‘Why are you crying Mama, are you sad?’ she asks me with the kindest eyes I have ever known.

Kinder than the many eyes staring at me under the guise of compassion on this crowded 47 bus going south on Lansdowne.

‘I’m not sad Mama… I just miss my parents, you know?’ I manage to say through the bitter tears pouring down my face.

She reaches into my pocket, holds the phone up to my face and says, ‘Here! You can see them here Mama!’ And in that very moment, I wonder what good I must have done in my life to deserve the love of such a pure and good soul. Petra believes my parents live within my phone for that is the only context in which she recalls interacting with them. After all, the last time she saw any of my family, she was only one and a half years old. But she is 5 now. I envy her untainted matter-of-fact view of life, her ignorance.

I want to correct her, to tell her how absurd it is to think that people inhabit phones, but as I look at her big, beautiful brown eyes, I decide not to. Certain truths are better left untold. She can wait a few years to make these revelations. I will not be responsible for dimming the light in her eyes- I’m sure the world is more than capable of accomplishing that feat that without my help.

There was a time, not too long ago, when their eyes on me would make me pull myself together and dry my tears in a haste, but not so much anymore. These days, the 47 has grown into a shelter for me- my sanctuary on wheels; reminiscent of the long drives I enjoyed with my father behind the wheel. I welcome the tears when I am in this crowd, I long for them, and almost everyone is either looking at their phones or fighting back tears of their own. I am at peace here; the noise seems to be the only conduit to the memories of a life I once had.

‘Why are you crying? Mama?’ she asks me again. Oh, precious little one, I really want to tell you why, but I can’t. I won’t.

I want to break down my nightly ritual for you: every evening, like clockwork, I put my phone on silent and stow it deep within a cupboard in the kitchen. I tremble to my core at the mere possibility of a midnight call; whenever that has happened in the past, it has been to give me the news of the death of another person I love, of another funeral I will never attend and yet another goodbye I will not get to say.

I want to tell you why I instinctively shield my ears with my hands or abruptly stop talking when a plane cruises across the sky above us. Why, at the CNE last year, I dropped the cotton candy to the floor and ducked under a parked car when the fighter jets aerial ‘show’ began. That day, you looked at me much like most everyone did; bewildered and amused. Curiously, it gave me some relief when I saw the genuine lack of familiarity on your face; You looked at me like a Canadian would. And I have to admit, I felt some resentment, towards you and all the others who looked at me that way, like I was a rabid Toronto raccoon cornered in the daytime. Why do you all get to appreciate flying acrobatic jets and have your sheltered childhoods? What about me? What about my childhood and my potential fascination with flying acrobatic jets? Nevertheless, I’ve learned that some questions are just not meant to be asked out loud.

Petra and I will probably, in all likelihood, not see my parents again. Every time I watch them on my phone they feel less and less animated, steadily becoming mere impressions, shadows of who they once were, inching closer and closer to a sure death in my absence. I want to tell her that this is the price I was/am willing to pay to get her to safety, to give her the possibility of a decent and ‘normal’ future, in a land that allows her to occupy more space than a gerbil. I want to take her hand and insert all of her into my heart and through my memories, my being and show her the magnitude of what she is missing out on; the cousins, the family, the breezy evenings running around the village with not a care in the world, the love of it all, ‘THIS IS THE PRICE!’ I want to yell out at her, but I don’t.

Now, on the 47, I am not only mourning my fathers’ future demise, but also a childhood lost to wars and invasions, spent hiding in stairwells and on the floors of cars speeding through streets littered with snipers.

I choke on the image of my Baba shrouded in a white cloth, KAFAN, surrounded by floating and howling silhouettes dressed in black on a glitchy phone screen thousands of miles away, being mourned by a chorus of wailing women to the haunting voice of Sheikh Abdel Basit Abdel Samad. (Abdel Basit was a powerful Qur’an reciter known by every Muslim household in the Arab world, his work present at every funeral. He was banned from Saudi Arabia because his voice was so enchanting that men feared women would be aroused by him.)

I close my eyes and wrap Petra’s hands in mine and repeat to myself: this is the price you chose to pay, willingly, and he said he understands. Baba said he understands.

She does not know why I cry. I pray, daily, to gods I never believed in that she will never come to know why and with that, my job as a mother, is almost done.

‘This is our stop, Mama’ she tugs at my hand and leads me through the mournful crowd and off the bus. And for a second there, I feel like a little girl; like I am someone’s daughter again, being led to safety.

‘Home sweet home Mama!’ I sing out to her in an effort to keep my tears at bay. She comes closer and touches my cheeks to make sure there are no more tears like she usually does, and sings it back to me- ‘Home sweet home’.