Sabreen (name changed to protect identity) Arrived in October 2006 from Israel

“They’re going to do it on Thursday.” Her sister’s husband tipped Sabreen that the males in her family were plotting to kill her, and the murder would happen in two days. With that warning, in the fall of 2006, Sabreen used the few connections outside her village in Israel’s Negev Desert to organize an escape to Tel Aviv, where she went into hiding. The barefoot walk through the desert to a getaway car stays seared in her memory: The last view of her adopted mother, the last image of her family’s tent. Sabreen is Bedouin, and in her nomadic family and village, honour is above the lives of individuals. Women bear the violence. Women like her birth mother and a sister, both killed, and like Sabreen, who faced the same fate at age 21 after refusing an arranged marriage.

The getaway to Tel Aviv worked. In hiding with friends of friends made in her military service, Sabreen learned that her family and the police were searching for her. A brief encounter with police in Tel Aviv told her she couldn’t trust them. She wanted out, anywhere, so friends bought her plane ticket to Canada. Sabreen had never been on a plane. She knew little about Canada and thought she would be homeless. She was wrong. She claimed asylum and, although she initially received a rejection letter, won protection on appeal. The appeal judge agreed the Israeli state could not protect her from her family. Sabreen is now a personal care worker. She is ambitious, passionate, blunt, and rebuilding. “I will be thankful to this country for the rest of my life.”