AnaBGR
Not really. It’s been a rough week.
StanleyP
Remember our deal?
StanleyP was referring to our long-ago deal that he would send me a picture of his finished project, after which I would decide what to do about us. In the craziness of the past few weeks, it had slipped my mind.
AnaBGR
I remember.
StanleyP
I’ll be sending you that pic soon. I hope you know you can share things with me too. Your podcast was intense.
AnaBGR
Maybe I’ll tell you about it one day.
StanleyP
I’d like that. Take care, friend.
Chapter Thirty
Ihad a shift at Three Sisters the next morning and I was late. I made chai and scrambled eggs for Baba’s breakfast and toast for Fazee, then threw on black pants, a white shirt, and my green hijab with the pink flowers before sprinting for the door. I would grab something to eat from the restaurant.
It was a cool morning with a hint of warmer weather in the air. I walked onto Golden Crescent towards Three Sisters and spotted one of the festival flyers Rashid and I had posted on a street lamp. Except something was wrong. I walked closer, frowning.
Someone had written something across the front in black Sharpie:MUSLIM PIGS.
But we don’t even eat pigs, I thought. Then, realizing what I was reading, I ripped down the paper, crumpling it into a ball and stuffing it into my pocket.
I walked faster towards the restaurant. Over a week ago, Rashid and I had taped a dozen flyers side by side to the window of Luxmi’s bakery, next door to Three Sisters. Now I saw that someone had spray-paintedMUSLIM TERRORISTS GO HOMEacross them, blackpaint dripping onto the sidewalk below. I tried to rip them down, too, but the painted words had bled through. Now it readM————ORISTS GO H——.
Luxmi Aunty spotted me and hurried out. “It happened overnight,” she said. Her eyes were round with worry and fear. “They hit nearly every business on the street, the ones that put up flyers. Even the Tim Hortons. I called the police and they said they would send someone.”
My face felt numb and she patted my arm. “The police will find out who did this. Probably some bored teenagers.”
“N-nobody saw anything?” My teeth were chattering and I was suddenly freezing. I closed my eyes, trying to calm down, but my mind created a picture of the perpetrators. They looked like the angry, red-faced men in black T-shirts who had screamed at Rashid and tried to hurt Aydin and me.
Luxmi Aunty patted my arm again. “I’m so sorry, Hana,” she said, and I caught the worried glance she sent towards Three Sisters. My stomach tightened in response, body instinctively readying itself for a punch to the gut, as I walked toward the store.
A large swastika had been spray-painted across the front window of Three Sisters.SHARIAH LAW? NOT IN MY CANADA!was written below, an ugly slash of blood-red paint.
My legs felt like jelly. I reached out to support myself, and my hand came to rest on the hate-filled symbol. I jerked away, nearly falling backwards in the process.
Mom appeared in the window and then hurried outside. “Are you all right?” she asked, hands claw-like on my arms.
I nodded, and she tugged me inside the restaurant, onto a plastic chair. “The police are on their way,” she assured me, as if that meant something, as if everything would be put to rights now that thepowers that be had been summoned. My eyes drifted to the dripping red shadow on our storefront, and I flinched, looking away.
Mom placed a large chipped mug in front of me, sloshing some of the tea over the side. She was never clumsy. I gripped the cup with my hands before I risked a look at her face. She was smiling, but as I looked closer, I realized it was more of a grimace, frozen to her face and stapled to the corners of her mouth. She was trying to hold it together, I realized. Trying not to react.
Rashid came running into the store, eyes wide and panicked. He skidded to a stop before us, breathing hard. “You are okay,” he said, and it was not a question. He put a hand on his knee and took a deep breath. “Alhamdulillah, you are both fine.”
Mom stood up to make him a cup of tea. What was it about desis and their obsession with chai? As if a hot cup of steeped leaves with milk and sugar can make everything better.
