The building that Rachelle and I live in is over one hundred years old and used to be a hotel. There are five apartments in it and sadly, it’s the sort of downtown situation where you really don’t know your neighbours. Over the last couple of weeks, a woman who I presume just moved in, keeps ringing our buzzer to get into the building. It’s probably happened a half dozen times and it bugs me. Appearing at the door with a barking dog under my arm, my face must always be a kind of slide show moving from surprise to disappointment to frustration then irritation.
Who are you?
Why do you keep doing this?
Can’t you do anything right?
These are the things my face must say.
The young woman, Asian and with a beautiful french accent, always mumbles, almost whispers an apology, telling me she had forgotten her keys. Flustered, she’s never stopped to introduce herself, hoping to avoid rather than engage in conversation. She stands awkwardly in the hallway, sighing. Although now in the building, she’s still can’t get into her apartment. This, the metaphor for her life.
Right after this, some friends took Rachelle and I out for dinner in Little India. We went to Lahore Tikka House, which is really more of a carnival than it is a restaurant. Sprawling beneath brightly coloured-tents and banners, the place always makes me feel like I’m actually in India, or at the very least, a Wes Anderson film. As unpretentious as the Ex, it’s always bustling and a kind of organized chaos presides.
Tuesday was the last day of Ramadan, and with the Muslim fast now over all of Gerrard Street was jumping. On the sidewalks, beautifully attired women in glowing saris sat at tables, and underneath bright lights young girls penned henna into their hands and forearms. One girl in a hijab was so shy and meticulous in her work that she never looked up to make eye contact with the woman she was working on. Instead, she murmured softly into the cell phone she had pressed tightly to her head, as if speaking to a boyfriend she could not bear to be apart from. Watching was a woman in a black burqa, only her eyes visible through the impenetrable mysteries of her wardrobe.
Music throbbed, families hung from windows in the apartments above, teenagers hoped to fall in love and all the stores, blasting their music, stayed open and happy. We walked through it as if part of a movie, one where a spy must flee through an exotic land of bright lights, sounds and scents.
Returning home to Queen street we found two men moving a sofa up the staircase leading up to the apartments. The sofa was jammed and the men were utterly perplexed as to what they might do next. They looked like they might just abandon the project in it’s entirety and go get drunk at the bar.
As Rachelle and I navigated our way up the stairs we could see the open door of our unknown neighbours who were now in the midst of a move. The young Asian woman stood there with her suitcase. Seeming lost she looked down the stairs at the sofa, one more obstacle to face before leaving this point in her life, a trail of sadness almost certain to follow to her next destination.