Diaspora Dialogues

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Book 4

Birthday Blues

by

I woke up on the morning of my twelfth birthday and immediately wished I hadn’t. It was almost ten and the house had that deathly Sunday stillness. I went to the washroom, peed, wiped the seat clean of the yellow drops and flushed the toilet—all as mum had trained me to do.

I went back to my room and picked up The Dark Knight Returns. I lay down on my bed and began to read. Reading kept my mind off things like how dorky all my birthdays have been. Okay, not all, but at least the ones I can remember. I needed no crystal ball to tell me that today would be no different.

I heard a sudden vroom downstairs—mum must have started on her favourite weekend pastime, vacuuming the whole damn universe. It was only a matter of time before she came upstairs, dragging the machine like a pit bull on a leash. I got up and played Back Street Boys real loud to drown the racket she was making.

Soon enough, without so much as a knock, mum pushed open my bedroom door. Mum believed in surprising people.

Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 4. Purchase the book to read the full piece.

Safari

by

Sultan Uncle placed several glossy brochures in front of Arif and Meena. “I recommend this one.” He tapped the brochure for the Tree Tops Lodge & Resort. “Top class luxury. It will be the ultimate safari. Of course you can also try the Serena. Can’t go wrong there either. After all the Imam owns that one.”

Arif rubbed his goatee as he reviewed the brochures. The hotels weren’t exactly what he had in mind. “Actually, Cha-cha, I think Shakeel would enjoy a camping safari more.” He turned to his son, who was slumped on a chair behind them, playing with his Game Boy. “What do you say, buddy? ” Arif pointed to a poster behind Sultan Uncle’s desk. The poster showed a group of white campers, hair rustled, unshaven, sitting around a fire and holding out bottles of beer to the camera. A Masai man stood in the background, wearing a warrior’s shield and holding a spear. The sign above the campers read “Discover Kenya in Livingston’s Footsteps.”

“Yeah, Dad,” Shakeel said as he pushed up his glasses. “That would be cool.”

Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 4. Purchase the book to read the full piece.

Toronto locations referenced in this piece

“Soon after they were married, they opened a dental practice in Fairview Mall at Sheppard Avenue and Don Mills . . . ” —Fairview Mall

“The practice grew quickly so that before the end of their second anniversary, they opened additional office, this one in Parkway Mall, only ten minutes away at Ellesmere Road and Victoria Park . . . ” —Parkway Mall

“Soon after Shakeel’s birth, they had been appointed Regular Mukhi-Sahib and Mukhiana-Ma at the Unionville Jamatkhana . . . ” —Unionville

“She had signed up for Weight Watchers a few months ago after Munir, the husband of a friend, had joked during a group excursion to the water park at Ontario Place that she still hadn’t lost her baby fat . . . ” —Ontario Place

“When Arif and his brother were growing up, their parents owned a medium-sized grocery store located not far from the Dundas West subway station . . . ” —Dundas West

The Iron Curtain

by

“Neil, what you studying in school, boy? Interracial marriages? ” my mom asked.

“International relations,” I said. Suddenly I was slurping down the rest of my coffee in a rush to get out.

She turned to my father. “I send he to ‘U.F.T.’ to study international relations but I feel he studying interracial marriages. I does see we son knocking about with a little girl of the . . . Asian persuasion.” She glowered over her mug at me, and I back at her. “I getting a Chinese girl for my daughter-in-law,” she said. “Allyou think she could cook a roti? ”

She did this to stir my dad and it worked every time.

“She go feed me chow mein and pork till I dead,” Dad said. “Noodles, noodles, noodles! My backside already thin like a noodles. How I could survive on that? ” He waved his bony arms.

“Don’t forget fortune cookies.” My mother sipped the last drop of Milofrom her mug and headed to the family room.

My dad followed her. “Me ain’t want no cookie with fortune inside. I done know my fortune if my son marry a Chinese girl: I go dead from eating noodles.”

Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 4. Purchase the book to read the full piece.

Return to Sender

by 

Was she thinking: grief
is a letter you mail to yourself

once the turnstile’s been turned
at the subway station

x number of times. The delay
is necessary, chosen in advance

for a day like this, when she pushes
the door open into a room

made immaculate, and relatives
made inquisitive, by an infant’s 

early death . . .
Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 4. Purchase the book to read the full piece.

Canadian Birds

by

Bird shit falls on my face and I want to cry, because before this I have always liked pigeons. They look really cute in pictures and on TV, but I guess photographers and moviemakers don’t like capturing them scrounging and shitting.

I look around and hope that no one has noticed. My parents are ahead of me, their backs turned; the old men around me are playing Chinese chess on stone tables. I frantically dig in my pockets for a handkerchief.

“Ai lao Zhou-ah! Ni lai kan!”

I jump. I flush when I see that the old men are laughing at me. Spotted fingers are pointing; wooden soldiers are left without direction on their grid-like battlefields. Halted in my search for a handkerchief, I feel a glazed look slide over my face.

My parents must’ve heard them, because they’re also hysterical with laughter. I watch these people contort their faces and wheeze for air. My eyes prickle like crazy, but I won’t cry.

“Don’t just stand around,” Dad finally chokes out. “Get a tissue or something.”

“I don’t have one.”

“Here. Wipe it off.” Stepmother, gasping for breath and her face bright red, proffers a tissue.

Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 4. Purchase the book to read the full piece.

Church and Gerrard

by

There is a hum. Surrounding me Toronto respires. It gapes. Gap toothed to the world. I imagine a yawning crater sucking anything that isn’t nailed down into itself. Feeding. Feeding off the teaming life scurrying at its feet. Feeding off me. All around skyscrapers stand their ground. Like giant teeth. Proud. Immovable. Unchanging. Blank faced. I am being eaten alive by this city, sucked dry, desiccated in the dead heat, desiccated in the aircon. Moving around like a cell in an artery. It diminishes me and I give it life.

I stand at the window and look east. My first morning back in Toronto, I was here at six. Wide awake from jetlag, I watched the sunrise. First the neon orange glow, then the pink, seeping gloriously into the light blue predawn sky. The colour of his eyes. Blue and white and green and yellow, watercolour strength. The ambient glow stole westward, touched and lightly caressed the sleeping city, nudging warmly at the corners of buildings, like a lover coming to bed long after you’ve been asleep.

Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 4. Purchase the book to read the full piece.

Toronto locations referenced in this piece

“I watch him go. Almost excited because I know I move him still but then, there is an empty space where he has been. A grey street. A fluorescent light. Church and Gerrard . . . ” —Church & Gerrard

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