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  For the ancestors who continue to guide me long after they’ve left this world

  Contents

  Dedication

  Story

  Acknowledgements

  Ameera

  March 27, 2015, Huatulco, Mexico

  ∆

  A DC8 droned above.

  “Here they come,” I announced. Friday was our departure-arrival day. One sunburnt and grouchy group left for their northern homes, and another cohort, ecstatic and pale, touched down and took their place.

  Roberto grabbed a plastic file box and gestured for me to sit beside him. I lowered myself onto the makeshift seat and wiped away a slick of perspiration from the creases behind my knees.

  “Ameera, you hear about that tour rep getting fired over at Waves?” Roberto stroked his thin moustache.

  “Nancy? Yeah, I’m still in shock.” I hadn’t known her well, but I’d gone clubbing with her and the other tour reps from our sister resorts a few times. She’ d seemed all right to me.

  The airplane circled closer, and, in unison, we clapped our hands over our ears and tilted our chins to the sky. After it had rolled across the tarmac and quieted its engines, we resumed our gossip.

  “What I don’t get is why someone in their late twenties would want to have sex with a fifteen-year-old.” Roberto shook his head, as though trying to dislodge the idea.

  “But didn’t the kid lie about his age? He told her he was eighteen, right?” While I’d never in a million years sleep with a teenager, I could imagine how booze and loneliness could have led Nancy to her mistake.

  “Who knows. There was no investigation.” Roberto slouched, his lanky frame folding into itself.

  “True. It’s unfair.” It was strange that there hadn’t been an investigation. I couldn’t imagine our cheerful manager, Anita, firing anyone.

  “At least we’re gonna get a local boss soon.” Roberto was referring to our company’s recent announcement that it would shift from an Ottawa-based management model to a Huatulco-based one. I was surprised he was raising the subject; we’ d all been skirting it.

  “It’ll be strange though — one of us promoted over the others?” Not just strange. Awkward.

  “Well, I think it should be Oscar. He’s been working in the industry since he was a teenager.”

  “Maybe.” Truthfully, I’d been fantasizing about the promotion since the memo’s arrival. It would make staying in Huatulco for another three years worthwhile. So what if Oscar was way older than the rest of us? I had the best sales record.

  I looked at our three co-workers: Manuela, Blythe, and Oscar, who stood listlessly in the glass-fronted airport terminal building. Did they all want the job as much as I did?

  Luggage began to circle on the conveyer belt, nudging them out of their collective stupor. They sauntered our way.

  “Still no tourists.” Manuela fished an elastic from her pocket and gathered her long black hair into a messy ponytail.

  “The customs guys take too long in there,” Oscar said.

  “It’s getting bloody late,” Blythe complained.

  I checked my watch. We still had to welcome the incoming tourists, pack them onto Oceana’s buses, and offer a perfunctory tour of the stretch of highway between the airport and hotel. When we arrived at Atlantis, our home resort, the vacationers would hold things up at the front desk, arguing for better rooms with king-size beds and oceanfront views. The whole tedious process would take about two and a half hours, provided that there weren’t any lost suitcases, passengers, or other mishaps.

  Manuela’s giggling fit interrupted my thoughts. Roberto, a head taller, grinned down at the blush spreading across her face and neck. Oscar, too, looked amused, his mouth tight, his chin jutting out. Even though I’d missed their joke, I smiled along with them. I liked seeing my three Mexican coworkers like this, relaxed and natural, so different from their formal work demeanours.

  Blythe prodded Manuela for a translation; neither she nor I were fluent enough in Spanish to understand jokes delivered in double-quick time.

  “They’re talking about that lady and her husband who left today. With the big muscles?” Manuela explained.

  “Ameera, you know them. They spent a lot of time talking to you at the tour desk.” Roberto flexed his biceps and sucked in his gut. The bodybuilders from Buffalo, Marina and Mike. I tensed, wondering what he’ d seen.

  “Oh, yeah?” I asked, trying to feign indifference. Roberto winked at me. Why do people wink? It’s such a stupid gesture.

