If only he had taken Ashif under his wing sooner. Maybe it would have been easier. Children are more pliable. His own apprenticeship started at the age of four, when he was required to accompany his father to the store each morning before school, where his father sat him on the counter next to the cash register. He was not allowed to ask any questions or make any requests, and at the end of each visit, he was quizzed to test his understanding. Short, clear answers in English—the language he was required to master before mastering five others. Any wrong answers, any misbehaviour, was punished immediately.

His father’s laugh booms behind him. “Fool idiot! It’s too late. Your son is almost thirty. Thirty! And you are sixty.”

“No, Pappa!” he says defiantly. “I’m going to do it. Train my son. Get the money for my plant. You just watch me!”

His father jams his cane into his back. “Don’t be smart with me!”

Mansoor folds over in pain.

“You better do it, boy! Everything depends on it.”

Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.

Chapter 11

ASHIF AND MEL, THE VP of human resources, meet briefly before the first layoff candidate arrives in a conference room at the hotel. Their protocol was simple. Ashif would lead at the start. His job was to make the candidate feel comfortable. Then Mel would take over.

Most of the candidates are surprised by the news, some devastated, a few are thrilled. Ashif tries his best to be present, to be empathetic. Most of them have a family, children, mortgages. Most of them are over forty. But as the candidates discuss their futures, Ashif’s mind returns to a time he thought he’d have a very different life.

He met Shafina each Thursday in the same room at the Forrest Lawn Library from four to six p.m. for their Beauty Salons. The room had a wooden table, four rickety chairs, a TV-VCR, and a boom box with a double cassette player. Each week they devoured poetry, plays, films, novels, music, art catalogues. From Flashdance to That Obscure Object of Desire, Annie Lennox to Bach, Shakespeare to Lorca. Everything at the library and anything they could get their hands on with the help of the librarian, Mrs. Sims, who could access libraries across the city and the country, too.

Some of the books they wanted to read posed a problem. Lolita, Delta of Venus, Giovanni’s Room, Shame, The Unicorn and the Dancing Girl, Wifey, Rumi’s The Book of Love: Poems on Ecstasy and Longing. They couldn’t take them home without eliciting parental scrutiny. From her parents, anyway. His mother assumed any book he was reading was a school book. She also left him to handle anything to do with school. She didn’t know the Canadian system, but she trusted it implicitly. She rarely checked to see if he’d finished his homework, never asked which classes he liked, or what his teachers were like. He didn’t mind. In fact, he liked it. He could do whatever he wanted. He even signed his own parental permission forms, even his absentee notes when he and Shafina skipped school. His mother knew he could forge her signature, but she had agreed only so he could deposit the cheques his father left them on his Sunday visits.