A photo of a running track in Toronto.
During COVID the track replaced the gym and became the outdoor arena where I came to run. - Shama Naqushbandi Credit: Shama Naqushbandi Credit: Shama Naqushbandi

I have this image that won’t go away. 

Picture it. I’m on a concrete track in a field. It’s not busy, rarely in fact is it frequented. It’s about a 15 minute run from where I live, close to a handful of high-rise social housing near a main intersection. I guess when they planned it, it must have been a green space for the folk living nearby. Or walking space. Or just eye space. The winters are hard in Canada, especially for pram-pushing mothers – you realise this after being here for a few years. I still remember the small house we moved into when we arrived, not realising how space shrinks when you have young children – the living room that becomes the dining room that becomes the kitchen that looks out to a single window – everyone on top of one another in that winter of 2017. Those peeling, suffocating walls.

There is a school nearby, so perhaps the field serves another purpose: communal sports grounds shared with the public. Sometimes you hear the children inside. Once I caught sight of a red-haired teacher smoking by the bins and thought of Miss Thomas, my Latin teacher crying because the boys were mean. 

I come here every so often to do my exercise, sandwiched between pick-ups and conference calls. During COVID the track replaced the gym and became the outdoor arena where I came to run. It’s not particularly scenic – rather spartan in fact. But I like it. I don’t need to worry about the dude on the treadmill next to me, and I can rip off my T-shirt when I get hot without feeling self-conscious because really there’s no one else around to judge me in a sports bra anyway. Plus it reminds me of the sports fields outside the tennis centres where I used to train, when dad dropped me and my sister off before rushing back to the operating theatre. I always hated hospitals. 

There’s a familiarity to these pitches for us former sports folk. It feels almost comforting, like a blast from the past. It’s got the same edge to the ones we used to walk through to get to the courts, like at any moment a bunch of skinheads might jump out from behind the bins. I used to dread that walk through the field. Not anymore. I’m practically untouchable now. I see myself in the mirror, standing in that hospital washroom bloodied and throbbing for the first time like I had just emerged from battle, so much blood eddying down that drain.

Of course I never showed it back then. After all, confidence is learned. I was the eldest out of us, even if it was just by two minutes. I had this trick where I’d let my racket drop to my fist like a blade. It made my sister feel safe. Why did dad drop us off in those whites anyway? He never understood. Or maybe he did, and that’s why he booked us the show courts at night when all the drunks came out. I guess that’s how we learned to focus in the end. 

Yeah, there are a couple of dog walkers that pass by this spot. The older people come to stretch or to get pushed around in wheelchairs for their daily dose of fresh air. Sometimes you see them waiting by the empty stands under the shade just breathing in the air as if sucking through invisible tubes. All that rasping makes you run a hell of a lot faster. A mother or grandmother pushes a pram up ahead. I smile as I run by. I must look like a crazy person smiling – I’m panting like mad.  

And then I see these two girls with an older man. The man is middle-aged and athletically built wearing a navy blue tracksuit, but the girls can’t be more than five-years-old. Not much older than my daughter. Their bodies are slim, skinny like little girls are at that age. Almost boyish. They’re dressed in shorts and t-shirts, high-top socks over their trainers. The man in his sports clothes must be a coach. Or looks like one at least. You learn to recognise these coach-types. I think he’s teaching them how to run. He stretches his legs, extending his arms and gait to mimic the movement. 

I’m still jogging, panting. Reeling, in fact. I take the opportunity as a good excuse to stop and catch my breath. Thank God. I’m exhausted. Wheezing. Basking in the full disgrace of an aging athlete. I’m also curious. I watch the trio from half-way around the track. The girls are so young, their hair tied back into ponytails. I can’t see their faces properly, but they’re so small. Two little girls. They won’t be able to run far surely, not at that age. The man steps to the side and the girls brace in position. A few seconds later there’s a soundless shot and they take off. I watch, but suddenly something takes hold of me. It’s like I’ve been punched in the gut.   

For a moment, I stagger back winded fighting back the tears, seeing the two lithe forms chase the curve of the track against a falling, overcast sky. Unfettered, weightless, free. The power in their cycling legs. Their form is so perfect and natural, like they never needed to be shown. I am trying not to weep. It’s the most beautiful sight I’ve seen.

God knows. Maybe there are things buried so deep inside us that we don’t even know. 

Perhaps I was thinking of my own body failing, watching it grow older day by day as each morning new aches and pains come, with the common insecurities most women get when they cross a certain age. One day life would caste its vulgar film and these girls too would be sullied. For hadn’t I longed for the curve in my back, the rise in my hips, to become full? Promethean, soaring heedlessly into the sun. I suppose they would enjoy it for a while, like we all do I guess. But it’s a different sort of power –  one you don’t always control – and one that takes you far, far away from yourself – and for sure they would start seeing themselves in a different way. Not this way. God, not this way. They would forget this. 

Last month, I found out my twin had been diagnosed with cancer. It still hasn’t sunk in. She’s not even 40 and has two young daughters. Or maybe it has and I’m just in that arena with her, egging her on, saying the same things I used to say to her when we trained together   – words of encouragement and motivation to keep her up, to keep going, to keep pacing. Stay with me. We’re going to get through. It’s not over yet. 

She hated it of course, all that training. We both did at times. It was hard. So f***ing hard. And then those running girls. I see them again. Except this time they are carrying everything. My sister, my children, my husband, my family. Everything in my life.

One day I will write about this, I promise myself. I will sit down and write a whole book that will vindicate this scene. That will explain the emotions that I can’t convey and the feelings that stumble short. Mixed with all the complexities. The running girls. I promise I will do it. I’ve written 90 pages but it’s hard. So hard, with work, the kids and everything else. I keep stopping and starting, reading and thinking it doesn’t make any sense. The whole thing doesn’t make any sense, like I’m climbing an ever-climbing wave. 

But I can’t give up. I know I have to keep going. I have to, for those girls. For all of them. So I carry on. One foot in front of the other dragging everything with me not knowing where the story will go, like that broke-back Aeneas clutching all his gods out of the smoke-filled ruins of Troy. Courage, dear heart. Courage. One day I will finish and it will say everything that needs to be said and I will probably cry again for the light of truth is beautiful especially when it strikes you in the heart like an act of God on a cloudy day. For we are made of epic proportions. Stronger than Titans. Braver than a thousand heroes. Through the glory and the pain.

Shama Naqushbandi

Shama Naqushbandi

Shama Naqushbandi is a writer and executive based in Toronto. Her first novel, The White House, won Best Novel at the Brit Writers Awards and explores the challenges of finding identity in an increasingly...