Story Map: Things We Imagined

A negotiation about a baby.

In 1980, Farzana was born in Iran.

In 2006, Farzana, a pragmatic electrician who trusts things she can repair, and Iggy, a community-builder, live modestly in a rented house in North York.

On a crowded bus, Iggy is suddenly overtaken by the vivid life of a stranger, a nurse who has a blind daughter, experiencing her memories as if they are his own.

He dismisses it as fatigue until further rides bring flashes of other lives: a young photographer shaped by life on the reserve, a healer working at a dollar store.

Iggy shares the stories with Farzana; she listens with amused skepticism, attributing them to imagination or stress.

Electrical outages roll across the city, crumbling infrastructure says the news. Farzana worries that Iggy is becoming ungrounded, while he grows increasingly absorbed in the lives of these strangers.

News of unusual weather patterns and worries of infrastructure strain appear in the background.

Iggy reckons with a new vision: the bus driver who is lobbying for a new animal shelter. Iggy invites him for coffee to talk about a mutual aid network he’s running to deal with rolling blackouts.

A catastrophic flood devastates Toronto’s hinterlands, permanently severing infrastructure and pushing the outer burroughs of the city into long-term scarcity.

Their neighbourhood is wiped out, forcing them into temporary shelter. Daily life reorganizes around disruption.

Iggy leans further into building a mutual aid network, believing connection is survival; Farzana retreats into planning for self-sufficiency and withdrawal. She hands out cards to people to do repair jobs for barter, to collect what she needs.

Riding daily through a changed city, on a volunteer run charter bus that replaces the public service, Iggy experiences the visions more intensely, feeling as though shared hardship amplifies connection.

A fierce argument erupts when Farzana suggests leaving the city entirely, and Iggy refuses to abandon the fragile community he is helping sustain. Farzana grows wary of his delusions and fears that Iggy’s visions are symptoms of a serious neurological condition

Medical uncertainty in a broken city deepens as Iggy’s episodes intensify, forcing both of them to confront the possibility that his mind may be unraveling. They see a doctor working underground and get news that Iggy has a brain tumour.

It is difficult to find medical care. Farzana commits to caring for Iggy. To comfort him, she begins weaving his stories into small acts (letters, gifts, gestures) treating them as if they are real.

Farzana enters Iggy’s imaginative world fully, discovering her own capacity for storytelling and vulnerability. Together they build a private mythology from the lives he learns about, strengthening their bond.

Iggy dies, leaving Farzana alone in a fragile city and unsure what to believe about his experiences.

She retreats into practical survival, considering leaving the city entirely. She holes up in their house, suffering so much loss. She gets to work rebuilding her plans to be completely self-sufficient.

Farzana usually rides her bike, but it breaks down and in a rush she rides ‘Iggy’s bus’ to a repair job and sees people who look like they could be from Iggy’s stories. She speaks to no one, just observes.

The dollar clerk sees her and secretly diagnoses the deep pain, as she is motivated to do. She takes a package to Farzana’s doorstep, filled with ayurvedic healing supplies.

Farzana finds the package. It seems like it might be from one of the ‘imagined’ bus people. But perhaps Iggy sent when he was alive, she thinks. Very like him.

Encounters with strangers begin to echo Iggy’s stories. She makes a house call to repair something and sees a portrait of Iggy on the wall. She learns about a local photographer; his bio is on the back of the frame. Another one of the bus people.

She seeks out the photographer and offers her fix-it services. When she visits his home, she confronts him. He remembers Iggy - never talked to him, but remembers taking the photo at the bus stop. She confirms his life story, unsettling her sense of what is coincidence.

She injures herself on a job and is sent to the hospital. The attending nurse is Alenka, the dancer. Again, the details are corroborated. The stories were not inventions.

She rides the charter bus once more, and follows the dollar store clerk who admits she left the package. They talk, and Farzana says she must also be sick, to believe in all this. The clerk gives her medicine and says: you must decide whether to interpret these events as coincidence, grief, or something deeper.

She finds the bus driver and waits until everyone leaves. They talk. He is now making a plan to rebuild a precinct - he thinks he’s seen her poster around. Is she a builder? He needs builders.

She abandons her plan to withdraw from the world, accepting the bus driver’s bid for help.

From beyond this world, it seems Iggy has sent these strangers to lead her to a new reality of empathy, honesty, and creativity. Iggy always wanted community for her, and now she has it.

An echo back to 1980 in Iran: the story which had been asked of her mother is hers to live.