Finally, it got quiet in the living room. We heard steps coming towards the kitchen. Who was coming? My father? The stranger? My mom grabbed one of the butcher knives on the counter. The steps stopped. Total silence. We looked at each other. The kitchen door opened and my dad walked in. My mom gently put down her knife.
My dad noticed the dinner on the stove – cabbage rolls, his favorite. He gave my mom an appreciative little kiss. Then he whispered “This guy is from Saskatchewan, some place in the middle of Canada. His parents are originally from Eastern Europe, but they died during the war. He has Tatar-eyes and facial features.”
And that was why he could meet the family. Apparently, my father had found out more about him than this guy had found out about the Tatar diaspora. This was the modus operandi of my dad: once you answered his first innocent question, you felt obliged to answer the following ninety-nine. Yet you never felt that he was asking you anything.
My dad turned to my mom: “Can we have this spy stay for dinner?”
Without missing a beat, my mom replied, “Sure.”
After hearing the word spy, my siblings and I erupted into a big laughter. You know when you laugh, but feel you are still missing something? It happens a lot when you are the youngest one. In this commotion, I thought that we were having a Canadian spy for dinner, like my mom’s tasteless boiled chicken that she occasionally served. When our laughter was over, I mumbled a few puzzling words about this new menu item. This gave rise to a fresh wave of thunderous laughter from everyone except me. I stood there looking bamboozled which made them laugh even harder.
So, our dinner guest was a Canadian spy from Saskatchewan. Since we had never met him before, my siblings and I were still a little unsure of him. We were nervous as we set the table. Just before sitting down at the table, we huddled on the kitchen floor and made spy-defying plans about what to do in case Mr. Spy tried to do “bad” things to us.
At the dinner table, I sat next to Mr. Spy, with my brother on his other side, as per our plan. My mom brought out the dinner. She gently removed the lid of the clay pot, the pile of cabbage rolls in tomato sauce, still simmering. Mr. Spy was almost in tears when he saw this.
During our dinner, each time my mom offered him more, he held out his plate, while I cringed because it meant fewer cabbage rolls for me. He noticed that we were all dipping our bread into the sauce, and he started doing the same. Mr. Spy ate quite a few of them, dressed with plenty of yogurt and a drizzle of chilli flakes in melted butter on top. After he finished, he said quietly, trying to hide his emotions, “These cabbage rolls are delicious, just like my mom used to make!”
That was it. I stopped calling him “Mr. Spy.” He was now “Uncle Spy”. This Canadian had achieved the same ranking as my heroes at my father’s office.
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