  “A girl shouldn’t get that big. Not natural. Women should have some fat on them,” Oscar opined. Manuela adjusted her skirt, and stood a little taller in her black pumps. Blythe rolled her eyes.

  I crossed my arms over my chest and squeezed my soft biceps, remembering how flabby I was in contrast to the bodybuilders’ hard bodies. The previous night, when I’d straddled Marina, pinning her down on the bed, I’d felt foolish, like I couldn’t convincingly carry off the move. But she’ d played along, moaning and groaning while she pretended to struggle beneath my grip. I’d pushed my tongue into her mouth and my breasts against her flat chest. Meanwhile, Mike watched from the sofa, naked, except for a ridiculous lime-green sombrero upon his head.

  “Bodybuilding is a very big trend these days,” Blythe said authoritatively, tucking a stray lock of blond hair behind her ear. She had a habit of offering us insights about our Canadian and American tourists, even though she hailed from a small town in England.

  “Fea. Ugly. There is your Word of the Week.” Oscar peered over the top of his bifocals at me.

  The others laughed — we’ d long ago turned my weekly vocabulary-building exercise into a joke — but I was in no mood for it. I scanned the runway. The plane that had arrived earlier, belching a couple hundred men, women, and children onto the tarmac, was now the site of the departing group’s mass exodus. I squinted to locate Marina’s red coif and Mike’s bright sombrero in the queue. There they were, at the front. I watched them climb the steps and disappear inside the dark of the airplane. When I turned back to my colleagues, Roberto was watching me with a bemused expression.

  “Yes. Fea,” Oscar repeated. He rubbed concentric circles into his back. And then, changing the subject as was his tendency, he said, “We need chairs out here.”

  “Chairs for us? Never gonna happen,” Blythe sing-songed at him.

  “We’ll see,” Oscar blurted. He raised the subject on a weekly basis even though management had told us chairs were not permitted because of some arbitrary airport regulation. “I will bring my own then. Yes, that is what I will do.”

  “Finally.” I pointed to the tourists who were now trickling through the baggage area.

  The five of us stepped into formation, and a middle-aged man approached our kiosk, his eyes skipping across our reception line of artificial smiles. He focused on Blythe.

  “Welcome to Huatulco,” she said blandly, reaching for their documents.

  “You’re on Ameera’s bus. Bus Number Three, over that way folks,” Oscar said with forced cheer.

  A group of four young men wearing khakis and T-shirts bearing my alma mater’s logo asked about welcome drinks and Manuela promised them that they’d be sitting at an overflowing bar in an hour. I was about to ask them about campus life, but a beverage vendor yelled, “Cerveza fría! Cold beer here!” and the men followed his voice, like lemmings over a cliff.

  A young couple with three children was among the last to approach the kiosk. The mother drooped under the weight of a sleepy toddler, while a young boy and a slightly older girl clung to her thighs. The father dragged a squeaky cart with three suitcases and four overstuffed — and threatening to topple — backpacks in various Disney motifs. Manuela directed the family to my bus, when suddenly their eldest girl ran off toward the tarmac, yelling, “I want to go home!” I dropped my clipboard and gave chase. I scooped her into my arms, and the girl sputtered a surprised laugh, her cheeks reddening. I giggled along with her as I ushered her dazed-looking parents onto my bus.

  Before climbing aboard, I gazed at the afternoon sky to watch the outbound flight of vacationers, including the bodybuilders, fly away home.

  Azeez

  ∞

  June 21, 1985, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

  I’d been watching her for a full ten minutes. She sat at the table next to mine, reading a textbook entitled Understanding World Religions. It was the first day of summer and my second last in Canada.

  She absent-mindedly played with her long auburn hair, her fingers moving like a magician’s, conjuring it into a single braid. She didn’t tie off the end, and her hair eventually resisted the arrangement and pulled itself free.

  I nibbled my honey cruller, and waited for her to notice me. For another ten minutes, I scripted my words. I was a chatty fellow back then, but it took immense bravery to speak to a woman I didn’t know. I chided myself: what did it matter if I sounded like a fool?

