It was kind of like when I see a little kid from India or Pakistan. We pass each other, and they look up at me. I mean, they stare at me hard with a look of recognition in their eyes, turning to look back at me when we pass. Even Trudy can see it: they know. They know I’ve got some of that blood. The little kids, they can just tell.<\/p>\n
So we were wandering around the McGill<\/a> campus, having peeked into the Rutherford Physics Building in search of The Rutherford Museum<\/a>. Trudy and I had also\u00c2\u00a0spent a little time in the Redpath Museum<\/a> looking at fossils and rocks and other geological things. We’d been walking a lot, and I’m sure Dad’s knees were hurting as we walked down hill, so we were walking slowly.<\/p>\n And we came upon a bright blue section of pavement marking two handicapped parking spaces. It hadn’t been there on our way up the hill earlier, so I figured it was still wet, and I steered around it, but Trudy, Khadija and Dad walked across it, making me cringe.<\/p>\n Two painters were taking a break on the other side of a little grass strip, evidently having just finished their painting. As we approached, they had stopped talking and watched us closely. I was waiting for them to yell at us.<\/p>\n And just then one of them did shout something. I looked over, and he was addressing himself to Dad.<\/p>\n “Pardon?” Dad said.<\/p>\n The painter repeated himself, but I couldn’t understand what he said.\u00c2\u00a0Dad replied using words and a tone of voice that were equally foreign. And of course it was at that point, just as the first “Acha!” came out, I realized they were speaking Urdu.<\/p>\n So we stood there, Trudy, Khadija and I, as Dad had this long back-and-forth conversation with this guy. They were clearly talking about where they came from and when they came to North America, and they were smiling broadly.<\/p>\n This went on for a few minutes with the two of them speaking in animated tones, periodically waving a hand to emphasize a point.\u00c2\u00a0And then the two men said goodbye, and we continued our walk down the hill back to the hotel.<\/p>\n So here’s the thing of it…<\/p>\n We were strangers in this French-speaking town wandering around this English-speaking university as tourists. And these two guys were painters taking a break in the shade. And the one looked at Dad and instantly broke out in Urdu as if Dad had a sign hanging from his neck saying, “I speak Urdu.”<\/p>\n He knew. He could just tell, just like those little kids.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It was kind of like when I see a little kid from India or Pakistan. We pass each other, and they look up at me. I mean, they stare at me hard with a look of recognition in their eyes, turning to look back at me when we pass. Even Trudy can see it: they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[42,41],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=796"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":797,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796\/revisions\/797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}