Diaspora Dialogues

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Book 2

The Call of the Mountain

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Every time Billy Bilkim Costanza entered the antique shop where I worked, he would find some excuse to say, “The mountain still calling me, boy. The voice in my ears might change but the message always remains the same. Always the same.” Sometimes he would pretend he was examining one of the old, creaky lamps that Mr. Pervez, the owner of the shop, had bought at a garage sale and whisper gloomily, “I don’t think it’s a good idea to ignore the mountain. I might be playing with fire.” Then his gaze would shift from the cluttered shop with its cracked teapots and freckled brass decanters to the door facing Albert Street. He never stayed longer than twenty minutes or so.

Costanza was different from all the other customers, not only because he never made a single purchase, but also in the way he would frequently gaze outside and breathe in little gulps, as if he was suffocating or hiding from someone. And he always left in a big hurry.

Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 2. Purchase the book to read the full piece.

Caribana

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In the summer of 1977, almost a year after Elvis’s death, I met my father for the first time. While many were still mourning the passing of “the King,” in Toronto, we were preparing for a party that promised to be hotter than the record temperatures that divided the city into those who loved the heat and those who didn’t. Almost everything I knew about Albert Godfrey was twenty years out of date. His lean, compact build, easy smile, slick razor cut, natty clothes and Ray-Ban shades had been captured in a snapshot taken on a hot day in 1958, not long before I was born. For me, those details were as close as I thought I’d ever come to knowing my father. Until that August morning when I rode the revolving door into the Sheraton Centre Hotel.

There he was, looking around the lobby anxiously. I could hardly breathe. When he saw me, a grin hijacked his face; I hadn’t seen anyone that happy in a long time. I swallowed hard, my stomach churning with fear and excitement, my throat dry.

Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 2. Purchase the book to read the full piece.

Toronto locations referenced in this piece

“We detoured through Osgoode Hall, which looked like both paradise and prison with its pristine gardens and high, spiked black iron fence . . . ” —Osgoode Hall

“Outside, people strolled down the middle of Queen Street. It was one of 
the few days in the year when Toronto forgot its dull Protestant roots . . . ” —Queen Street

“Across from the hotel, colourful booths dotted the usually grey Nathan Phillips Square, and the air smelled of curry and fried fish. The clock at Old City Hall chimed, but it couldn’t compete with the lively steel drums we could hear from two blocks away . . . ” —Nathan Phillips Square

Blood Rivers

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There was no need to open my eyes to tell the difference; all I needed to do was breathe. One slow inhalation of air held in my body as long as possible. At the time, I couldn’t articulate exactly what it was, but what I could say was that with one deep breath my lungs were filled with the atmospheric odours particular to Hong Kong. The emphasis is on the word “particular.” It’s not pungent or sweet, not rancid or polluted, just particular and entirely different from the air I was used to breathing in Toronto. These are things I can tell you about Hong Kong air. It is certainly much more humid and dense. And the particles of pollution that mingle amongst the oxygen, carbon dioxide and ozone are more intense and intimidating. But as the air filtered through each vacuole of my lungs I began to get this subtle sense that Hong Kong air is also filled with something that isn’t so scientific, that doesn’t just arouse the odour receptors in my nose, but rather touches on something more intrinsic to my being.

Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 2. Purchase the book to read the full piece.

Potatoes Cause Brain Tumours (and Other Things His Mother Told Him)

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The father, his wife and two children are standing in the basement when the bird flies in. It must have come in through the chimney. It circles and circles over their heads, desperately trying to find something familiar and get away from the faux wood panelling and green shag carpet. The bird’s circles get closer and closer to the ceiling, its black feathers glistening as if wet. The wife screams, covers her head and runs to the safety of upstairs. The two small daughters stand quietly, their fly-catching mouths open. They are too afraid to move. Don’t worry, their huge liquid brown eyes seem to say. Daddy will fix it. They are still at the age when children think their parents are part magic and believe everything they say.

The father’s eyes are fixated on the black bird. His thoughts are thousands of miles away. He’s thinking of something his mother told him long ago growing up in Murid Wallah, a tiny village in Pakistan. He thinks of the village and the mother he hasn’t seen for twenty years. Her words echo in his head: when a bird comes into your house it’s a sign of bad luck, a winged messenger sent to share bad news.

Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 2. Purchase the book to read the full piece.

Amah

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I found her in literature only once, hiding in Salman Rushdie’s short-story The Courter. London, 1962, an Indian nanny walking down a street in Kensington with the edge of her “red-hemmed white sari” in hand. Amah did the same as she cut through the pedestrian pathway at the end of our street, making a beeline for the 7-Eleven. But unlike Rushdie’s Kensington ayah, Amah never met and fell in love with the Eastern European hall porter of her employer’s building. She never had liaisons that involved a shared love of chess.

Amah came to Canada when I was eight weeks old. I was told that her husband beat her and drank, although I never met him and she never talked about the beatings. Romantic love was of no interest to her, and whenever she saw a couple kissing on television and in the movies she’d say “chee chee” in disgust and turn away. She arrived in our lives through the recommendation of an aunt in Delhi. Her previous charges had been the children of diplomats, although I couldn’t imagine Amah rotating through the three-year cycle of embassy employees.

Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 2. Purchase the book to read the full piece.

Toronto locations referenced in this piece

“Now she would sit peacefully beside me in a sari and green jacket as I drove the 
two of us down the Danforth. We drank south Indian coffee and ate dosas at the Madras Dhaba. Afterwards we would cruise the video stores for 
the newest Bollywood titles . . . ” —Danforth

“As soon as I got my driver’s licence, I began driving her to Gerrard Street on the weekends. Saturdays had been her market days, when we would 
go to Little India for vegetables and bhel poori at Bombay Bhel . . . ” —Gerrard Street

“They drove and had friends and went out on weekends(to sing karaoke at the strip malls at Bathurst and Wilson).They were a new kind of Amah, supported by social networks, mobile. Young. Ninety percent of domestic caregivers in Canada were Filipino women . . . ” —Bathurst & Wilson

january—ward’s island beach

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yes, this places still exists in winter,
although reduced ferry service and
a wind that rattles the bones
of the skeletal trees lining the beach
certainly make it less accessible.

and the sand is coarse and hard—
the weight of too many ghosts
has compressed it and the ice has cooled
summer’s too-hot-to-stand-in dreams.

but the pole we took turns throwing
stones at still stretches from the sand
and the spot we drifted to about twenty metres out
still glistens from the sun
and the memory of that moment . . . 
Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 2. Purchase the book to read the full piece.
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