Roy and I picked up Amir at the airport in Montreal. It was a bitterly cold day in March, the temperature not making it above a few degrees below freezing. The cold wind made it feel even more like winter would never end. But we didn’t care. We would be together for two weeks: several days in Montreal, a couple of days in Quebec City, and one in Ottawa. We would spend the last few days at Roy’s horse farm, and then I would drive Amir back to Montreal to catch his flight home.
In spite of the cold, Amir loved walking around Old Montreal. We visited the Basilique Notre Dame, remembering how we had visited the cathedral of the same name in Algiers. That had been a very hot day; now, completely the opposite. I had brought all sorts of winter clothes to bundle Amir up in, and I took him up Mon
