‘Are you sure it wasn’t an accident?’
Khadija was crossing the street in Old Montreal, as she does every morning on her way to work, a stone’s throw from city hall. Only on this spring day, as she reached the centre of the intersection, a man in a white Dodge Ram suddenly pressed on the gas and came barrelling toward her.
She had turned her head to look right at him. He was bald, 40-ish and thickset. He was just a few feet away. She dove to the ground, just in time.
The pickup came to a stop at a red light down the street. Khadija ran to take a picture of the licence plate. But she was crying so hard and her hands were shaking so badly that she only captured a blurry shot of the asphalt.
Then she ran to a police car parked in front of city hall and told the officers what happened. The man tried to run me over, cried Khadija, an architect at a nearby firm. That’s him in the Ram, she said, pointing down the street.
Khadijah says the policewoman responded: “OK don’t worry, we’ll look into it,” before driving off in the opposite direction. She never saw them again.
But this was just a preview of the treatment she would get from the police as she tried to file a complaint against the man she says tried to kill her.
Khadija was trying to calm herself down when a young man came up to her and said he had witnessed everything. That guy was crazy, he told her. He had the licence plate number and would testify in court if she wanted. He gave her his number.
But even that didn’t seem to help when she again tried to get police to investigate the incident in the spring of 2016.
Later that day, Khadija went to her neighbourhood police station in St-Laurent.
She explained what had happened to the officer on duty, sobbing as she recounted the details. But she says the officer acted as if she was just whining, playing the victim, making a big deal out of nothing.
She says he told her: “Maybe it was an accident. Maybe he didn’t see you. Are you sure you want to file a complaint?”
At least, at that point, a superior came over and told the officer he had to take her more seriously.
“The number of times I get looks or insults or middle fingers or people spit at me — I’ve become immune to it,” says Khadija, who usually dresses in bright, fashionable clothing and wears a hijab over her hair. She didn’t want her last name published, for fear of receiving more abuse online.
“Before, if someone spit at me, I would go home and cry. It would make me so depressed. Then it became just a daily thing.”
In the six years since she moved from Morocco to Montreal with her husband, who had attended university here, she’s been a target of abuse so many times it doesn’t faze her anymore.
“There’s always something. Once a guy on a bike rode by me and raised his arm at me and said, “Tasse-toi grosse musulmane!” (“Get out of the way, fat Muslim.”)
But this was the first time she was almost killed.
In the days following Khadija’s visit to the police station, a policewoman called her to follow up. She says she told her, “You know, if you press charges, it can take a long time. If you go to court, it could take two or three years. Do you really want to do this? Maybe it was an accident.”
She had a calm, down-to-earth voice. She was talking to Khadija like a friend. Are you sure you want to do this? she kept asking.
“She wanted to convince me to drop it,” Khadija says. “I was angry. So I said, ‘I want to press charges so the man will be arrested and know that he did something wrong.’ ”
Khadija describes herself as a happy person. “Even in the worst moments of my life I find a way to smile,” she says.
Even while describing how she was almost killed and how the police didn’t seem to care, she is still making jokes.
But she’s getting tired, she says.
“In the beginning I wanted this man to know that there’s the law and there’s authority. That he couldn’t get away with this. But then you see the attitude of police who are supposed to protect you. I thought we were safe and secure, and in the end I realize I have to protect myself.”
Khadija received a second call from the friendly policewoman, but she was busy at work and couldn’t take the call. The police woman left a message telling Khadija she had three days to call her back or her file (and the complaint) would be closed automatically.
Khadija called her back three times, always leaving a message, but the policewoman could never be reached.
Khadija and her husband are planning to move away now, either to Calgary or back to Morocco. Someplace safe to live with their three-year-old daughter.
“After what happened, I realized I can’t live like this. My life was in danger. My husband feels the same way. This is a safe city, but not for everyone.”