Aparita

Toronto Star, [11/17/2001]

Mina has terminal cencer, but her parents in Iran have been denied visitors visa

You hardly get to see Mina’s hazel eyes. She constantly dabs the tears that fill them up. She asks one question over and over.

“Why?” The single word encapsulates 35-year-old Mina’s life.

Mina, a nickname for Batoul Sadeghi, is dying from colon cancer. Bedridden, paralyzed from the waist down, she’s in diapers, having lost control of her bowels. She swallows 24 pills a day, including morphine. Her doctors are surprised she’s still alive. Recently, they gave her perhaps three months to live. They say hope is keeping her alive.

“I want to see my parents before I die,” she says, sobbing quietly. “Why can’t I see my parents? Why?”

‘Why can’t I see them? They won’t stay. I promise they will go back’

Her question hangs in the silence that envelops the small living room of her North York apartment, broken only by the hum of the air circulating in Mina’s special bed. A caregiver attends to her five days a week, seven hours a day. Other times, her husband of 10 years, Hamid Raza Sadeghi, and 16-year-old daughter, Tamina Sadeghi, take care of her.

“My daughter wanted to show me her room,” Mina says. “I couldn’t make it and started crying. She told me not to worry. She’ll show me pictures. But I promised her I will see her room. One day.”

Fourteen years ago, Mina left Iran in search of a better life, with her then-husband (they separated 11 years ago) and 21/2-year-old Tamina. Their first stop was India, where Mina fell sick and was diagnosed with colon cancer. The doctors told her husband, not her. Mina didn’t know that the “big surgery” she had was to remove a tumour or that the treatment she underwent was chemotherapy.

“I had never seen anything like that in my family and I was only 22. Who gets colon cancer when they are 22?” Mina asks.

She left India after seven months, making her way to Canada where she arrived on Aug. 14, 1988. Her brother-in-law took her to Toronto Western Hospital the very next day.

The doctors told her at once of her condition. Over the next 13 years, she underwent five surgeries and several rounds of radiation and chemotherapy. Things were going “okay” until 1998, when she was back in the hospital complaining of severe pain. There was a tumour near her spine. Doctors told her they could not touch it.

“Then everything went down. Last May, they told me the tumour was in my spine. That I was dying. I asked them if I would be paralyzed. They did not say anything, but I knew,” Mina says, breaking down again.

She had been trying to go back to Iran to see her parents, but couldn’t. She wasn’t a landed immigrant - she had been living here on a minister’s permit due to her medical condition. When she found out she was dying, Mina became desperate.

Her parents had applied to the Canadian embassy in Tehran twice last year for a visitor’s visa, but were denied. Last August, the Sadeghis approached the office of their MP, David Collenette, for help in getting a minister’s permit for Mina’s parents to visit their daughter. (A permit from the immigration minister’s office can be granted to allow inadmissible inidividuals to come to Canada under exceptional circumstances, usually on humanitarian grounds.)

A month ago, that application was denied.

“The first time, both parents applied (for a visitor’s visa). But they (immigration authorities in Tehran) thought my in-laws would stay back here,” says Hamid Raza, shaking his head in frustration. “So, the second time only her mother applied, thinking they will let at least one parent come. They refused again.”

Mina’s parents are in their 60s, with a large family in Tehran. The father has a second wife and several children, and runs an established business. The Sadeghis say that the parents are happy with their life in Iran and do not want to stay in Canada. Raza even signed a letter attested by a lawyer to that effect.

“Why can’t I see my parents? They won’t stay. I promise they will go back,” says Mina.
Hamid Raza adds: “I am a Canadian citizen. I can support my in-laws while they are here. So what’s the problem?

“The people at David Collenette’s office said they would be able to help. Mina was so happy. She called her parents to tell them they will be able to come. My father-in-law was crying with happiness. He said maybe everything happened for a reason. That the second visitor’s visa was denied because both of them were meant to come. Then Sept. 11th happened.

“When we called again, they told us that the application had been refused. They said that we would get a letter explaining why. It’s been more than a month, but no letter. We want to know why. Why?”
Ironically, during the wait, Mina received her landed immigrant papers. She can officially travel.

“If I had it earlier, I could have seen my parents, but how can I go now?” Mina groans with exasperation. “I used to call them every week, but I have not called them for a month. I don’t know what to tell them.”

Alison Smith (her name has been changed), a volunteer with Hospice Thornhill, says communication with Collenette’s office stopped once Mina got her landed immigrant papers.

“And when the office found out that I also work as an immigration consultant, they did not return my calls,” she says. “I am just helping these people out. I am not being compensated in any way.”

Collenette’s office declined to comment on the case.

“We have to respect the privacy and the confidentiality of the issues that come into his office,” says spokesman Anthony Polci.

And Susan Scarlett of Citizenship and Immigration Canada, says: “We can’t comment on particulars on any case without prior written consent from (the parents).”

Mina is grateful for everything she has been able to get because she is living in Canada. She feels lucky to be in the hands of good doctors and health facilities. But she also hopes she can see her parents before she dies, especially her mother.

“I haven’t told her. My father knows a little bit. It will be hard if she sees me like this, but I want her to see me. I want her to be here. I don’t want her to find out through someone else that her Batoul is dead.”