KINGSTON — Zainab and Sahar Shafia were young women who revelled in their beauty, exulted in their blossoming sensuality.

But they hailed from a culture and a region of the world where sexuality is a dirty word, if ever mentioned at all. Puberty brings with it the covering up of hair, the swathing of bodies and often the veiling of faces. This is done for a variety of reasons but primarily cloaked in the rubric of modesty. In fact, a more honest analysis of swaddling tradition has little to do with protecting female virtue. It’s all about the men: Those who measure their own reputation by the accentuated chastity of their womenfolk and those who might be tempted by femininity on display.

It is the responsibility of women to obstruct male desire. And it is women who are punished when sexual crimes occur.

The forbidden, however, is always most alluring.

For girl teenagers being raised in a rigid household, within a family transplanted to Canada from Afghanistan and Gulf states, the verboten was irresistible. Thus, Zainab and Sahar transformed themselves when they left for school every morning, hiking their skirts, removing the hijab, changing into revealing tops. Even 13-year-old Geeti — the youngest among three dead siblings, found drowned in a Nissan sunk to the bottom of the Kingston Mills Locks — had once been sent home for wearing inappropriate clothing, a sweater that showed too much of her budding bustline.

Perhaps the sisters overdid it, secretly, in defiance of the severe restrictions imposed, although their wardrobe was unremarkable when compared to fashions popular among young Western girls. But mere days removed from their death — what the prosecution has called an “honour killing,” parents and brother charged with four counts of first-degree murder — their father was captured on a wiretap still in a rage over harmless photos depicting Zainab in sexy underwear and Sahar in a bikini. Whores, he called them.

Those pix, retrieved from their cellphones, have been entered as exhibits in the trial against Mohammad Shafia, Tooba Yahya and son Hamed. Also among the dead was Rona Mohammad Amir, Shafia’s first wife.

A picture of Zainab was included among images posted on the Star’s website last week. Some readers were outraged.

There is nothing remotely offensive about the photograph: A 19-year-old female, wearing bra and panties no more revealing than what can commonly be seen on the beach. Only those who ascribe to sexist prudery can possibly find the published image an undue invasion of privacy.

I would certainly not presume to speak for the dead girls. But, from what I’ve heard in court of the sisters’ desperate struggle to take ownership of their own lives — from an oppressive father, from an allegedly abusive brother — I seriously doubt either would object to the photos being publicized. Of one thing I’m positive: Their dignity has not been compromised.

There is a continuum of chauvinism in all this, a strong thread of paternalism — of infantilizing — that runs through accusations I’ve fielded about shaming the dead. What shame? Because a ripening body, a figure of loveliness, has been seen by strangers?

This is Canada. There is no shame in women’s bodies, uncovered, and I won’t concede an inch out of respect for “tradition.” Too often the human rights of females are sacrificed on the altar of tradition, culture and religion. Even Western feminists, loath to criticize the gospel of multiculturalism, have abandoned our sisters, those in greatest need of support against the tyrannical mandates of men.

Four women died, allegedly murdered to cleanse their family’s honour, eliminated for the effrontery of their disobedience; what were, in fact, pathetically minor violations of a cultural code transposed to Canadian soil.

Beyond the melodramas exposed in this courtroom, though, there are untold numbers of immigrant children, first-generation children, being subjected to cultural and religious pressures that leave them in endless conflict with their surroundings, chafing on the leash. It has undoubtedly always been thus, but we have made it harder to bridge the divide these young people straddle by caving to the apparent paramount rights of culture, tradition and faiths.

How many Zainabs, Sahars, Geetis and Ronas are out there, leading lives of quiet desperation?

Allow me to quote from the thoughtful email of a recently retired teacher who wishes to remain anonymous — specifically because naming her might identify her students.

“I am sure many of your readers assume that Zainab’s story is far removed from their reality. I wonder if … they realize that many of these girl children lead far from ‘western’ lives, despite their parents bringing them here. They are enrolled in our public schools but some are prevented from becoming full participants in school culture. In the quiet elementary school in which I taught for several years, I had girls who did not have time to do their homework because they had all the chores to do at home, which included cleaning up after their brothers.

“Many have to share rooms with adult relatives who are visiting for lengthy periods — this at a time when girls need their privacy. One girl was at school on a Friday and by Monday was sent back ‘home’ because she had her first period the week before and could no longer be trusted around boys. Her mother sobbed as she told me she was not allowed to accompany her daughter to settle her into the country she had left when she was six. She had been in Canada for six years.

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“Another family with three daughters pulled them out of the school when a stabbing at their older sister’s arranged wedding made the newspapers. I taught all of them. They were hysterical when their brother arrived to fetch them from the school after their father and uncles read the morning news and realized the family was easily identifiable.”

We know about Zainab, Sahar, Geeti and Rona because they ended up dead at the bottom of the Kingston canal.

How many other girls just die in spirit, inside the prison of their homes?