‘A Kinder Home’ by Hajera Khaja

For as long as I can remember, Ammi and Abbu had talked about leaving India and settling abroad, and whenever they brought up the various options — Chicago, London, Singapore, all places where we had some family — I was the only one who felt apprehensive, a burning feeling settling in the pit of my stomach. These were places where I felt I would be swallowed whole, engulfed in a horde of pedestrians or struck down by a rush of traffic, places where I would no longer have any sense of bearing and feel forever lost.

So it came as a surprise to me that I felt no panic or anxiety when one day, as he was sipping his afternoon chai in the wicker chair by the front door, Abbu announced to us that he would try for Canada. I had no knowledge of the place; I had not read any books or watched any movies set in Canada, but I liked the sound of it, the syllables plain and unadorned as if offering comfort through its relative anonymity. My younger sisters, Aziza and Shaista, who were ten and six at the time, were less pleased.

At once they started bombarding Abbu with questions about why not America or England, and where was Canada even, and how come they had never heard of it. Abbu said Canada was a kind and safe place where immigrants were welcomed. He also had a second cousin there, Safiya Aunty, who had moved to Toronto in the seventies, just three months after she got married. That was the time it took in those days for a visa to be issued to a spouse. It was a much longer process for us.

For weeks, we ate on the ground, sitting cross-legged across a red cloth runner, while Abbu’s mounting pile of paperwork took up residence on the dining table. Every night after dinner, Abbu would sit hunched over the long immigration forms, making tiny strokes with a black ink pen as he filled out the small boxes, letter by letter, with our personal and financial details. Two years later, we received a letter in the mail saying our application had been accepted. We celebrated by going out for dosas, but none of us finished our meals. By the next day, the dosas had lost their crispiness.

In the summer of 1993, we landed at Pearson International Airport in Toronto, the plane cutting through smoky grey clouds on its descent. Safiya Aunty was waiting for us in the arrivals area, a bouquet of yellow and white roses cradled in the nook of her arm. Her husband, Muneer Uncle, was also there. We were to stay with them until we found a place of our own. As the exit doors parted, a hot, heavy mass of air rushed at us. “This is not how the weather usually is,” Muneer Uncle yelled out over the drone of the rushing traffic. By the time we reached their car, the hair at my temples had started to frizz and curl, the humidity reminding me of monsoon season in India when I would put coconut oil in my hair to keep it in place. It didn’t occur to me that I might need it here too.