Layyal stared at the mint leaves lining the bottom of her mug. It had become a tradition in her sole one bedroom apartment: tea before her morning. Layyal, on the 17th floor of her downtown condo, looked out her balcony window. Snow. Not just any snow; big, heavy, sticky flakes. The kind that sits unused in piles on sidewalks.

Her curly African hair is tied back with a red head band, a frail attempt at controlling the part of her within reach. But individuality is lost here in the city where people are, heavy and unused in corners, in piles. Mint tea, nothing is more relaxing, little reminds her more of home, as the lighted incense burns in her plastic kitchen.

Layyal, she is a love of many nights, contained in the sterility of a new city without the expanses of desert she believed she was indifferent to. Layyal, who hated listening to the voice from the dusty mosques from a distance. She had been inside a mosque only two times in her life, both for funeral prayers. In the white garb the imam wears, slowly stained by years of sand and harsh sermons, her heart had lost hope in God and now in Canadian mint leaves. Both flavours evaporating before she could get her fill.

Now, she is an empty vessel carrying the longing of soft winds of autumn, blowing sand into food and eyes. She takes deep strides, full of eloquence and thought, and trips, her head in the smog-laden clouds of Toronto. Has the urge of folly, to dive into the frigid lake and swim far into it, bumping into wedding yachts and getting her African hair to matte itself on her neck.

But she is standing on the shore, kicking the sand beneath the snow, and still smelling the incense burning in her apartment. And in the clouds, a distant glimmer of sun, bold streaks of paint strokes. The colour at home was never quite this brilliant. The calligraphy of her world drawing itself in the sky.

Something catches her eye, a small, quick and nearly unnoticeable movement. She swings her head to the side and sees two tiny ducklings hiding beneath a leafless bush. Their brown feathers dusted with snow and mud, and a look of desperation lining their eyes. Layyal thinks of her incense as she eyes the dead mother a few metres away. Her warm remembrance of home, of her own mother. She brushes some strands of hair from her eyes, picks up the frightened birds and puts one in each of her coat pockets.

As she strolls back to her apartment with her hands over her pockets, she chuckles and thinks, maybe Canadian mint leaves are not so bad.