Ashif bounced on his seat with excitement. “Just like Superman!”

“Yes, a real-life superhero. Fifteen years after he first set foot in Africa, at the age of twenty-eight, Dadabapa opened his own little dry goods shop in a small village called Tororo on the Ugandan-Kenyan border.”

“Toronto?” Ashif asked.

“No,” he laughed. “To-ro-ro. So close in name, yes. But worlds apart. This town wasn’t even the size of your school. Imagine. Once he built up the business in Tororo, he followed the new European railroad across the nation and built a chain, opening new shops at each stop—Busembatia, Iganga, Jinja, and finally Kampala. A small empire. So you see, son, you can do anything. Be anyone you want. But you must never give up. Never! Understand?”

Ashif nodded.

“Mark my words, son. We were kings in Uganda, and we will be kings yet again in Canada.”

“Me, too, Pappa?”

“Of course!” Mansoor lifted his son up into his arms. “One day everything is going to be yours.”

Mansoor reaches for the stack of business plans on his desk. He sets two aside for his meeting with the banker, then takes another for his son. On it, he scribbles the initials AMV. Ashif M. Visram. There are so many things he wants to share with his son, not just his business plan. If only the boy would let him. He’s not sure when the trouble began, but for some time now, Ashif has erected a wall between them. Whatever happened to change the boy? They used to tell each other everything. Now, when Ashif wants to tell him something, he tells his mother first, then she passes it on to him. What is she—his translator? But he wonders if pieces of information get lost in the exchange like in a game of telephone. He’s not even sure she tells him everything. Maybe she’s deliberately omitting parts of the message. But what bothers him more is the feeling that she is always between them. If it wasn’t for her, he’s sure they’d have the kind of relationship they had when Ashif was a child. When his son thought he was a hero, when he listened to what he had to say, laughed at his jokes, sought out his company. Ashif as a little boy, in his snowsuit and mukluks, running to him with open arms. This image emerges whenever he thinks of his son, even now. Like a parent who freeze frames the last time they saw a child they’d lost.

The idea for his new business came to him quite simply. He’d been searching for a way to grow his business, make his mark. Then on the day his car was at the shop, it struck him. He had to use public transportation, which he’d never used before, and that’s when he noticed all the dead space in the LRT stations. There was a ticketing office, sometimes a convenience store, but that was it. Nothing else. No business would allow this kind of waste. But then, this was government. Inefficient fools. They had no regard for the bottom line. Why would they? It wasn’t their money they were playing with. Not their name on the line.