I used to see Atta all the time in Dundas Square. He would sit cross-legged in front of a chess board and play with anyone willing to sit on the ground across from him. When it came to personal details, Atta wasn’t big on specifics: he was from Afghanistan; he’d been living in Toronto for nearly 20 years. Maybe he treated all his personal interactions the way he treated a game of chess. You keep things to yourself so your opponent doesn’t know your strategy; and you assume they are approaching you in the same way. All my dealings with Atta felt like they were tinged with suspicion verging on paranoia. Why was I asking such questions? Nobody is interested in somebody else for no reason; they must be after something.
An interesting thing: in addition to the chess board, Atta kept an arrangement of objects close at hand, precisely ordered according to principles only he understood. A feng shui of the street. Pop cans. Rocks. Photographs torn from magazines. The talismans of an obsessive mind. He needed the sense of order his precise arrangements gave him. At the time, I thought it was odd. Now, almost two years into a pandemic, I think I understand how order can be a comfort.
As I say, I used to see Atta all the time, and I would photograph him whenever I passed through Dundas Square. At first, he was open to my intrusions, then grew reluctant to pose, then turned positively hostile to my camera. In my last photograph of him, he raises his hand to block my shot. That was on January 18th, 2018. I haven’t seen him since. Other people have replaced Atta in that space, which causes me to wonder. Although he might think it a suspicious thing for someone to do, I worry about him.