  “That looks like interesting reading.”

  She glanced up, and her cheeks blushed crimson. I loved when white girls did that. It just isn’t the same with brown girls; their pigment allows them to mute their embarrassment. The girl smiled and nodded and returned to her textbook, her lavender highlighter squeaking across the page. But I could tell she was no longer concentrating on the material.

  My mother once told me that my best feature was my straight white teeth. So when the girl gazed in my direction again, I flashed a wide grin. I ran my fingers through my coarse black hair and patted it down,
then feared that I might have salted my shoulders with dandruff.

  “It’s not bad. Dry, but okay.” Her tone was friendly. She looked at me with large, round eyes. What colour were they? Hazel? Light brown? I sat up to stretch my five-foot-seven frame a little taller. I surmised we were about the same height.

  “Have you reached the chapter on Islam yet? I’d be happy to explain anything you don’t grasp. I’m Muslim, you know.” Not exactly a worthy pickup line, but I was no Casanova.

  “I’m reading it now, actually.” She turned the book toward me and indeed, there was a photo of a gold-domed mosque on the page.

  “I’m not a very strict Muslim, but there are many things about Islam that I appreciate.” I rambled on about it being a religion of peace and equality. I spoke with uncharacteristic enthusiasm; I hadn’t prayed or fasted since I’d come to Canada just over five years earlier to begin my PhD. The photo of the mosque made me think that I should visit the masjid when I went home. It would please my parents.

  “I imagine all the world’s religions share that. At their core, they’re good. It’s people who cause all the problems.” The girl looked across the empty parking lot then, and I wondered what had suddenly made her pensive. I took the opportunity to study her freckles. They dotted their way down her neck to her chest. She wore an orange blouse that cut low across her large breasts. She was pleasantly plump around her midsection.

  “True,” I took another bite of my donut and its waxy coating flaked across my lap.

  “I’m Nora.” She reached out a hand and her scent of sandalwood wafted over. Her palm was cool, her grip firm.

  “How is that spelled?” I can be idiotic when nervous. She spelled it slowly and then asked me my name.

  “Spell it,” she joked. With false bravado, I grabbed a pen from her table and wrote A-Z-E-E-Z on a paper napkin.

  “I like names with double e’s. And look, two zeds.” She studied my block lettering.

  “So do my parents. They gave my brother and sister double e names, too.” I wrote their names under my own and underlined the vowels. A well of sadness came over me then; I missed my siblings. I should have been excited for our reunion in two days. But perhaps a part of me knew something different.

  I turned the conversation to her, asking her dozens of questions, which she seemed to like. I learned that she was an only child, had grown up in Hamilton, and had almost completed her B.A. She’ d applied to do her Masters in Anthropology. Perhaps one day she’ d do a PhD. She was an ambivalent Catholic (she pointed to chapter three of her textbook dismissively).

  Eventually, I took a deep breath and asked if she had a boyfriend and she blushed again and shook her head.

  I bought her a double-double and I had another tea and cruller. When she invited me to her apartment to listen to her cassette-tape collection, I gladly accepted.

  Ameera

  ∆

  After my shift, I returned to my room, but Blythe and her boyfriend Rhion were arguing again, their voices ringing across our shared wall.

  “I was daft to ever trust you, you bastard!”

  Rhion murmured something back.

  “How could you do this to me?”

  Murmur, murmur, murmur.

  ∆

  I decamped to the staff cafeteria, and sat in the back corner where there was a Wi-Fi signal. I checked my e-mail on my phone, most of it junk. The last message to load was from Anita, my manager. The subject line read “Online Complaint.” Curious, I clicked it open.

  Dear Ameera,

  I’m writing to notify you that we received an anonymous complaint through our online comment form today. Although a record of it will be filed in your employee record, we will not follow up unless there are repeated complaints of a similar nature (it’s nearly impossible to investigate when there is no contact information left by the complainant).

  It said, “Ameera is not professional. She’s sexually inappropriate with Atlantis customers. She is a bad example.”

