and he was proud. And he was always telling to others that when she grew up, she will know everything. She can be a boy, you know?

There was a name of a milk. You know?

I was drinking that milk too much. For that reason —

That’s cute.

Oh.

I miss that too much.

In 2011, we were a guest in my aunt’s home. We went for our winter’s holiday down there and then —

Me, my mom and my two brothers and father.

And they put a hand bomb into the home in this attack.

My aunt’s husband, her daughter and three other children did die. From burning, they die. And the person who was alive was my sister, and she was totally burned. She was not normal, but those people with her, they lost their lives. They lost their lives.

Can I tell you that the Taliban —

They come to our home. They attacked on my father. They beat my father and also my brother.

For the second time to Pakistan.

But my father, actually, he loves Afghanistan because he was a soldier and that type. He loves Afghanistan.

When we come to Kabul, it was safe. There was no Talib. I was spending my life normally, very normally.

I decided to be a businesswoman, to learn business, to create a business for myself.

Every night, I was learning.

I was trying to learn and learn and learn.

It was my luck.

They told me that you are a girl, and the business is for men. It is not for you.

If you don’t want to change it to Islamic studies, then we don’t allow you to go, stay home and don’t go there.

I said that it’s OK. Now I can be a judge.

What’s law say about the rights of women, and if someone kill another person, then what should we do? And there was a TV show about a case.

If a case come to me like this, then I have to think that how should I handle or how should I think?

If there will be many people in front of me, then how can I defend someone?

In front of mirror, I was trying to be a judge, and was talking with myself, and acting like a judge. I was doing all these things, and I said that, oh my god, if I will be a judge, then it will be fabulous because there was no one in our family or there was no girl who was a judge. And I said, OK, it’s also good.

As a woman in Afghanistan, to be a judge, it’s a big personality, or I was trying and I was dreaming like this. My numbers was great.

Your grades were great?

Yes, it was great.

We were starting our new semester.

Then this.

Suddenly, all dreams — someone broke all your dreams. Alive without any dreams is like nonsense. It’s nothing, and I lost it everything.

Afghanistan’s government has fallen to Islamist militants who make up the Taliban.

There are scenes of panic and pandemonium at Kabul airport today as desperate people pour onto the runway trying to flee the country.

Increasing numbers of Kabul residents have been looking for a way out.

Who don’t feel safe, who are petrified —

In what can only be described as a chaotic exodus, now people are literally clinging on —

This is extremely concerning to the population, especially women, who will be required to cover their faces. They will not be permitted to work in traditional roles, and you will see —

My father’s scared about that. If Taliban knew about us and they were searching, we are not safe. My father is a criminal in Taliban’s eyes, and we don’t feel good.

We were trying to move out from the country together with my family. They were trying.

I tried my best. I really tried.

So one of my father friends told to him that if you give your daughter to a Talib, then there will not be a danger for you and your family. So for this reason, my father wants to give me to Talib.

The first time they beat me with pipe, and my whole body, there were scratch of that pipe.

Even the younger — my two brothers, they’re younger than me, and they’re slapping me. They’re kicking me.

And I was very tired about this beating because I don’t want to marry with Talib, and I will — if a person give me two choices, to marry with a Talib and to accept suicide, I will suicide. I will attempt suicide, but I will not marry.

You’d rather die than — yeah.

And I told him, my father and everyone, don’t beat me. I will do it. You don’t kill me, I will kill my own self.

I cut my hand because I want to put a deadline to my life.

And in this situation when the blood was coming from my hand, they were not paying attention on it, and they were beating me. It didn’t matter for them that my hand was cut it.

I don’t know who was he, but his mother and sister, they come to our home.

I brought tea for them, but my hand was shaking. And the tea just — the tea, it leaked out at the floor.

It spilled, yeah.

Yes. Yes. When they saw that she doesn’t know how to work at home and she’s like — and I have a weird, like a T-shirt, the way that I can show them my hand, and the way that they think that I’m not a good girl.

In Afghanistan, when a person attempts suicide or a girl, they think that she’s not a good girl and like this —

Like a troublemaker.

