A Long Journey

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Today you asked me about your father. For the first time in all these years – 12 to be exact. It was your birthday, and like every other birthday, we celebrated the day with your grandpa and grandma who had practically raised you while I worked on setting my priorities right. It was a private party. You had cut the large candle-lit cake, ate a little spoonful that your grandma offered, and then looked at me and asked, “Where is my dad?” It was a strange question to be asked at that moment of joy, at least that’s how it felt. I had forgotten growing up in a family without a father could be something you would even notice. Your grandma curtly responded, “We don’t know.” She then offered you ice cream to steer the discussion away to something more comfortable. Later, before going to sleep, alone with me, you asked again. I told you to sleep through the night and in the morning, you’d have your answer. Now, sitting at the table next to your bed, the reading lamp turned on, I am writing a letter to you, believing it probably wasn’t the man you were looking for but the reason for his complete absence in our lives. The answer is not simple. You should know all of it. Looking at your sleeping face, a soft shade of light resting on your brown, peaceful body, I have a hard time believing there was a strong possibility that you might not have even been born. A lot of things had happened before you were born, and a lot more since you did, now was the time that you learned all of that. It had been a long journey for all four of us – you, me, and your grandparents.     This story started at a small party at my best friend’s house, 14 years ago. I was a teenager, just turned sixteen, doe-eyed, mild-mannered, bordering on being shy, and kept myself contained within a small circle of friends. Nila, a pretty girl with a bubbly personality of Pakistani origin who I called my best friend, led the tiny pack. On her sixteenth birthday, her parents had invited a few of her friends and relatives, one of them was a young man, the son of a Pakistani army high-up, who supposedly was studying at the university after completing his high school at a local institution. He was NIla’s first cousin, from her mother’s side. His name, let’s say, Alam. He was tall, handsome, charming, and very persuasive. We hit it off from the get-go. I was bigger than my age, he was good with words; for a quiet, introverted girl, the situation was ripe for an adolescent romance. He took my phone number and promised to call. Nobody knew about it. Not even NIla. Soon, we started to date. I felt my whole life dependent on making him happy. I gave in to doing things that I shouldn’t have. My parents had always trusted me and given me enough freedom. Perhaps, they shouldn’t have. They had little to no clue what was going on. Later I blamed them many times, in my mind, for being so trusting. However, things changed drastically when one of our family friends accidentally saw me together with Alam in a restaurant, when I was supposed to be in my class. Once my parents learned about it, they did exactly what they had always done – speak to me. I wasn’t truly myself anymore. The thought of losing ‘the love of my life’ made me belligerent, rude, and completely irrational. Not only did I admit my true love for him but also threatened to leave them if they ever came between us. My parents listened and tried to reason siting my tender age, but I remained stubborn and irrational. They realized they couldn’t completely keep me away from Alam, so they did the next best thing – put me under increasingly more restrictive conditions, cutting down my opportunity to see Alam. My stubborn love for him just grew stronger faced with obstacles. A couple of years passed by and I turned eighteen.  Alam, frustrated with the fact that his access to me continuously became limited due to the constant vigil of my parents, came up with a radical plan. He wanted me to elope with him, go to Pakistan, and tie the knot. It was a no-brainer for me. The possibility of losing him was wreaking havoc in my mind. I was ready to go with him to the end of the world. The first love of a teenage girl! This was when things turned complicated. Somehow my parents, possibly overhearing my conversations with him on the phone, had assumed that I could be planning something terrible. My mom, as always wanted to talk it out with me, which obviously didn’t work. I was beyond talking. My dad, a quiet, loving person, tried to stop me in a subtler way. He hid my passport. Without a passport, there was no way for me to legally get out of the country. I was mad. I demanded to get my passport back by creating a tantrum. That didn’t work. He simply denied taking it. I knew what I had to do. At an opportune time, I packed up some of my essentials and moved out of the house, taking shelter in a friend’s house whose parents were very supportive. Next, I filed a complaint with the police against my father alleging he was holding my travel documents. Cops paid a visit to our house and asked my father