Letter from Boston
Reconnecting with Quebec and Madonna
September 1, 2012. We reached Quebec city in the late afternoon, and were planning to hit the Old City (Vieux Ville) right after we had a chance to wash up, but when we checked with the hotel concierge, he warned us not to take the car into the city since roads leading to the Old City were blocked because of a concert by Madonna. However, we defied him and, since the sky was clear and we anticipated that the moon would be up soon and brighten up the city and the river, we decided to brave the traffic and road blocks to get to the heart of the city. We lucked out and were able to get to our destination without major detours, and even found street parking on rue Ste-Anne at a spot very close to the river front, the Chateau, and for us the major attraction, the Terrace Dufferin, a promenade above the St. Lawrence River which offers a magnificent view of the estuary and the mountains surrounding it. As soon as we stepped out from the car we could hear Madonna singing "Papa don't preach", a song that was the battle cry of the women's emancipation struggles in the 1980s.
July 29, 1979. We came with a group of friends to visit Montreal, but decided to take a side trip to Quebec City, a two hours' ride from Montreal. None of us knew much about Quebec, but Shahanshah --- my childhood friend, our driver and also the tour guide ---having lived in Canada before he came to Boston had some notion of the charms of Quebec and persuaded us to head in the northwest direction from Montreal. So on this day, my birthday, all seven of us piled into the small rental car we drove from Boston and took off for a day trip to Quebec. Rumi and I instantly fell in love with this city, and over the next three decades we would look at the photographs we took with our cheap instamatic camera from time to time, and vow to go back to this breathtakingly beautiful and romantic city. It soon became part of our "bucket list"--- targets that you desire to achieve before you run out of time.
September 1984. I was driving on Storrow Drive, the expressway that hugs the Charles River in Boston, having just picked up my daughter from nursery school in Beacon Hill, and turned on the radio almost instinctively. The radio station was playing a Top 40 hit by Bruce Springsteen, and I did not pay any attention to his song which I had heard many times. I asked my daughter, quietly sitting on her car seat in the back, "How was school?" She said "Fine", a short reply not unexpected from a two-year old, who was enjoying the riverside view as we headed back home or watching the traffic go by us. Soon the Springsteen song was over, and another top 40 song by a female artist came on the air. She sang, "...like a virgin, touched for the very first time," and I, scared that my daughter would ask me the meaning of the word virgin, tried to resuscitate my conversation with her and asked, this time showing a little more interest "So, what did you do at school?" Midway through my sentence, I heard her say to me "Shoosh", and as I looked back on my rear-view mirror I saw her sitting there with her index finger raised over her lips in an attempt to signal me to be quiet. I did not know what to expect but soon realized she was totally absorbed in the song "Like a Virgin" by Madonna, whose name we knew but did not know what to think of her brazen style and histrionics on display on her videos on MTV. But my daughter's generation, the two year olds and, of course, her older brother, were completely enamored of Madonna and soon embraced her message and her call for freedom from outmoded social norms. In my household, Madonna and her music has been welcome since then and she has been part of the gallery of musicians and artists we have cherished over the years including Elton John, Michael Jackson, David Bowie, George Michaels, Annie Lennox and others who came after them.
September 1, 2012. We did not have tickets for the Madonna concert but we became, by accident, part of the throngs of Quebecois who converged on the Plains of The Abraham to hear this iconic star, known as Queen of Pop, and is synonymous with the MTV Generation, including my family. As we walked to the Terrace on this moonlit night right in the shadows of the palatial Chateau Frontenac, we did not regret not having the concert ticket, though, since the atmosphere in the entire city on this Labor Day Weekend was festive and the mood electric. We roamed about the Old City in a leisurely fashion, looking at the shops in Petit Champlain, mingling with the teeming tourists who made this city their destination to be with their loved ones and take in the charms of this city, which in 1985 gained the status of UNESCO World Heritage Site. We knew we had the following day, Sunday, and the morning of Monday, Labor Day, to visit the many sites we wanted to see and revisit from our trip in 1979, and others that we were advised to see by the online tour books. We knew we had to visit the riverfront and take the ferry to the other side and see the city of Levi, eat in one of the roadside cafes, or even take a ride on the horse carriages.
So, tonight we lingered on the Terrace Dufferin, heard a few street musicians playing the harp, piano, trumpets, or entertaining the visitors with their renditions of love songs. We took the steps to the lower city and the shops on Petit-Champlain, which is the oldest shopping district in North America. Here, boutique shops and cozy cafés spill out of restored houses. As we ambled through the crowded, narrow alleys, we couldn't but wonder whether we were in North America or in a small town in medieval France. When it was time to head back to the upper city, we were tempted to take the Funiculaire, a railroad inclined at 30 degrees and traversing the escarpment from the lower city to the upper. But we went back up the winding steps and almost ran out of breath.
The moon had by this time glided a few degrees to the west, casting a silvery sheen on the water, and we, two dreamy-eyed souls from a faraway place, walked hand in hand, dreamy-eyed, taking in the unique setting that is beyond my words, but borrowing the immortal lines from Omar Khayyam, I might say, "Paradise is here now".
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