a collection of short literary or philosophical extracts
Not all ideas fit neatly into the pages of a book. When I see, hear or read something that moves me—a news story, a snippet of conversation, a musical phrase, a storyline or cityscape—I capture the thoughts it provokes by jotting them down. From art and sports—whether Wimbledon or the World Cup—to politics, love and war, all topics have the potential to spark my imagination.
“Andrea, where are your Turkish—sorry, Greek delights?” I asked the owner of The Romantic Grocery and Gift Emporium. Since the partition more than thirty years ago, all references to Turkey were...
Gnawing hunger woke me up. I opened my balcony to the Mediterranean. Although evening had crept in , its cooler air hadn’t. I skipped down the marble stairs to the lobby. A waif-like concierge...
Recently, I was interviewed for a programme called “True Calgarian”. I examined my brown skin while listening to my incorrigible British accent, forty years on. “Truly Calgarian? Me?” Since I was...
"Pops, why aren’t the shops open? It’s only 4 p.m.," Christopher wondered. As we passed through Doha Airport, the terminal seemed like a town in a Western movie before a gunfight. No one walked the...
Laura and I visited Dad daily. For the first few weeks, every day we visited, his clothes were piled high on his bed. His winter coat crowned the mound of clothes. We were told that when Dad woke...
Who was this man? He was unshaven, with no tie, his shirt collar open and missing buttons. He seemed to have slept in his clothes. His suit was wrinkled and creased. He had the eyes of a hunted...
December 8th was Dad’s eighty-second birthday. It was also his elder grandson’s seventeenth. Laura cooked steak—Dad’s favorite. He fussed over his birthday cake and insisted on a dozen photos. Dad...
The next best thing to travelling is to write about it. PHOOEY. “ Wake up, wake up! “ it’s 6.00 a.m. on Paradise Island, Bahamas. It’s Christmas and we’re up at this time of day. Sheesh. We...
Photo Credit—Argosy Bookstore, New York City The Argosy Book Store on 59th Street in New York reeled me in, not with a siren call but with the only book title that would have drawn me like iron...
Calgary was booming with oil. On my arrival, I bumped into fellow immigrant accountants all in their mid-twenties—all Ismaili Muslims educated in England like me. In the evenings they disappeared to...
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Emil Rem, an eccentric accountant becomes a writer of eccentric characters, in exotic locales—each chapter taking us on a trip into his fascinating twisted world. Born to a close knit, middle class Muslim East Indian family in Dar-es-Salam, Africa in the 50’s, he is then moved to Maidenhead England at the age of five. The next twenty years are spent shuttling between England and East Africa, wearing a St. Christopher’s cross one minute and attending church, to wearing a green armband and attending Muslim religious classes in Africa the next. Moving to Canada, marrying a woman from the Philippines and having two boys only adds further texture to his stories.