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I remember the
monotone repetition of questions in her native Canadian English. I
remember his silence and avoidance of eye contact with me. And I
remember the patience of my fellow Go riders. Above all – I remember
Nabokov's Pnin -- “If his Russian was music, his English was
murder.”
The day after the
Civic Holiday, 2003, I was in the Ajax Go Station to buy a ten-ride
ticket to Toronto. Surprisingly, I found quite a few people lining
up to buy tickets. I got in line and patiently waited for my turn,
as all Canadians do.
"Next in line."
"Tan-ride ticket to
Toronto."
"What?"
"Tan-ride
tic-ticket to Toronto."
"What did you say?"
She raised her voice.
"Tan-lide
tic-ticket to To-toronto, please."
"I don't know what
you were saying." She answered impatiently like a stern faced
mandarin.
Her black
co-worker, from whom I’d bought tickets several times, avoided eye
contact with me. The GO riders standing behind me waited patiently.
"What do you
want?"
I took out the
notebook from my backpack, and I wrote down “I want a ten-ride
ticket to Toronto” on a blank page. I showed it to her and gave her
my Visa card.
While waiting for
my ticket, I felt something inside me fraying, something I had
draped my dreams in.
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