  I trust that you have been professional in your conduct, but if there is anything you’d like to notify me about that may have caused a complaint like this, it would be best if you reported it.

  Best,

  Anita

  My pulse quickened and I flushed shame. Gavin, my ex-boyfriend, came to mind, an unwelcome intrusion. I pushed him away, and refocused on Anita’s message. I took a deep breath, hit Reply and quickly composed:

  Dear Anita,

  Thank you very much for the heads-up about the anonymous complaint. I can’t imagine who would write such a thing about me. There have been a few tourists who have asked me on dates, and I’ve declined (always politely). I wonder if this could be a reaction to a rejection, or perhaps a prank of some kind? Please do let me know if the issue escalates, and be assured that I make every attempt to be courteous and professional with our guests.

  It must be freezing in Ottawa these days! I hope you’re weathering it well.

  Best,

  Ameera

  I took another deep breath, reread my reply twice for typos, and considered adding a happy face to the end of the last sentence. I decided against it and pressed Send.

  My mind ticked through the meagre parade of tourists with whom I’d recently had sex. They were all nice enough folks. Who’d make a complaint like this? It didn’t make any sense.

  I closed my eyes and once again Gavin swaggered forward. This time I didn’t resist him. His toothy smile flashed across my eyelids and then there was the heat and press of his lips on mine. His hands were warm and insistent. I drew my thighs together.

  It was always unexpected, this wanton arousal. I could be walking along the street, and see a guy wearing a shirt that reminded me of Gavin. Or I could hear a song we’ d listened to together. And then I’d be aching for him, the instinct Pavlovian. A stupid animal-like response.

  We’ d dated in six-month increments. When we were together we’ d swear we were right for one another. We’ d leave whomever we were dating and have an intense affair. Then we’ d break up, parting with almost as much certainty as when we’ d reunited. During our breaks we’ d date other people, avoid texting, and remove one another from our Facebook news feeds. But soon enough we’ d end up bumping into each other at Jackson Square Mall or out at a concert or gallery opening. And then, as though in some kind of evil carnival hypnotist’s trance, we’ d fall into one another’s arms, dopey and happy and forgetting that we’ d end up miserable.

  A few months in we’ d remember (or finally admit, again) that we weren’t compatible. He was fairly sure he wanted marriage and kids and I was fairly sure I didn’t. A deal-breaker for us both. My friends joked at the reversal of gender roles, called me a commitment-phobe. But that wasn’t it. I was a romantic. I liked relationships, loyalty, commitment. I just didn’t want to do it his way. I’d never pined for weddings or baby showers like most of my friends. I guess I hoped he’ d change and he imagined that I would, too. Number one on the list of things not to do in a relationship.

  Two months before I left Canada for Huatulco, we were broken up, the fourth time in four years. A mutual friend was having a birthday party at the Slainte bar. I knew he’ d be there, too, but I thought I was over him. I wanted to be over him. I’d heard he was seeing someone else and was happy. They were engaged. I thought it would be safe.

  I was the composed ex-girlfriend. I greeted Tamara, his fiancée, with an enthusiastic hello and graciously exclaimed over her sparkly cliché of an engagement ring. Gavin and I hugged hello, my right hip tingling where his hand had brushed over my jeans. We retreated to our separate corners. Later, we gazed at one another across the pool table and before I knew it, we were in the back alley, my tongue in his mouth, his hands up my blouse, me unzipping his pants. He came fast, with a howl and a laugh and a look of wonder. Pleasure was like that for Gavin, an unexpected, gleeful novelty. Without missing a beat, he slid his hand down my jeans, past the elastic of my underwear, and inside me. Every inch of me vibrated with his touch.

  The back door slammed and Tamara and two of our friends wandered out for a cigarette. He pulled away from me, and one of my breasts flopped out of my bra. I stuffed it back in and his stickiness, still on my fingers, smeared across my blouse. He ran inside, following his girl, while my friends sighed and shook their heads. “Oh come on, Ameera. They’re engaged,” Robyn said with a sigh. She said engaged like it was something sacred.