Yes, like, a bad girl. They think like this, so for this reason, I have showed them, not directly, but I have showed them my hand. And they talked with my father that what was that? And I think they catched my signal, and they reject me. They reject me.

So when they left our home, my father — again, they — he beat me. What have you done? They just kicked to my main part.

Like your stomach?

Yes, on there. And I don’t know what we name it, but the main part. We are girls.

Oh, they’re kicking you in — like, they’re actually kicking you in your genital area. Oh.

Yes. Yes.

OK.

Yes, it was bleeding. I talked to my mother. Mom, it’s bleeding, and I’m feeling painful. No, he was not believing that. And he was telling to my brother to broke a wood, to beat me with a wood.

Sometimes when they beat me, I cry. It’s a normal thing. When you feel pain, you start crying, and he locks the windows and the door. And he’s saying to me that don’t — you stay silent. Don’t voice.

I see. Don’t yell. Don’t yell out. Don’t make a noise.

Yes. Yes. And when I’m crying and I make voice, then he’s saying to me that I will give you to Talib. I will give you to Talib. I will give you to Talib.

And he’s a good man, my father, but when he talked with that decision to give me the Talib, after that, he doesn’t play a role like my father. He just played a role more like a Talib. He’s acting like my enemy.

The only person who is with me in home is my mother. My mother, she’s trying very much to stay in front of them to save me, but she can’t do directly. The thing is she’s always saying that you’re a girl, and you will go to your husband’s home, and I will stay with my sons. So I should be with them. I should accept everything that they are telling me. Unfortunately, I can’t help you. I know this is wrong, but I can’t do anything.

So your mom — so she’s trying to defend you, but at the end of the day, there’s nothing she can do. Is that —

Yes, the day when my hand was bleeding and she was trying to help me, she was — my cry is coming. She was trying to help me, and she was saying that take her to hospital. She’s bleeding. But they talked my mother out of the room, and they were beating me. And when I saw that moment, I see that there was no one to help me. The only person was my mom. And after that, she come, and she put —

A bandage?

It was like a bandage. She put it on my hand to stop the bleeding, and she was — I love her because she’s fighting for me.

I’m sorry. [CRYING]

No, I’m sorry.

It’s so very hard that you stand against your family. The only thing that we have is our family, and I’m — I love my dad also, but I don’t know why he’s doing all these things with me. If he loves all the family, then I’m also a member of this family. He should stand for me also.

If Taliban wants to kill us, then he — then it’s not the right thing to put me on the hand of Taliban. If he know that they are bad people, why he’s doing all these things? I really don’t —

I’m sorry.

No, it’s OK. I mean, what are you more scared of at this point? Like, is it going to the Taliban, or is it your own father? And what’s scarier to you?

I’m scared from my family, because they’re my own family. The enemy, the Taliban, is not. I don’t love them, but I love my family. When they were doing all these things, I feel bad that my own family, who I love them, who I’m their daughter, their sister, they’re doing all these things with me. They know.

I told to my father that you are the one who saved many people life from Taliban. How should you want to give your daughter to them? How can you decide this? And he told me my family is important, and he told me that if I was a daughter and you were a father, then tell me what will you do for your family? Save one person, or to save all the family?

You are talking about saving your family. Am I not his family’s member? Am I not his daughter? It’s like a nonsense.

I’m feeling shameful that I’m talking for my family, and I’m feeling shameful in front of you that my family is like this. It’s not — no one’s family is like this.

He’s my father, and when I’m thinking about it, I broke from inside. I don’t know why. When I was child, he loved me, but now I don’t know why he don’t love me.

Now I’m always doing — I cook his favorite food. He loves tea. I’m always making tea for him. I’m doing anything. I will do anything that to be something that they love me or change their decision, because it’s the decision of my life, and it’s not like a play. It’s the decision of my life.

They broke my dream, Taliban. It’s not OK, but now I can deal with that. OK, there is many girls that Taliban broke their dreams. OK, fine.

But my life, I can’t spend my whole life with someone like — with a Talib. I can’t. I really can’t. I will kill myself, or I will — I’ll leave home, but I will not accept that.

But if I left this home, I doesn’t have any family like this, and it’s hard for a girl to live alone in Afghanistan.

So it’s a decision of my life.

