sidewalk scribbling

Sometimes, I make mistakes. Our fancy hotel turned out to be more expensive than budgeted because of a stupid asterisk that I hadn’t paid attention to (taxes exclusive. Whoops.) We scrambled through our finances and made a few mental calculations (my mental calculations are on an actual calculator). The last leg of our trip was going to be in Colombo, where Fahad had his work conference. Which is why we were to check in to a proper hotel there the next day, which also meant that a significant chunk of our over-utilized budget was going to be spent on this uber-fancy place. I quickly checked the prices online and gulped – “I hope you get some company discount, buddy.” The little imps of stress quickly climbed onto our shoulders and stayed there for the rest of the day, every now and then pulling our hair and whispering in our ears to remind us of how we might be in a little bit of trouble. We had decided to go with our tuk-tuk driver’s brother, who had a taxi, and was giving u...

July 9 8:30 am. The room feels cooler, it is cloudy outside and there is a cool breeze making its way into the apartment like it lives there. I get out of bed but for all my usual sadistic penchants for ruining people’s sleep, I feel bad about having to wake them up when we fell asleep so late. I eventually do, and when I walk into Kate and Reem’s room I am taken aback by the beautiful view (not of Reem and Kate a-slumber) – we can look out over the city, with a green hill, Mount Royal, ahead and McGill University sprawled at the foot of the hill. The apartment feels much better. “Guys,” Kate begins in a voice that indicates she has some worrying news to share: “I’m hungry.” The menu is in French. This is troubling. “You should have listened to those French tapes in the car,” Reem is smug but she translates and it seems to match up to the pictures so we order away. I have gotten so used to English as the primary language, I feel a little displaced. Language can be su...