EIGHT

A friendship begins with a secret. A shared knowledge, exclusive to its bond. She is the only one who knows about it, the dense black hole right beneath my diaphragm. She is the only one who can see the emptiness inside me; who told me I didn’t need to hide it, assured me that no one can see it except for us and the mirrors. She was there when it first happened. We witnessed it together. As mother was desperately dialing hospital numbers on the green chunky phone in the kitchen, as father cried in front of us at the kitchen table, I felt the hollow space opening inside me. The pain. The shame. I could tell that she could see it too, from the way she looked at me. It took us a while to figure that as long as I hid the reflection of my naked body in the mirror from people, my secret was safe with her. Throughout my teenage years I tried to fill the void with food. But I only gained weight. Of all my secrets, this one was un-sharable.

Perhaps that’s why I found solace in the Woolwich township of Ontario, amongst a people with whom I had nothing in common. When I first drove to Heidelberg five years ago, even the site of the town felt from another time-space, horses, buggy riders, white bonnets, and straw hats. A homosapien environment but that felt from another planet. It was the perfect place to be forgotten. By the time I got to the off grid city adjacent to Waterloo, it had been a decade that I had immigrated, a decade that I had been on the move from one Northern city to the next. Living in boxes, always ready to leave. A decade that I had been trying to find her kind of friends, share my secrets. Immigration promises salvation. Economic prosperity, freedom of speech. But the more I tried to open up to the citizens of the North, the farther away I felt from them. Finding friends in the North, was not about sharing the secrets I buried and carried in this black hole inside of me. It was about speaking the language of comic books and marvel super heroes; indigenous peoples and party politics; things that I was too wrapped up in my past to be able to care for. And so I chose loneliness.

The site of never-ending orchards, sweet grass fields, and vast meadows was the only thing that drew me in. Somehow the silent landscape makes me feel more at home. At least in Heidelberg, we didn’t have to pretend to understand each other or to speak the same language. We share soil and water with each other. The wind takes my garden seeds to their property. Their cattle feeds off of the grass in my little orchard. But we are not friends, nor do we share any exclusive knowledge. Two peoples that have their own un-sharable secrets, we only exchange Montgomery pie and halva recipes. Returning to this world, flying back to the source of the un-shareable, would be impossible without a friend.

“I know it’s hard. Do you want me to do it?” She puts her right hand on my hand, as she rocks the stroller slowly with the other hand. Secrets have power. She can tell me things that no one else can; do things for me that no one else does. I look at the piece of paper between us on the kitchen table. I stare at the list. Aunt Leili. Mr. Kashani. Zahra. Ahmad. I don’t want to talk to any of them. I look at the tiny human sucking hard on the pacifier, with her dark brown eyes wide open. “She is beautiful.” I say as I smile at her. “It scares me how much I love her.” I hug my knees into my chest and rest my chin on my knee cap: “It has been more than twenty years Del. Twenty years.” She nods as she stands up, picks up the infant carefully and turns toward me. “Are you ready?” I sit upright on the chair, open my hands and nod yes. She bends from her waist, puts the infant slowly on my two hands and tells me to support her neck. “Say hi to aunty Raha little one.” She sits back on the chair and looks at us with a smile. “Just call them. He is not going to be found magically. Don’t worry. Just call. For her.”