INNOCENTLY I ASK, “What’s a Pakistani haircut?”Smiling, the barber replies, “We chop off your head.” It’s Saturday afternoon,and I’m exploring Little Pakistan. I’ve decided there’s no better way of knowing a neighbourhood than by asking a stranger with a razor questions about a touchy situation back home. PakCan Hairstylist is small and friendly, a touch dirty — I probably wouldn’t take my mom here — but it’s a perfect launching pad to find out how Toronto’s Pakistani community is dealing with the tragedy back home.
Immediately, I put my foot in my mouth.
“What are you guys doing about the earthquake?” I ask, and Faiz Ali, the shop’s owner whom I met on Gerrard Street as he was sitting on a milk carton and rubbing his feet, puts down his blade.
“You mean the flood?” he asks. Jesus, typical spoiled Canadian. I dodge the eyes of Faiz Ali and take in his barbershop — there’s framed painted pictures of a waterfall behind a heaven-esque rural village and a princess who beams behind a farmer tending his goat. I stammer and apologize. Ali, however, is cool.
Six million people are currently homeless in Pakistan. There were more than 20 million people affected by the flood.
“We’re sending money home,but not through the government because we can’t trust the people in charge,” he says, and when another customer enters, someone, presumably, who knows the difference between Pakistan and Haiti, Ali steps aside to give the other man his haircut. His 25-year-old son in a UFC cap cuts my hair.
“If we had a nice government, we could trust them with our donations, the whole world could, but instead we have something much worse,” says the kid, a new father, who encourages me to take the same step with my wife. “I’m glad we live in this area,” he says.“It’s better than home.”
The area that’s called Little Pakistan is indeed little, just a half block or so on Gerrard Street between Greenwood and Coxwell Avenues. And even though the old man at PakCan Hairstylist has a unibrow that’s as fat as a Rob Ford joint, he enjoys teasing me about my back hair.
“You can get something for that, you know,” he says, as a white man with very few teeth enters the shop selling DVDs. “Hey, don’t forget — when I met you, you were picking your feet,” I respond. “And you let me touch your head,” he says, and I have to admit, that’s true. I ask the old man where I can find some good Pakistani food and he recommends 786 Restaurant, which is located at 1330 Gerrard Street. When I walk into the massive, silent dining hall, no one seems to know how it got its name.
“Might be something religious,” says Feisal, the 18-year-old studying business management at Seneca College, who stands behind the cash register and grins. Feisal was born in Pakistan and still has family there, but says they weren’t affected by the flood. By the restaurant’s cash register, there’s a box for donations,and the place is as empty as Rosedale during a Holt Renfrew sale.
Since I’m here during Ramadan, most people are home fasting, but Feisal is happy to join me as I have chicken biryani, with rice, fried
onion and a nice mint garlic-yogourt sauce. Halfway through my meal, which I enjoy with homemade naan bread, prayers blast in Arabic over a loudspeaker, and I feel like the chef or someone I can’t see might be making fun of me.The chanting booms and is a little foreboding in that way that anything Arabic sounds vaguely scary to a Jew. I ask Feisal what’s up, and he tells me we’re over a mosque.
“Can I see it?” I ask him. “Let’s go,” he says, and the next thing you know it’s like that scene in Goodfellas as Feisal takes me through the kitchen, past the bathrooms and down a flight of steps to the Masjid Al-Tawakkul Mosque where four men pray on a purple rug with no shoes. At night, Feisal tells me, there can be as many as 50 people down here, but on this wet Saturday, it’s just four dudes on their knees on a purple carpet, one floor down from where my biryani gets cold.
This accepting multiculturalism is why I love Toronto. And the men don’t even mind when I snap their photograph. Instead, they tell me I should come back that evening with my wife.
Apparently, 786 Restaurant is famous for its Lahori fish,and maybe next time I’ll try the kebab, but it’s a good experience, and I’m about to go back to my barber and thank him, but back on Gerrard, I’m distracted by Miss Pakistan World magazine. Looking into the window of Bollywood Music Centre, I’m overwhelmed by a desire to find out who the hottest woman in Pakistan is. I take my new purchase into Lahore Tikka House, which would have Toronto’s best patio, but it’s Muslim, and doesn’t serve drinks.They serve me kulfi (homemade almond ice cream) and tea, and I’m passed a flyer for a fundraising dinner to aid Pakistani flood relief. August 14 was the anniversary of Pakistani Independence Day and at Lahore Tikka House, where Jack Layton spent the day, the room went silent to pray for the victims of the tragedy.
“You have to wire the money directly to your relatives,” says Yasser, the restaurant’s 28-year-old manager. Pakistan is in dire need of dried milk, vegetable oil, blankets and children’s anti-rash cream. Yasser, like the barbers and the 18-year-old at the restaurant, says he doesn’t trust his government. But Toronto’s Little Pakistan neighbourhood is doing everything it can to pitch in. “If I lived in Montreal or Saskatchewan, I’d miss Pakistan,” says Yasser. “Look around, though. Living in Toronto, it’s like I’m still at home.