Inside the case, there is also a medical kit. He snaps it open. Bandages, hydrogen peroxide, scissors, and a little bottle with a red rooster. His Wake-Ups pills. He keeps a bottle here in case he finishes the one in his briefcase. Only now does it occur to him that perhaps he fell asleep at the wheel. Is that how he ended up in this ditch? But he banishes the thought immediately. Impossible! He even had a cup of coffee after eating his dinner at Harry’s Sports Bar. Or was it a whisky? He pauses. He’s not sure. Doesn’t matter! He was wide awake when he started his drive, of that much he is sure.

Mansoor turns away from his wrecked car and briefly surveys the landscape. The dark fields extend to the horizon and merge seamlessly with the night sky. A perfect circle. A barbed-wire fence separates the ditch from the field. This was one of the reasons he was drawn to Alberta. The sheer immensity of the land, the feeling that anything was possible here.

In Montreal, Mansoor was asked to choose the province his family wanted to live in. First, he studied the wall map of Canada pinned up at the immigration office. A massive country, longer than his outstretched arms. He developed catchy acronyms to remember key facts like BAS MOQ, which translated to “I’ve had enough.” Each letter represented the large provinces, west to east: British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec. After grasping the basics of Canadian geography, he pored through the library at the immigration office. The collection included a few books of fiction. But what he really wanted was to understand the real Canada so he studied the non-fiction—travel books and history books—making a list of the beneficial features of each major city. He crossed off Montreal immediately. It reminded him too much of Vienna with its cobblestone roads, old buildings, and its stubborn insistence on tradition. He had no interest in holding on to the past. And who wanted to be a part of such an unwelcoming society? One that insisted on one language, one way of doing things? Not him. Not after Uganda. Toronto also seemed mired in the old with its mess of intertwining streets named after old battles, royal figures, and war heroes. Roncesvalles, Queen, King, Bathurst. Tied to the old country like a child to a mother’s apron strings. Suffocating—all this history staring down at you at every turn. He ruled out Vancouver and the Maritime provinces. Vancouver with an ocean at the base of its mountains and St. John’s with its craggy harbour. Too much beauty can lull a person into a false sense of well-being. It breeds laziness. Nobody works hard in coastal cities. They think they are on vacation all the time. It was business-minded Alberta, and Calgary, in particular, that appealed to him. A city clearly divided into quadrants, the streets and avenues numbered and easy to follow. If a street was named, it was for the neighbourhood, not for some bygone man, so that all the streets in Pineridge started with the letter P. That made complete sense. That’s how every city should be designed. He also liked Alberta’s landscape. Clear lines, straight roads, neatly cut hectares, perfect rolls of hay. Even the colours were simple: golden fields, blue skies, emerald lakes. But most of all, he felt a deep kinship with Alberta’s history—the prairie homesteaders who worked relentlessly to break and settle the land through the harshest of winters and with hardly any tools or resources. They were strong. Resilient. Self-sufficient. Just like him. Just like his father. The Wild Wild West. A blank slate where he could make his mark.