Zahir was conceived in southern Tanzania in the back of a peach truck as it went over a bump in the road. Nine months later, he was born in the small town of Songea to a Khoja Shia Ithnasheri family -- the last child in a line of four girls.
The Paryani’s arrived in Don-Mills, bleary-eyed and bedraggled in September 1974. The journey was only remarkable for all that was left behind: Family possessions, friends, community, the familiar rhythms of an equatorial year and knowledge of a language that was soon to be forgotten.
School proved to be harrowing with new rules and ways of doing things. Unable to cope with the mathematics of grade 5 on the first day and, probably as likely, the lack of attention he received on this first day from his teacher, led to Zahir begging his father to move him out of grade 5 and into the gentle and welcoming arms of Mrs. MacRae – a grade 4 teacher. A teacher whose influence he recounted more than 20 years later in an article.
Those early years in Canada were marked by new friendships and racism in equal measure. Friendships were made with classmates who lived close to home and were, for the most part, Indian immigrants themselves. Racism was to rear its head often in the form of taunts and bullying. To his credit, individual acts of racism in his pre-teens never resulted in a need for him to paint people from other cultures with the same brush.
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