Why Calgary? Out of the blue, I was recently asked what it felt like being a Calgarian. I examined my brown skin while listening to my incorrigible British accent, 40 years on. “Calgarian? Me?” Since I was taken from Africa at the age of five — my mom obtaining a divorce and whisking me to
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Why Calgary?
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Out of the blue, I was recently asked what it felt like being a Calgarian. I examined my brown skin while listening to my incorrigible British accent, 40 years on. “Calgarian? Me?”
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Since I was taken from Africa at the age of five — my mom obtaining a divorce and whisking me to England with her — I considered Dar-es-Salaam my home. It was a place to return to as soon as possible.
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That closeness was strengthened by my father, who stubbornly remained in Africa. Dad worked for an airline, and every school break saw me jetted off to Dar-es-Salaam to rejoin my father and the rest of our extended family.
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Despite my English family loving me more than anyone could, my heart belonged to Africa. Every day that passed brought me closer to the day I could leave for home. The belief of being a stranger in a strange land was entrenched by the behaviour of those I met while training as an accountant. I was now “elevated” from the working class to a milieu of the middle class.
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In training, however, I found the deep prejudice that judged me on how I spoke, not on how I behaved or performed. As much as I could not part with my accent — which betrayed my origins — I remained out of the fold.
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The middle class in England is hospitably polite. Beware the Perfidious Albion. All the overtures of welcome never allowed me into a staff birthday party, let alone the workplace squash ladder.
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Calgary was the only place in Canada where I had no relatives and could live an independent life — my mom, now a millionaire in England, and my father, the only East Indian in East African Airways, decided they were happy to remain where they were.
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Having been brought up as one-third atheist, one-third Anglican, and one-third Ismaili Muslim, I belonged to each, yet to no one, desperately needing space to discover who I really was.
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In the late 1970s, Calgary boomed, thanks to the oil the world needed. It shone with the promise of dreams fulfilled if you applied yourself. The city’s lifeblood was its entrepreneurs.
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Yet, my mindset was still to leave Calgary within three years. My one-room bachelor suite of 400 square feet was a camping ground — a sleeping bag, a boom box, an IKEA folding table and chair. That was it. Easy to pack up, easy to move on.
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Three years turned into four, then five. It never stopped me from dreaming of my African home, sans family, sans community.