AS she immerses herself in the Koran, head covered in a dupatta, Zarina looks the devout Muslim she is. Despite the tragic consequences her conversion to Islam 13 years ago has brought, she has clung to her faith and to the hope that those who killed her son in the 2002 post-Godhra riots will be brought to justice.
Born Geraldine Fullinfaw in Perth to affluent parents, Zarina made a series of choices that have brought her to a hovel in a dense Muslim locality of this small town. She looks old for her 39 years and lives on charity.
The details of her past aren’t clear: she says her troubles have made her forget the details; her neighbours say she’s somewhat unstable. She clear about just two things. ‘‘No matter what, I won’t renounce Islam,’’ she avers. ‘‘I want justice and will stay in India. I want justice, I want them to die as well, I won’t strike a compromise.’’
Her son Imran, 14, was studying in a madrasa near Dholka when it was attacked on the night of February 28, 2002. He died of stab wounds and burns 45 days later, at the V.S. Hospital in Ahmedabad.
Zarina says she was in Mumbai when the incident happened and could meet her son in hospital only six days later. She says it was his last wish that she remain in India. ‘‘On the hospital bed, he told me to stay back in India,’’ she says. ‘‘So I can’t think of returning to Australia.’’
Police had closed the case for lack of evidence, but it was reopened in November last year on the Supreme Court’s intervention. But investigations haven’t gone any further.
Zarina says she’d named two killers —‘‘one Raju, Narhari’s brother’s son’’ and ‘‘a goldsmith’s son’’. ‘‘I’ve given them a ladder,’’ she says. ‘‘If they catch one, they can reach the rest.’’
Inspector B.G. Solanki, who investigated the case before his transfer four days back, does not think so. ‘‘She never gave the names when her son was alive, neither to her community members nor to the police,’’ he says.
‘‘How can we now believe her story. She doesn’t seem stable.’’
Some local Muslims, however, allege that policemen and home guards were present when the madrasa was attacked and Imran was killed but refuse to identify the attackers. Investigators claim otherwise: they say the madrasa was attacked at night and it wasn’t possible to identify who was in the mob.
As Zarina waits in hope for justice, her neighbours help her in whatever way they can. They find her an oddity, because she’s the only white person in the mohallah and she speaks only English. Someone has given her utensils. Off and on, they give her money. But even they are not sure if what she says about her past is true.
Zarina says she came to India after a fight with her parents when she was six. She arrived here with her sister Dorothy, who was studying medicine in Bangalore. Later, she earned a diploma in nursing and stayed on.
It was while working in St Martha’s Hospital in Bangalore that she met her first husband, she says.
He was a patient who she says introduced himself as Joseph, proclaimed his love, even followed her on a trip to Perth and met her parents.
After marriage she realised that his real name was Mohammed Abdul Rehman, a Muslim from Mumbai who was already married and with children. She converted to Islam, she says, because she was bearing his child. She says he was killed by a mob when she was not at home during the post-Babri riots. Their son Imran was in a Mumbai school till Std IX, when she put him in the madrasa in Dholka.
She says her parents had wanted her to reconvert to Christianity but she doesn’t remember when that was. She says tragedies have made her mind hazy.
‘‘Kismet,’’ she says and breaks down when asked why she lives on charity when she can earn as a nurse. ‘‘My mind is not proper and I can’t control my emotions. I’ve lost faith in myself and should something go wrong I don’t want to be blamed for it.’’
Zarina vaguely mentions another marriage to an old man in Ahmedabad, whom she walked out on. People in the mohalla speak of this, but not disparagingly: they have only sympathy for her.
‘‘She has suffered a lot,’’ says Dilawar Khan, a neighbour.‘‘She doesn’t want to take any risk. She spends her time offering prayers.’’