What I Expected. What It Was. What It Became.

Fartumo Kusow: Welcome to Break the Silence, Build the Future. I'm your host, Fartuma Cuso, founder of Zahra Bouleh Foundation. This season we'll call it eight minutes to silence. Eight minutes is how long it took one night for everything to change for my family. This season is about the silence in those eight minutes and about everything we can do to make sure the next eight minutes are met with action instead of silence. Here's how this season works twenty episodes every Wednesday from now until december the second. Ten of those episodes are the child story. Told roughly in order. The other ten are conversations with people doing this work, researchers, advocates, survivors. The verdict lands in episode sixteen, which will air on november fourth. A few weeks before our I am Zahrabullah conference on november twenty sixth. Before I take you into any of it, I want to tell you what I had expected from this process. The process of the criminal justice system, the court, the arrest, the trial, and everything in between. Because the gap between what I had expected and what it actually was is where this whole season lives. I expected, I think. Like most people who have never sat through a criminal trial, something closer to what you see on television. A few dramatic days, clear answers, understanding. I did not expect what a trial actually is. Three and a half weeks of testimony, evidence entered. Page by page, videos reviewed frame by frame and a level of care that surprised me. The judge's instructions to the jury alone took a day and a half to deliver, page after page, because he wanted to make sure that twelve ordinary people who had never done anything like this before understood exactly what they were being asked to decide and how to weigh what they'd seen, heard over three and a half weeks. I remember thinking. However long this takes, this is what Thor looks like. I was grateful for it, even when it was hard to sit through it. There is a detail from part way through the trial that I still think about because of what happened to my daughter. The forensic lab couldn't recover enough of her DNA to build the profile. So they Asked for mine, they took my blood as said, mother, and used it to establish that was in fact my zahra. There is nothing, and I say nothing that prepares you for being asked to give peace of yourself so your child can be identified in a I was the first witness called. I didn't expect that either. That I would be the one to open it. What it became the entire trial for me was this. The day the man responsible turned himself in, because he did. He came back across the border on his own. I remember feeling something I didn't expect to feel. Which was gratitude not for him, but for the fact that it meant this process could begin. Instead of stretching across years of extradition proceedings between two countries, I've held on to that gratitude because I know how much worse the waiting could have been. Over Dozens and dozens worked on finding my daughter that week. They brought her home to us. Not the way any of us wanted, God knows, but they brought her home. And somewhere in sitting through all of it, the patience of that judge, the Bain is taking care of those officers, my own testimony. This foundation started to take shape, not instead of my grief, but alongsided. Why this season and why now? Why am I sharing this story with you right now? So here's what I want you to take from today. This season is not going to look away from anything. Over the next 19 episodes, we're going to walk through the trial itself. And in between, we're going to sit with people. Building the system that could change this story for someone else. Next week in episode two, I am going to introduce you properly to Zahra, who she was, and the day she disappeared. That episode is hers. This one was mine to open the door. If anything In today's episode brought something up for you. If you are in immediate danger, call nine one one. If you are in Ontario, the Assaulted Women's Helpline is free, confidential, and open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. There is more than two hundred language. Please reach out. One eight six six eight six three zero five one one. In French language you can reach one eight seven seven three three six two four three three. To find a shelter anywhere in Canada search shelter save that is shelter save dot com and you can Always find us at Zahrabhulefoundation.ca. All of these will be in the show notes. Thank you for being here and listening for the first episode of 8 Minutes to Silence. Find more information from today's episode in the show notes or at Zahrabhulefoundation.ca slash podcast. Subscribe and follow wherever you get your podcast. Leave a review, leave a voicemail, and follow the show. Thank you.