Christine Estima's vibrant story collection highlights the heart and history of the Arab diaspora in Montreal
Story collection The Syrian Ladies Benevolent Society reflects on Syrian and Lebanese heritage in Canada
Originally aired Dec. 29, 2023.
Christine Estima's debut story collection is inspired by her own family's rich history and the legacy of Arab communities in Canada. In The Syrian Ladies Benevolent Society, Estima shares the lesser known stories of Syrian and Lebanese women both past and present.
Estima is a writer, playwright and journalist of mixed ethnicity (Lebanese, Syrian and Portuguese) who was raised in Montreal and is currently based in Toronto. She was longlisted for the 2015 CBC Nonfiction Prize for her essay Sarajevo Roses. The Syrian Ladies Benevolent Society is her first book.
The Syrian Ladies Benevolent Society is a collection of stories which trace the immigrant experience through multiple generations. A young Arab woman named Azuree knows she comes from a long line of daring Arab women; the linked stories follow Azuree as she explores ideas of love, faith, despair and the effects of war — and what those family histories mean for her as an Arab woman in the 21st century.
Estima spoke with The Next Chapter's Ali Hassan about her family's connection to Montreal.
I grew up in Montreal as well, and you paint a very fun picture of the city in many ways. What role did your family play in Montreal through the many decades that they were there and continue to be there now?
My family has deep roots in Montreal, which I also think is surprising to a lot of people. On my Lebanese and Syrian side, my great-grandfather came to Montreal from Damascus in 1906. He was the priest of the St. Nicholas Antiochian Orthodox Church, which still stands to this day in the Little Italy area. He was also a Justice of the Peace and he started the very first Arabic language newspaper in Canada.
For me, Montreal and my family, the two are inextricably linked. It's so important for me to paint a picture in this book to let people know that we've been here for centuries.- Christina Estima
His son, who was my Jido, the Arabic word for grandfather, was a war hero. He was one of the few Arabs in the Canadian Army during the Second World War and he fought in the infamous bloody Battle of Ortona. Luckily, he came back otherwise I wouldn't be here — so many Canadians were not so lucky.
For me, Montreal and my family, the two are inextricably linked. It's so important for me to paint a picture in this book to let people know that we've been here for centuries. I think a lot of people don't realize that. When they hear Arab Canadian or Syrian Canadian or Lebanese Canadian, they think it's a new phenomenon.
They think of the Syrian refugee crisis, which is a serious crisis, but they don't realize that not only have we been here for centuries, but we have shaped the fabric of Montreal and by extension, Canada.
The second story is the title story called The Syrian Ladies Benevolent Society. Did that society actually exist?
So a few years ago when my Sito passed – Sito's the Arabic word for grandmother – I was going through her things and I found a letter addressed to her from the Syrian Ladies Benevolent Society. It was written in 1949. It was congratulating her on the birth of my mother and also her "successful confinement" and I was just delighted by this!
I had no idea a society like this existed. It turned out it was adjunct to St. Nicholas Antiochian Orthodox Church. Also, I just found that having a society like that, knowing about that today, might be surprising to some people.
Another story you write in this book is called Ortona, set in Italy during the Second World War. Ortona is where a very bloody battle was fought. Your grandfather fought in that battle as one of the few Arab men serving in the Canadian army ... but you don't focus on that. The story you chose to tell is of this young Lebanese woman from Montreal who was recruited to be an Allied spy. How did her story come to you?
Yeah, I feel like when it comes to the Second World War or even the Great War before it, the contributions of women to the war effort have been forgotten. Women being used as spies by the Allies became really well known after the war and we have some famous names like Josephine Baker who was a spy for the French.
A lot of people don't know that and for me, I wanted to bring it home again to shine a light on the stories of Arab women. So let's explore this and let's see where the story goes.
I wanted to bring it home again to shine a light on the stories of Arab women.- Christine Estima
You mentioned your Jido and your Sito – grandfather and grandmother characters appear throughout these stories, especially the larger than life character that is Sito and then you also dedicate this book to your Sito. Tell us about her.
Bless her soul. I think my feminism is directly informed by her. Her name was Louise Zarbatany, born and raised in Montreal, and her father abandoned the family when she was really young. She only got up to Grade 7 and then she had to go work in a factory.
She was a seamstress her entire life and she wouldn't let anybody pull a fast one. She was no shrinking violet, she was no wallflower and that's what I really loved about her. I find that her voice comes out in a lot of stories in this book because again, I think it's surprising for people to learn that Arab women are also incredibly strong-willed and have agency.
As you talk about women with agency, I'm thinking about the story, The Belly Dancer. The young woman in this story becomes engaged in Montreal to Gustav, who's a French Canadian young man and then there's an engagement party where all the families meet and the young woman performs a belly dance. Then not long after that, her fiance gets cold feet. How do you see that engagement party unfolding?
Belly dancing is something that I guess within our community is not seen as necessarily something that's like exotic or even provocative. So to have a scene where the Arabs are on one side and the French Canadians are on the other and they're just kind of watching as this affianced young woman is shaking and gyrating her hips.
It's incredibly sexualized and perhaps not something that polite people and proper genteel society would expect at an engagement party. It was interesting having that imagery [where it's like], "Yeah, I can love you but can you leave all of your cultural attributes behind while I love you? Can you not be so Arab? Can you just kind of assimilate a little bit more?" and that's kind of the undercurrent that runs through that story.
That's also maybe a microcosm of what we experience within Canadian society. I didn't want to shove that in the reader's face and [have it be] didactic. I wanted people to be engaged with a heartbreaking story.
Rue Berri is the street where many of the characters grew up and lived in Montreal. In the story, Rue Berri, Azuree goes back to that house, sifting through the memories and the lives that were lived there. Are we all just sort of amalgams of who and what has gone before us?
It's interesting that you asked that as that is one of the key questions that the book tries to answer: Are we just a product of the people and the places that came before us or can we be in this constant act of becoming and renewal? Can we break free from some of the traps that befell our ancestors? Is it somewhere in between?
Are we just a product of the people and the places that came before us or can we be in this constant act of becoming and renewal?- Christina Estima
Can we be a product of them and also at the same time, take that story three times around the dance floor? I think the only answer to that is yes. I don't know if I necessarily have the answer for that. I feel like I'm not necessarily endorsing a way of life, I just describe one and I ask questions and I provoke thought.
But at the end of the day, the reader is left to make their own decisions.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