So just I want to let you get some sleep, but I — just in terms of the next couple of days, what are you kind of worried about right now for the next couple of days?

I’m scared about the silence because they are not talking in front of me, and I’m really scared about that. They’re trying to erase the mark when I done suicide. They’re trying to erase that mark.

From the suicide attempt?

Yes. Yes. They were talking about that, that we should hide this mark, that no one — you’re not acceptable with this mark because everyone will ask from us, why have you done this thing? So I just feel that someone is coming that they want to hide the mark. I’m trying to hear what they want to do, but I can’t. So I’m very scared about their silence.

Well, thank you, again, and please message me the next time you get the chance, and we’ll talk again.

OK.

OK.

Don’t think about me. I don’t want to be — make anything — any bad thing for anyone, so don’t think about me. Thank you so much from me also.

Thanks, N.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

[MUSIC =]

Hi, ma’am. I hope you’re fine, and now I’m safe for a little bit. And that’s my new number, and it’s safe. You can call me or text me if you want.

Now I feel a little bit good.

And after that, I decided that I want to leave this home.

I wanted to leave home.

I cook my father’s favorite food.

An egg with tomato and some potatoes, he loved that.

When I was capturing that moment, I was thinking to myself that in some way, he’s kind.

I was trying to —

I was capturing that I was going to miss him. I will not see him again.

I’ve written a letter for her.

That, mom, while you were not in there with me, I was always writing a letter for her.

That’s how much I miss her. Now I miss her too much.

[SOBS] I’m sorry. Sorry. Sorry.

Hey.

He was a member of the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation just across the river. And we got into his Ford F-150 pickup truck —

Yeah, because we’re going to go up here.

All right, you guys ready? Let’s go. OK.

It’s just right down over there, so.

What are we looking for to dig?

It’s called [INAUDIBLE] — I don’t know the English name for it.

The top part is — I mean, the leaves are used for old tobacco. But the root is also.

I think it’s a — there’s a big rock there.

Well, we grew up in a rodeo ranching family. So we were all cowboys. But, you know, I mean professional cowboys.

My dad won the Calgary Stampede in 1945.

What’s that about.

Saddle bronc and wild horse race, yeah.

Your dad must have been a tough guy.

Oh, yeah, my mom was a jockey. That’s how they met.

They say she was a better shot than my dad, but she would never belittle my dad.

She would shoot the deer, boom. But she used to say, “Oh, your dad shot that,” she’d tell, “Dad shot that.”

Well, the residential school, so the brick buildings were the dorms.

Right, OK.

We didn’t really learn much in that school, that’s for sure. I’ll tell you that for a fact. But we sure knew how to make sure gardens were cleaned and how to gather apples that, they call them windfall.

At meal time, you had to fight like hell. People would — other kids would steal your food or, you know? You learned how to eat like this. If your plate is there, you just eat like that.

Guarding it —

Guarding it, yeah, so kids, kids had to steal because they were starving. There was a lot of fighting, a lot of — a lot of anger. You know, I mean, pretty much —

Like the older kids that knew us from the reserve said, “You guys never stay by yourselves. You make sure, you know, two or three always stay together.” They wouldn’t let us be by ourselves.

So, but I found out one day why. Because we took off, you know, like a little kid, you want to go to the bathroom. And we had to go into that old brick building downstairs, because that’s where the boy’s bathroom was. And me and my cousin went.

And right beside where the boy’s bathroom was, was where one of the brother’s rooms was, sleeping quarters were. So we heard one the — one of our friends in there crying and kind of like screaming. But you could — it was muffled too.

And the door was open. That’s the first time I had seen sexual abuse there. And I think I was, like, in grade two. And it was one of our friends. So he was in our class. He was with one of the brothers in there.

He was only like about seven years old or something.

Did you even know what was happening?

No, I didn’t know what was happening. We went running out and, yeah.

Did that brother, was he still at the school?

Yeah, nothing was ever done about it. And then nobody wanted to be what they call an “altar boy,” because they were considered to be the favorites of the priests. And so they did everything bad not to be an altar boy.

