What It Takes

To Live And Lead with Purpose, Laughter, and Strength

Zahra Al-harazi, Sarah J. Robbins

• Publisher: Collins
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781443443104
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

A NATIONAL BESTSELLER

The trajectory of Zahra Al-harazi’s life defies expectations. In this electrifying book that travels from a small village in Yemen to a small town in Minnesota to a Calgary suburb, Al-harazi describes surviving two civil wars; her years as a young, stay-at-home immigrant mother with little education; and how she became one of Canada’s most successful businesswomen.

Navigating two worlds, Al-harazi has struggled to find her own way between East and West, religion and belief, freedom and obligation, family and desire, love and honour, despair and gratitude, war and war again. With warmth and courageous honesty, she recounts how it is only through gratitude and persistence that we can find happiness and the courage to build the life we want.

Chapter One

Zahra, no. Zahra, don’t do that. Zahra, get away from there. There were many rules to keep track of, and so many people to warn me not to break them.

“You can’t talk to boys, Zahra,” said the headmistress, as she pulled out her dreaded cane.

“Her mother is not from here,” whispered my father’s relatives. “That’s why she’s such a wild child.”

“The devil eats with the left hand, Zahra,” scolded my aunt’s father, tying my left hand behind my back at lunchtime. “Your left hand is for wiping your bottom, not for eating.”

I was born into a society of rigid rules, and I often felt like I was breaking them all.

Not one thing about me fit into the world that I lived in. Not the way I looked, not the way I behaved, not even the hand that instinctively reached out for my food before it was slapped away.

The more I tried to fit in, the more I remained an outsider, and the more the spirit of defiance was fed within me.

I began to question the rules. The answer I heard most often was “because it is haram”—forbidden by God.

When my children were young and one of them did something wrong, the other kids would threaten to tell the teacher. When I was young, there was no need for someone to tell on me. God was watching—and, in case there was any question, he was keeping score.

If my mother burned the rice, she would say, “Kids that eat the burned rice go to heaven.” If I didn’t want to eat my food, she would say, “Kids that don’t eat their food go to hell.” That’s how my parents got us to do what they wanted.

I struggled to understand: if we were all God’s children to be loved equally, then why did he give me a wild streak that constantly got me into so much trouble . . . that and my father’s flat feet?

Even my passport breaks the rules: it says my birthplace is Yemen, but I was actually born in Uganda, like my father before me. When we arrived in Yemen, penniless refugees rejected by the nation of our birth, the passport official told my parents that making the change would save me from discrimination. It didn’t . . . not then and especially not today.

Uganda, the country that I first called home, was the opposite of what popular Western media often mistakenly projected Africa to be. Full of contagious smiles, creativity, resiliency, and rhythm, Uganda had a vibrancy. It was richly colorful, chaotic, and diverse. The earth was rolling and green. The crowded markets were stuffed with the sweetest fruits, the loudest chickens, and the most fascinating treasures. Shops like my grandfather’s teemed with wild, brightly patterned fabrics imported from all over Africa.

My grandfather, Rizq, was born in the mountain village of Haraz in Yemen, about three and a half hours outside Sana’a, the nation’s capital. My last name, Al-harazi, means “of Haraz,” a place that for generations has been filled with hundreds of first, second, and third cousins, aunts, and uncles.

Every time someone says my last name, I’m reminded of where I come from. Loyalty is everything in Yemen, and it is given first to your family.

In my grandfather’s time, leaving home was considered a betrayal of tribe and family. Children do not set off in pursuit of adventure or fortune, and families stay together. My grandfather, the first Al-harazi rebel, was an illiterate child who had never left his mountain village when he decided, at fifteen, that his destiny was not to be a sheepherder for the rest of his life.

One morning soon after the end of World War Two, he walked away from everything he knew with just pennies in his pocket. For four months he traveled to the coast, working along the way to pay for shelter and food. In Aden, the capital city of South Yemen, he reached the sea.

With adventure in his heart, he boarded the first boat leaving Yemen. My grandfather arrived on the island of Zanzibar, where he worked on the docks for a few months. He then continued on to Uganda—living for a while first in Jinja, a beautiful city on the coast of Lake Victoria, and then in Kampala, the capital city, filled with people who had come from every corner of the world to find their fortune as he had come to find his.

