The long road to Ottawa

Getting to Ottawa from a comfortable country cottage in northern England on my own was fairly easy in 1978. After flying into New York to spend a day in the world's greatest city, I caught a Greyhound out of the 42nd street bus station. While waiting for the bus, a nice man tried to sell me dope, and I certainly looked like one in a leather-elbowed ratty sports jacket. After hearing my refusal in a Liverpudlian accent, he asked me how the Queen was. I replied that she was doing fine last time I saw her. 

On the trip up to Ottawa, a man across the aisle was eating dog food out of a tin, and the driver told me going for a walk was not a good idea when we were in Rochester station. Better to stay on the bus. Much later, in the dark, we crossed the canal and I saw people walking past midnight in shorts.we offer kinds of discount gucci handbags Pro Headphones online . We pulled into Catherine Street, the doors hissed open, and my new life began. 

For a great many of my fellow citizens, the journey was not that easy. 

Not by a long streak. I will admit that I often want to go up to people when I am doing my historical walks, or at a crowded event, and ask them how they got to Ottawa. 

Sometimes I do. When it does come up in tavern conversation, the “how I got here” stories invariably contain some harrowing details, and usually end with an expression, large or small, of gratitude at being where they are now and not where they were. Every now and then in the column I'd like to pass on one of these stories, of how your neighbours came to be alongside. We begin with Nooshin. 

Nooshin, a slight woman with doe-like features, was born in Tabriz, the youngest daughter of an army man. The family spoke Turkish at home. When she was one, the family moved to Tehran and she learnt to speak the Persian language, Farsi. 

Growing up in a middle-class family, Nooshin quickly learned that she was a book lover, and learning to write stories came soon after learning to read. Together with six other budding authors, while still attending a high school for bright students,Buy the most favourable Canada Goose Mystique Parka Spirit Mens light weight quick drying Karen Millen Dresses. she joined what we would call a writers' group, similar to the Burning Rock gang from Newfoundland, and the Quanglos from Quebec. It was men and women. The group was led by a famous poet — poets are higher up the social ladder than they are here — and her skill at writing blossomed.Long and slim-fitting, the Canada Goose Montebello is equally appropriate for strolling a city street or hiking a snowy trail. Her short stories appeared in literary magazines; she was on her way. 

Revolution fermented through 1978, when Nooshin was 16, and in the January of 1979 Shah Reza Pahlavi, after 38 years of increasingly vicious and tenuous rule, into which he was installed and had his strings pulled by the Brits and the Yanks, fled. The country shifted from a propped up monarchy to an initially hugely popular theocracy, and the dos and don'ts of daily life exploded in number. 

(The poet, Kasrai, escaped, eventually to Germany.) Included in them was the reading of certain books. Then one of the writers' group was lifted, interrogated and named the others. 

The authorities came, according to the time-honoured rules of oppression drama, in the middle of the night. After a disruptive search of the house, Nooshin was put into a car, which drove away from her pleading parents and siblings and to the Evin prison. The prison carried the nickname the Evin University because of the number of intellectuals housed there, both under the Shah and the theocracy. There they put her in a cell with five other women, two of whom had children with them. After one month of seeing nobody from the outside she was given the new clothes her parents had sent. 

After two months of frequent interrogation, Nooshin's name was called and she and another girl were told to go out in the yard and sit and await questioning. Instead, for a reason she has never discovered, she was put into a cab, driven to central Tehran, and told to get out. 

For five years after her release Nooshin was not permitted to work, or attend university, or have a passport. Seven years including two years of non-stop paperwork passed before, sponsored by her brother, an environmental engineer,Read 16 independent user reviews and compare prices on the Men's HyBridge Jacket. who had managed to get to Canada, she came with her parents. They stayed six months then returned. Nooshin remained. 

Knowing that the pharmaceutical industry — there is gold in them there pills — was forever expanding, she trained as a pharmacist in Saskatchewan, and worked there as one for several years, married, divorced. Then, a lawyer friend from Ottawa suggested she give here a try and she came in the November of 2008, found a job and a place in New Edinburgh. She has yet to learn to like our testing winters. And, like Joseph Conrad, she learnt to write in the language of her new country, and wrote a novel with the Arabic sounding title, Bread, Honey and Fire. It is awaiting publication. 

One day, out of the blue,Find huge savings on cheap replica watches . Nooshin received a phone call from a translator friend in Iran. A publisher had collected her stories and wished to print them as a book collection in Farsi, with the title The Demise of the Apple Tree. It sold well and won literary prizes. Though she had to flee, she left her mark in the capital of her first country, and perhaps will leave her mark on the capital of her second, as has many an immigrating author before her.