Yeah, sexual favorites. So that’s what they were, the toys for them, yeah. So we all — they would tell us, “Be bad. Be bad if you have to be. Get a strap if you have to, but don’t be an altar boy, you know?”

How do they —

did the nuns aid in this? Did they just turn away? Did they —

The nuns were just as cruel.

Yeah, the nuns were just as cruel. Sister Mary Bernadette, I remember in grade 3, we had a girl come in. She was a Chilcotin girl. And, my god, that girl was —

when that nun, Sister Mary Bernadette, beat that girl, she was trying to force her to speak English. And that girl couldn’t speak English, because she was raised way back in Chilcotin Country and never ever ever been out of her home.

Anyway, she got captured and brought to our school. And she tried to make that girl say a sentence. And she couldn’t, because she wasn’t familiar with English sounds. She put a Bible on her hand, on each of her hand. She couldn’t say it, bang, she got strapped on the back. And that girl collapsed.

And she disappeared.

And then I was asking some friends from Chilcotin country, “Do you remember this girl?”

“Yep.”

“What happened to her?” “She ran away, she came home and she committed suicide.”

But she was beaten so bad, that girl. So the nuns were just as cruel, just as cruel.

The House will now proceed to statements by ministers. The Right Honorable Prime Minister.

[APPLAUSE]

Thank you very much. Mr. Speaker, I stand before you today to offer an apology to former students of Indian residential schools. The treatment of children in Indian residential schools is a sad chapter in our history.

Two primary objectives of the residential school system were to remove and isolate children from the influence of their home, families, traditions and cultures and to assimilate them into the dominant culture.

There is no place in Canada for the attitudes that inspired the Indian residential school system to ever prevail again. God bless all of you. God bless our land.

[APPLAUSE]

A devastating discovery has been made in Canada.

The remains of more than 200 children have been located.

Some as young as three years old have been found buried near Canada’s largest former residential school in Kamloops.

This is such a dark chapter of history for Canada that needs to be told.

This is going to be a staggering and heartbreaking moment in Canadian history.

We’re now utterly disgusted. There’s no other word for it.

How could this possibly have happened? How could it have gone neglected? How did they keep it a secret?

Some as young as three years old had been taken from their parents and sent there and died there.

It’s absolutely impossible for me to understand how it cannot be regarded as a major crime scene.

The day after they found those, my brother Teddy, he phoned me. He says, “You’re going to come with me today.” I said, “OK, where are we going to go?” He said, “I just need you to come with me.”

We ran into a couple of older guys in their 70s, late 70s. And right away, they start talking. And the one guy said, “We had to go dig the graves.”

And the other one said, “Well, I was the one that had to chop holes in the river in the middle of winter. And then we had to chop holes in the ice.” He said, “Big holes in the ice and then we got sent to the dorm.”

And then they were talking about, well, my cousin got pregnant. We knew she was pregnant. We were told that that baby was burnt in the incinerator. And they’re talking all in their language. And I’m like, I broke listening to these three men talk about that.

And my brother said, “I can’t be here any longer.” He said, “I’ve got to go.”

It’s just unimaginable.

Take me home, you know?

What do you think should be done for those children now? I mean, do their remains just stay in the ground? Should they be identified?

Identifying them through D.N.A. or through science is going to make it real. Because it’ll give them a name. Their names will come back. Their names will live.

So it’s worth the — I mean, it’ll be very traumatic. It’ll be very, very traumatic.

Absolutely, it’s going to be horrifying. But I think it needs to be done. And I think by identifying these children, their descendants, their relatives will be more at peace. Because there’s so many families out there that say, oh, my great uncle ran away never to come back. But maybe that great uncle is one of those bodies laying there. And there has to be closure.

There has to be that peace somehow.

It’s a word my language called [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], which means for us to return to being human again. We’ve been beaten down so much over generations, and decade after decade we’re finding our own way back. And we are finding it back through the land, through sitting in the mountains.

You know, we’re together. And we’re out on the land. I love being out in the land myself.

We go up there into the mountains and then go get what medicines we needed.

And then, you know, they’re always asking me, how do you say this, uncle, in our language? How do you say that in our language? Things like that, so that’s what gives me hope. Canada doesn’t give me any hope at all. It doesn’t. But these guys give me hope.