My grandfather had a thirst for learning, but the local schools in Kampala refused to admit him because his skin was brown. In those days, Ugandan society was deeply divided along ethnic lines, and schools were segregated into black, white, and Asian. He created his own opportunities instead, learning English by listening to the BBC, Swahili from the locals, Gujarati from his customers—and teaching himself to read and write in all three languages.

He opened his first shop by saving every single penny he made, and he filled it with imported African fabrics because he knew how popular they were.

He never intended to leave Yemen behind, and he returned to Haraz every few years, distributing his hard-earned money to both his family and the village poor. Each trip home was almost as complicated as the trip away, with weeks of traveling by road, rail, and sea.

During one of these visits, he married a beautiful young woman in the village, with bright, dark eyes, and skin so tight and smooth she would forever look decades younger than she was. My grandmother, Mohsina.

Arabic is a lyrical language that conveys a depth of meaning and emotion unmatched by many languages. There are at least eleven words for “love,” each of which describes a different stage of love.

My favorite Arabic word is alazima, which means pride, with a mix of strength, determination, and poise. In my mind, alazima is my mother, my grandmother, and every woman who came before them. She might have little, but her back is straight and proud. She is a fierce protector and loyal defender of those she loves. She will do what it takes—to survive, to thrive, and to persevere.

When my grandparents married, my grandmother was fifteen years old, completely illiterate, and in some ways completely provincial. She spent her days climbing up and down the craggy mountainside to fetch firewood and water. She was meticulous: each of her dresses had a similar cut and a matching headscarf that she carefully pinned over a neat braid. She was also a pioneer: the first girl from our village ever to leave it.

Considering that in those days every third child died before she was five years old, it is remarkable that my fiercely independent grandmother had twelve children, all of whom survived but one, who died at birth.

My grandmother learned to speak fluent Swahili, with which she navigated the bustling markets with ease and directed the servants in no uncertain terms. She raised her family with all the fierce protection of a mama bear.

That drive and grit is what my grandparents passed on to their own children, who began working in the shop when they were young, stocking fabrics, chatting with customers, and widening their own world views.

I, too, was raised in a world that was a collision of cultures—from food to politics, fashion to religion, language to skin color. And because of the diversity that has always surrounded me, I do not look at people and see differences. I look at them and see similarities.

I know we all have the same dreams, the same amount of love for our children, and the same fears that keep us up at night. That mind-set hasn’t changed over the years as I navigate country after country.

But when my father was growing up in Uganda, no amount of hard work or determination could convince the nation’s Africans that his Yemeni family were a valuable part of their society. One of only two Arab families in their community, they were grouped—dismissively—with the Asians, the descendants of the mostly Indian workers that British colonialists brought to Uganda as indentured servants, to build the country’s railways.

Over time, this Asian minority had ascended into a class of relatively well-off merchants, like my grandfather. Asians controlled most of the country’s economy, which was threatening to many Africans.

Unlike his parents, my father, Anwar, and his siblings were able to attend the primary and secondary schools reserved for Asians. Those opportunities ended, however, when it came to higher education; universities in Kampala did not admit non-Africans.

My father had a number of friends from high school who had gone on to study in India, which was relatively inexpensive. Since he spoke Gujarati and Hindi, he began to think about how he, too, could travel abroad in pursuit of a better future.

He graduated from secondary school in 1962 while my grandfather was on one of his regular pilgrimages to Yemen, leaving his brother, my great-uncle, to mind the shop and the family in Kampala.

While my grandfather was away, Yemen’s leader was suddenly overthrown by Egyptian-backed revolutionaries, who declared the country the Yemen Arab Republic. Saudi Arabia intervened on behalf of the leader, and the country—and, it seemed, the whole region—was at war. Communication, slow in and around Yemen during the best of times, was now nonexistent.

The family waited for word, and my father worried about their future—and his own. One afternoon, he found the courage to ask his uncle about the money that had been put aside for his education. My great-uncle took seriously his responsibilities to the family; he was not going to make a decision this big.

He told my father in no uncertain terms that as the oldest son, his place was in the store, especially when my grandfather was away, and that he needed to forget about university. But like my grandfather, my father had adventure in his heart and an even bigger thirst for learning. And like my grandfather, my father also decided he was going to take his chances in this world.

