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SIX METRES
OF PAVEMENT
SIX METRES
OF PAVEMENT
— a novel —
FARZANA DOCTOR
Copyright © Farzana Doctor, 2011
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.
Editor: Shannon Whibbs
Design: Jennifer Scott
Cover design by Courtney Horner
Cover image ©flyparade/iStockphoto
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Doctor, Farzana
Six metres of pavement / by Farzana Doctor.
Issued also in an electronic format.
ISBN 978-1-55488-767-5
I. Title.
PS8607.O35S59 2011 C813’.6 C2010-902444-3
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and Livres Canada Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program, and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.
Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.
J. Kirk Howard, President
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To my families: born and chosen
— 1 —
Motion
Years ago, long before Ismail Boxwala came to this country, a school friend told him that the only way to survive misfortune is to stay in motion. The friend was in a philosophical mood induced by too many beers and a recent heartbreak and imparted these words: if the body never moves, if the limbs are not exercised, sadness will turn the blood and lymph stagnant. Regret will cause the heart to grow weak, infection will creep in, and a person will die a slow, painful death.
Ismail Boxwala had no courage for this sort of dying.
After the tragedy that befell him, he remembered his friend’s words. He went back to work, fraternizing only with colleagues who were better at forgetting than he was. On holidays, he visited his older brother, Nabil, and his family, people who showed him a measure of warmth and never pitied him too much. Ismail paid the mortgage, the hydro bills, his taxes. He borrowed library books and read the Toronto Star on weekends. He managed to get out of bed, shake out his arms and legs, moving through life purposeless, a man directionless; alive, but lifeless. His heart grew weak.
Ismail later supposed that his college chum would have said that he hadn’t really stayed in motion, or not quite enough, anyway. He’d have to admit his friend would be right, for he was hesitant to draw attention to himself, maintaining the belief that he could be invisible if he just stayed still. For almost two decades, he kept his head down, became a watcher of sidewalk cracks, rarely noticed the sun.
He never imagined his life could change and so when it began to, he almost didn’t notice the first tiny clues.
— 2 —
Fall 2008
Ismail was first introduced to Celia on a warm, late September evening. It was a brief encounter, casual, and easily forgettable. Despite this, each would remember it, even though they wouldn’t see one other again for over a year.
At five-fifteen Ismail returned home, and prepared the same meal — an omelette and toast — that he ate every second day for almost twenty years. On alternate days, he opened cans of Patak’s curries. That evening, like most others, he gulped beer while chopping a limp onion, a chunk of ham, and whisking the eggs. He drank more beer while waiting for the butter to warm and pool in the centre of the frying pan.
Routines comforted him, but not completely. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, he awoke from dreaming this supper ritual, only, in the dream he looked away for just a moment while the omelette was in mid-flip, and his dinner landed on the floor, where a carpet of cockroaches devoured it lustily while he watched in horror. His dreams were always like this — just a tad melodramatic. There were other dreams, with various insects and creepy crawlies, but the dreams’ messages were always the same: don’t look away, don’t let the mind stray, always be attentive.
Luckily, that evening, his eggs landed safely on his plate and he ate them in the company of Wheel of Fortune. He mouthed vowels and consonants through two rounds, doing slightly better than the contestant from Idaho. He gulped back the rest of his beer, already itching for another. He grabbed his keys and headed out to the Merry Pint.
Scanning the sidewalk ahead, he cringed when he spied Rob Gallagher, rake in hand, tending his yard. Gallagher was the know-it-all of the block and one of Lochrie Street’s few thirty-year veterans. Doesn’t every neighbourhood have one of them? The person who could write a book about the area, knows everybody, and likes to be the local spokesperson whenever possible? Gallagher made a career of watching all of the neighbourhood comings and goings for decades, had written endless letters to successive city councillors, griping about potholes, burned-out street-light fixtures, and noise bylaws.
Ismail couldn’t cross the street now; he’d already been spotted. He speculated on what flavour of animosity his neighbour would exhibit that evening. Would Gallagher stare coolly like he did three days previous, or turn up his nose like last month? He was sure that Gallagher had cast him in the role of villain, and Rehana, his ex-wife, as a tragic victim, ever since their daughter died eighteen years earlier. Fragments of previously rehearsed but never verbalized defences crowded Ismail’s mind; he wished to say something to redeem himself, but never felt entitled enough to resist Gallagher’s judgments, because he shared them, too.
His first and predictable line of defence in these situations was to perspire. Profusely. He cursed the early autumn sun pressing its way through the clouds and wiped his brow with his handkerchief. He felt a little faint, so he forced himself to do the breathing exercises a therapist once taught him: inhale one, exhale two, inhale two, exhale four, inhale three, exhale six. It didn’t work at first, and he considered retreating to the house, and making his break to the bar later, after darkness had fallen.
On a breezy summer morning almost two decades earlier, Zubi squirmed in her stroller and pointed stubby fingers toward a small, white dog. It surged ahead of its owner, testing the leash. “Doggeeee!” she screamed, and Ismail thought, When did she learn this new word? Why hadn’t Rehana mentioned it? Reflexively, protectively, he stopped, waited for the dog’s owner to catch up to them, and to reel