Two new (well...kinda new) stories.

Reminiscences By Mona
Downtown Saint Mathieu street, corner Maisonneuve, was filthy. Old gum and rubbish, and who-knows-what-else, covered the sidewalk, where pigeons pecked at the remains of yesterday’s pizza crusts from Anatolia. The place used to be called “49 cents PIZZA”, and had many customers, including us. We used to go there often, relishing the flavours, the hot, saucy slices, and the strings of melted cheese. Then the nearby competition went out of business, and PIZZA 49 raised its prices. And so for a while the name was dishonest. Eventually that changed, but Anatolia, the new restaurant, never got as many customers as “49 cents PIZZA” had been used to.
Across from the pizzeria, the dingy area also housed a great fire station. Friendly fire fighters we waved to as kids often sat around smoking cigarettes on a bright red bench. Like the trucks, the bench gave some colour to the grey place, which, in the summertime, often reeked of pigeon droppings.
On the other side of Maisonneuve was a small Arab shop, called “Al-Mizan”, (the balance), that sold fresh vegetables, grain, meat, and sweets. Sometimes I’d go there to pick up some chicken legs or ground beef, or maybe some rice flour, that my mother had ordered. When entering through the door I’d always say “Assalam-Alaikum” to the man by the cash register, who had striking, clear blue eyes and fair hair. While waiting in line I’d try to pick up the news from Al-Jazeera, which was always on the TV in front of the cash. I never really could, as the little Arabic I had studied was the classical, and not the spoken style. Once a huge elderly woman with many rings and an exotic headdress was talking animatedly in Arabic to the blue-eyed cashier. She made grandiose gestures and he nodded and dropped in a syllable every once in a while. I had looked curiously from one to the other. After she had finished and left, he asked me if I had understood anything. I shook my head. He smiled and, with a playful tone, said that he hadn’t either.
Years before, Al-Mizan had been located in another part of the downtown area, and the location it now occupied had been a flower-shop. This was where the other kids and I were picked up by the school bus every day. In the spring, it was lovely and the air was perfume, and there was a little tree with long, thin, pale-green leaves in an earth-filled cement construction attached to the high-rise on the corner. I had climbed it once, and been delighted to find four small white “sinjid” , which I had immediately gobbled up. At home, I had told my mother about the sinjid tree, but she hadn’t believed me. However, on each subsequent occasion I checked it, the tree was fruitless.
On the remaining corner, upper side of the street and to the left from the direction of Saint Catherine, was the Guy-Concordia metro station. As with all metro stations, a strong gust of wind would hit you as you fought your way through the doors. Here, the drunk and homeless would invariably be seen lying ragged on the bench or filthy floor. Here was the hardest of beds, the most dismal and draughty of homes. Cold and colourless it was, two blocks upwards of the colours of Saint-Catherine street, where bustling shoppers quickly stepped by the beggars, the ragged men who were feared, ignored, forgotten. Some, with their girls and dogs beside them, were quite young, others less so. A boy of maybe twenty had a sign that asked a penny for a smile. And an ever-present old man, white-bearded, tawny-skinned, and tattooed, always sat cross-legged by the Faubourg, corner Saint-Mathieu and Saint-Catherine, on the very same block as the nuns’ house. This one was neat, friendly, and appreciative. In fact, most of them were so desperately hungry that their eyes glittered when you gave them the ham-sandwiches you wouldn’t eat yourself. The younger ones grabbed them and ate voraciously; this old man smiled and took them in silence, with a sincere “thank-you”. He had such a wise, almost prophet-like aspect; it made you wonder how he got there. They were all so alive, so puppy-eyed—so human. Passing them felt like a stab to the gut, but there was no avoiding it. Nearly every day, I experienced fresh cuts. There was nothing I could do.

sinjid:(A small fruit found in Iran, usually with a red skin, and, a sweet, powdery, white flesh, with a striped seed similar in shape to that of a date.)

Song for Persepolis
I have never seen my homeland. We left it when I was two years old, and to me, that’s like never having been there. Some dream of a better life here in North America. It is not so. One longs for the soil of the motherland, weeps for loved ones left behind. My mother sings the many anthems of the revolution, which, over time, I have learned to a degree. Sometimes she’ll spring into song, and I will join her. At intervals I cry, that I can’t see my grandfather, my grandmothers, my aunts, my uncles, my cousins… I doubt I’ll ever see the golden shrines of Masshad and Qom; the intricate tile patterns of the mosques; the luxury of the Shah’s palaces, now museums; the shining beauty of all that is Isfahan, which they call “half the world”; or the magnificent modern structure of Azadi Square, that stands tall proud in a field of green. I picture in my head the rice fields along the Caspian Sea, and the rural people who tend them. I picture the fishermen of the Gulf of Oman, their nets bursting with the fruit of the sea. I picture the bedouins of the deserts, Dasht-e-Kavir and Dasht-e-Loot, with their colored caravans, florid faces, and vivid costumes. I picture Tehran and its polluted air, traffic-congested and unbreathable—my uncle Mehdi riding a motorcycle, white pants on in the morning, black by dusk. I ask my mother to repeat the stories of her childhood, which she does again and again, being my only source of contact with a faraway realm. Occasional phone calls and letters from halfway across the globe leave me emotional and hoping, that one day I will return to the home of the Aryans, the ancestral boon of the race whose women are dark-haired and thick-browed, the land of the smiling sun, the cat-shaped country.