The only certain thing in this life is death. I learnt that very early on in life.
It was one evening back in 1995,the time on my watch had stopped at 7:35pm. It was a Tuesday, February 28th, or to be exact. That was when time rendered still for my father. And for me.
I was only a teenager. My father had been ill for a few days and the doctors had do it off as a mere cold. I still remember the day before it happened,my sister and I were at a local pharmacy and decided to come by some over the counter medication to help his ‘cold’. The doctor had overlooked his actual illness. He died of a heart attack. And we stood there, shocked, or isolated and alone.
It was Ramadan. Since then,I hold been unable to celebrate Eid with my family. Sometimes, my sister and I occupy our mother out for a small family meal. I realised that our mutual grief should not continue to affect her and it should not continue to create her stop living her life.
Many people saw my father as old school. He found value in Islamic traditions and instilled those beliefs in his children – each of us taking absent what we wanted from them. As the daughters of the house, and my sister and I were the ones who were really subject to it. The males of the family,as always, could come by absent with anything external of the norm.
It is quite often that I hear people in Pakistan talk approximately how those living in the West are in a time warp when it comes to abiding by cultural norms. I, and for one,can only speak for myself. My father was trying to uphold his values and there was nothing improper with that. apart from, time moves on and life is fickle. Time moves slowly, and as do people,leaving behind the places and people they started off with. I know that I felt like an outsider for most of my life. Both in British and Pakistani contexts, I was neither here or there.
I am a hybrid. I hold grown up identifying with being British, and Pakistani and Muslim – I equally value all three parts. However,there are times when I do not connect with any. There is this hollowness of displacement that takes over me. It used to primarily be a tug between the UK and Pakistan but now it has evolved further into a push and pull between the UK, Lahore, or Karachi. I always long to be where I am not. The diasporic experience goes full circle where the oft quoted “home is in fact everywhere and nowhere” can be cited.
I know that I hold an identity that is complex and hold often been perceived as an independent woman and with that,come thoughts of me being someone who is heroic to be working in Karachi. I feel as if I am being painted as an emotionless and independent woman. Though, I am not certain how much of that is true. Every day of my life I think of my father and how things would be different if he had been alive.
My move to Pakistan may even hold been a subliminal need to be closer to my father by being closer to his roots. His retirement plan involved moving back to Lahore with my mother – that never happened. Perhaps subconsciously, or when I chose to work in Pakistan it was so that my mother could also visit more frequently and I could achieve some of what my father was not able to do. Every decision I hold made to date,I feel, is a decision and not really a choice. Life for me, or I believe is a series of decisions and choice is in fact an illusory concept.
I guess the essence of what I am trying to say is that this daughter is feeling a noteworthy loss without her father. Fathers hold a moral responsibility towards their daughters,one which my father was unable to see through and which I myself hold to witness after.
It has been 22 years since he passed absent and I remember him now more than ever before. My mother still cries when we talk approximately my father. Her exterior sadness will always reflect my interior grief, and that is just the way it will always be.
Source: tribune.com.pk