Excerpt:
They were brought up to court separately, Tooba Mohammad Yahya, the mother – the mama bear, to borrow from the old Goldilocks and the Three Bears children's story – first.
Slight and pale, wearing a modest black tunic top over matching pants, cuffed at the wrist and ankle, her small chin quivered now and then, but she held it together – she is an Afghan, after all, tough and proud – until, as part of a court procedure, the prosecutor read aloud the names of her four surviving children.
At the naming of the last, a girl, the 39-year-old Ms. Yahya began to sob, quite uncontrollably.
How sad that was, and how fitting: Girls, women and the XX chromosomes that mark the female of the species appear to have everything to do with what Kingston Police now allege was mass murder.