The phone rang. “Hi! This is Mike, a neighbour of yours. I read the blurb you posted about your writing in the mailroom. Can I buy you a coffee?”
Without thinking, I agreed.
Did I make a mistake?
Mike was so ordinary. If you gazed into his face for an hour, you’d still forget what he looked like. Worst of all, he was an Ismaili Muslim, a community that had raised me in Africa as a boy. These days, I gave them a wide berth. Inevitably, their conversation was always self-centred, along the lines of how wealthy they were. One evening I had been invited to one of their homes. They ushered me into their luxuriously appointed basement. It was dark, save for a spotlight directed at a framed certificate of graduation from Harvard, awarded to their daughter. It didn’t matter that the course was for one month during the summer recess. The shaft of light beamed straight at the shining calligraphy of HARVARD.
The man allowed me an hour to spout about myself and my writing. His quiet attention brought out the worst in me, so full of bombast about my books, reflecting the almost supernatural life I had led, the dragons of adversity I had slain.
Eventually, I ran out of superlatives about myself. Tucking into an apple brioche, sipping a now lukewarm gunpowder tea, I made the fatal mistake of asking Mike (an anglicised version of his given name) to tell me about himself.
“I’m retired. I study 15 languages.” What? How could he be a pukka Ismaili?
No hints of kids at Harvard studying brain surgery or owning a hundred Dollarama stores. Such a disappointment.
Mike talked in a painfully slow, funereal, low-pitched, ponderous voice—enough to either put you to sleep or rush out and invest in a hearing aid or two. Yet he had no Indian ‘twang’ about him. He spoke like someone born in England.
“My father, a wealthy merchant in Kenya, sponsored me to study medicine in England.” His measured narration made me egg him on with impatience.
“I couldn’t stand dissecting rabbits and mice. And the putrid smell. I threw up after every class. Medicine wasn’t for me. Since childhood, I loved languages and joined The London School of Languages.” He glanced at me to make sure I was still awake.
“My father disowned me. My allowance was stopped. I found a part-time job cutting molten rods of iron. A shilling for each rod cut properly. All I earned went into paying for my courses and board and lodgings at the college.”
“Couldn’t you have compromised with your dad and become, say, an accountant?”
“No. I had found my vocation.”
“I mastered five European languages. Got a job at £50 a day. I would accompany millionaire businessmen on private jets across Europe. Stay in five-star hotels. Interpreting sales pitches for them.”
“You found your calling,” I interrupted.
“Not quite. Prejudice abounded everywhere. I found a girlfriend. But we couldn’t find accommodation. Landlords would look at my brown colour and immediately state their room had been taken.”
“A white colleague of mine felt sorry for me. ‘Come,’ he directed.”
“My friend introduced me to a plum-speaking Englishman, wearing an Eton tie. He turned out to be an upper-class estate agent.”
“The man asked, ‘How much savings do you have?’”
“About £1,700. Why?”
‘Give me £1,500.’”
“He took me to a house in Hampstead Heath. ‘This house has six rooms you can turn into bed-sits, each with a little electric hotplate. You can spend £200 on painting, buy some beds and chairs. Close the purchase in 45 days.’”
“I put a notice up at my old college and, within 45 days, had the rooms paid for, keeping a large one for myself. Based on the rental income, the agent got me enough financing to get my £1,500 back while still buying the house.”
“Within two years, the agent came and sold the house for me, netting me £12,500.”
“The agent offered me another property to invest in. I refused.”
“I needed a break and took off for a holiday to the Spanish Mediterranean island of Mallorca. To a small seaside town called Magaluf—an up-and-coming tourist mecca. I rented a scooter from an Englishman. We became friends. He was going through a divorce and had to sell his business. It was thriving, but he needed the money to settle with his wife and return to England.”
“I bought his business with all my savings. I expanded my store threefold. Loved the locals and the all-year-round temperate weather.”
For the past thirty minutes, as his story unfolded, I had hung on Mike’s every word. Here was someone so unassuming, I had expected to hear the history of a retired bus driver leading a pedestrian life. Not this rollercoaster odyssey. What manner of man was this Mike? If he had done so well in Magaluf, what was he doing in the relative backwater of Calgary? Did something go wildly wrong in Mallorca?
I was soon to find out.
