During high school freshman year there was a student in my class who had this odd habit of winking instead of blinking. At first everyone thought he was intentionally doing so and it got him in trouble with teachers but eventually we realized it was not his own doing. He had a unique black jacket that had a horizontal red stripe that said "Buma" on it twice. It seemed like it was meant to be a Puma knockoff jacket and I always thought it would have looked cooler it they had instead written Burma Boy which would take up the same number of letters and in fact use most of the ones already there. His jacket enabled me to spot him on Shariati Street one day as I drove by him in a taxi after coming back from Tarh'e Kad.
"My parents, brother, and I left Iran in 1980, shortly after the revolution. After a brief stay in Italy, we packed all our belongings once again and headed west to the exotic and the unknown: Vancouver. We had recently been accepted as landed immigrants, meaning Canada graciously opened its doors and we gratefully accepted; we arrived at Vancouver International Airport on my 10th birthday, three suitcases and one sewing machine in tow. After respectful but intense questioning at immigration, we were dropped off at a hotel on Robson Street, which was then still a couple years shy of becoming the fashionable tourist hub it is today. We were jetlagged, culture shocked, and hungry, so that first night, my father and brother courageously ventured out into the wild in search of provisions. I fell asleep before they returned. The next morning, I woke up at 5 a.m. and ravenously feasted on a cold Quarter Pounder with cheese and limp French fries that had been left by my beds...
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