He packed in secret, filled with guilt about leaving his family. As he lay staring at the ceiling in the middle of the night, my grandmother walked into his room quietly. He sat up in surprise and fear and waited for her to tell him that she knew what he planned and he should not go.

Instead, my grandmother pulled off her neatly arranged scarf and reached into the corner where she always tied anything she didn’t want to lose, like the house keys. “I know that you need to go,” she said sadly.

This is what his father would have wanted, she told him, as she handed over a roll of bills. She had sold her jewelry and the jewelry she’d been saving for his sisters’ dowries, and she gave him the proceeds along with all the money she had squirreled away over the years.

Speechless, he took the money from her hand and held her tight, tears slipping down his face, knowing the sacrifice she was making for him. He promised to return as soon as he could and use his education to take care of them all. When the early dawn appeared, he left the house quietly and tried not to look back.

Weeks later, my father finally arrived in Pune, about ninety miles southeast of Mumbai. One of the region’s intellectual capitals, Pune is so steeped in language and literature that it’s sometimes called “the Oxford of the East.” At Wadia College, the school most of the non-Indian students went to, he studied zoology, chemistry, and botany. He was handsome, smart, and athletic, the captain of the tennis team and the cricket team.

Although he excelled at school and was happy there, the money his mother had given him eventually ran out. He stopped paying his rent and survived on tea and bread, which he bought on credit from the owner of the restaurant he lived above, his landlord. He borrowed from friends every once in a while, to pay his creditor when he got too impatient with my father.

When the landlord gave him a final ultimatum, my father decided to go home, too proud to ask anyone else for help. As he was packing to leave, he heard banging on the door. Afraid it was his landlord, he ignored it until he heard a voice calling his name in Arabic.

The old man at the door, after looking at my father’s passport to make sure it was him, gave him an envelope full of money and a letter from his father. “I am back,” it said. “Here is some money for your education. Be well, my son.” My father wept tears of joy and relief.

He paid his landlord and his friends and invited them all to the restaurant downstairs for a meal. Amid a great party and well-deserved celebration, that night they were all arrested for being too rowdy and had to sleep in the local police station.

I guess I come by my rebellious nature honestly.

My parents met in the early 1960s, at a dance at the college where my mother, Fatema, was also a student. She recognized the boy that her friends referred to as “the African,” but since he was there with another date, she refused to dance with him.

My handsome father was not used to hearing no. Intrigued, he pursued her, first as a challenge, and by the end of the night as the woman he wanted to marry.

My mother fell in love with him long before she gave in to his courtship, but she waited to tell him because he already had an ego that was larger than she liked.

Though they were both Muslim, and both from the same sect of Islam, they worried that their relationship could be doomed by their differences. Their parents’ reaction confirmed it.

“You’ve already been promised to your cousin,” my grandmother told my father. “You can’t marry an Indian; she is not one of us.” It was the first my father had ever heard of these plans, and he was shocked: his cousin was more like a sister to him. My mother, too, had also been spoken for, said her father.

My mother appealed to the imam, the religious head of the sect. He had a soft spot for this quiet young woman, who rarely asked for anything. She told him how much she loved my father and what a good person he was. The imam asked to meet him.

My parents didn’t wan...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• It Takes an Introduction
• Chapter One
• Chapter Two
• Chapter Three
• Chapter Four
• Chapter Five
• Chapter Six
• Chapter Seven
• Chapter Eight
• Chapter Nine
• Chapter Ten
• Chapter Eleven
• Chapter Twelve
• Chapter Thirteen
• Chapter Fourteen
• Chapter Fifteen
• Chapter Sixteen
• Chapter Seventeen
• Chapter Eighteen
• Chapter Nineteen
• Chapter Twenty
• Chapter Twenty-One
• Chapter Twenty-Two
• Chapter Twenty-Three
• Chapter Twenty-Four
• Chapter Twenty-Five
• Chapter Twenty-Six
• Chapter Twenty-Seven
• Chapter Twenty-Eight
• Chapter Twenty-Nine
• Chapter Thirty
• Chapter Thirty-One
• Chapter Thirty-Two
• Chapter Thirty-Three
• Chapter Thirty-Four
• Chapter Thirty-Five
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments
• About the Authors
• Copyright
• About the Publisher