Analects - Emil Rem

Demented-Part 2

by Emil Rem | Feb 20, 2025 | Analects

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 animal. This wasn’t Dad… was it? Dad had always worn a suit and tie. He...

Demented Part 1

by Emil Rem | Feb 13, 2025 | Analects

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 had mounted old pictures of Alex and framed them with some poetry from...

Harbour Island

by Emil Rem | Feb 6, 2025 | Analects

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 shower in silence, eat our free breakfast buffet – boxed cereals,...

Argosy

by Emil Rem | Jan 30, 2025 | Analects

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 filings to a magnet—Hyman Kaplan by Leonard Q. Ross, exhibited in its...

With God On Our Side

by Emil Rem | Jan 23, 2025 | Analects

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 pray at their mosque. “Why don’t you join us. After all, you’re one...

Whose Life Is It Anyway?

by Emil Rem | Jan 17, 2025 | Analects

Recently, we convened a team meeting to launch my next book. “I would like to publish my collected analects (blog posts). Each would be headed by a coloured photo.” Ida immediately piped up with “You can’t do that. It’s too expensive to use colour. It runs contrary to...