“I don’t know.” She pushed her glasses back up. “But I’ll figure it out. I want to explore the possibilities and then I’ll decide. I mean, that’s the key to a good education, right? To broaden our minds and learn about the world. It can’t just be about making lots of money. What about you? What are you going to do?”

He shrugged. He’d never considered entering a program without first knowing what he’d do after graduation. It was important to have an endgame in mind. Know how you’re going to make a living before wasting money on a degree. That’s what everyone—especially his father—seemed to say. He was leaning toward something like chartered accounting or maybe pharmacy. He was good at math and chemistry, even if he didn’t like them. Shafina’s ideas seemed both ludicrous and liberating. “Do your parents know about this?” he asked.

She laughed. “They don’t need to know everything about my life. They’ll find out soon enough, anyway,” she said, her face turning grim. “Larkin was right. You have to leave home as soon as you can. Before your parents screw you up.”

Who’s Larkin? he wanted to ask but didn’t. He was entranced by the way she spoke. Her words flowed out of her with such strength but softness, too. Like gold, melting. It took him a few seconds to respond and even then, all he could muster was, “Oh, that’s interesting.”

“Not like there’s anything they can do about it, anyway. I’m just going to get a scholarship and get out of here. Do what I want to do.”

He could hardly grasp her meaning. As if she was speaking a foreign language. Doing what she wanted without the approval of her parents was crazy. He would never do that to his parents. “What university do you want to go to?”

“It’s not just about the school. I want to be in the right city, you know. Montreal, New York, Paris, Cairo.” She adjusted her beret. “Calgary is so…” she rolled her eyes, “pedestrian. Who wants to live among cowboys? I want to be a moth, not a candle.”

Her words continued to confuse him, but he liked the sound of them. The rhythm. “What does that mean…I want to be a moth, not a candle?”

“Poets! I want to live among poets,” she said, raising her eyebrows. “You know, like Rumi. Don’t pretend to be a candle, be a moth.” She lifted her book and turned the cover to face him. Divan-e-Shams-e-Tabrizi, by Jalaludin Rumi. “You know him, right? He’s like, famous. Well, maybe not here and definitely not with those heathens,” she said pointing to the crowd.

Ashif shrugged. He felt that he didn’t know anything. He hadn’t even heard of this guy, let alone read him. All the books on the required reading list at school were written by white authors. Maybe once in a while, he’d come across a foreign name at the library like Anita Desai or Naguib Mahfouz.