to give up my passport as I was already an adult and was free to go wherever I wished to. He obliged. Soon I had the passport in my hand. It felt like a great victory over an evil power, my father. Alam made all the arrangements for me to fly to Pakistan with him. We were supposed to get married there and make it our home for a little while. His mother had died from cancer a few years ago. His father was living all by himself. Alam wanted to live with him and keep him company. I was determined to go wherever he went. Call it crazy love. Before leaving the country, I called my mother one last time. She cried on the phone, begged me to reconsider, failing asked me to keep in touch wherever I was. I asked for my father. He didn’t speak to me. He had declared me unwanted in his life since the day the cops forced him to give up my passport. To him, it was humiliating and painful – not being able to do what he felt was best for his own child.      To be honest, when I boarded that flight with Alam, which was supposed to take us first to Dubai, and later to Karachi, I felt like a shadow of myself, as if it wasn’t me, as if I was in a movie, just playing a role. The only thing that kept me going was my unconditional love for Alam, who was nice and understanding so far. He spoke into my ears, giving me strength. We reached Karachi in the early morning. His father showed up with a van. He was a big man with a big attitude. He barely spoke to me but I wouldn’t say he was rude. He was clearly a man of very few words. With no woman in the house, he mostly took care of himself. There was a male servant who cooked and cleaned the house, but he often went away to visit his family in the village. Alam seemed to have a warm relationship with his father. They hugged and spoke frankly. I understood some Urdu, so, had no problem figuring out his father was referring to me as a good catch but too young. I was happy that he felt I was pretty. At that age, you don’t want anybody to think you are not worth it.           There, my life went on normally for a little while. What however didn’t happen, was the marriage. Alam was too afraid of his father to admit that he had taken me home without ever actually marrying me. In their strict family, this would be seen as a sin. I brought it up several times but he hushed me down every time, describing it as minor paperwork. I was so deeply in love with him that I accepted whatever he said. It made no difference to me. I loved how he took care of me, from minor stuff to bigger issues. I saw his love in every little thing that he did, not realizing how he was quickly turning into a possessive man. This went on for several months. However, slowly but steadily, an ugly side of him kept creeping up – his drinking habit. Even though as a Muslim he wasn’t supposed to drink, like many Muslims around him including his father, he drank profusely. Initially, he would drink a little, knowing I didn’t approve of it. But soon he started to ignore my wishes and started to do whatever he pleased. This wasn’t something that I was prepared for. It really hurt me. You’ll be surprised to know how quickly crazy love can turn into hatred.   He started to become loud, aggressive, and outgoing. Before he spent most of his day with me, soon his old friends had gathered around him and they would spend most of the time outside, I didn’t even know where. But it didn’t take too long for me to find out. He was also into gambling.  His father was rich but he gave Alam an allowance every month. That was a handsome sum of money but when you gamble carelessly and continuously lose, you’d need more all the time. I had a few gold ornaments that I had brought with me. One day he asked for them. He promised to return them soon, but I knew I would never see them again.  I had very little money with me, as he would rarely give me any. All I had was those ornaments. I declined to give them to him. By then my unconditional allegiance to him had started to fade away. This was when the worst happened. He hit me. That moment, when he slapped me on the face, several times, yelling to give him the ornaments, something happened inside me. I just knew what a big mistake I had made. I knew there was only one way to correct it. Escape. Four months have passed since I came to Pakistan. You had already been conceived. Getting out of Pakistan turned out to be harder than I thought. Alam had already become suspicious by then and started to control every step I took. I knew he would never allow me to leave him or even Pakistan. I felt like a captive. I don’t know what anybody else would have done in that situation but since I had left home, I had become braver, tougher. I was determined to get out of there at any cost – for me, for you. I found a way to call my mother from Karachi. We both cried. Mom had a friend in Karachi. With the help of her, I was able to board a flight to Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, the city we hail from. Despite having all of our relatives there, Mom advised me to stay in a hotel and arranged for my flight back to Toronto. I landed at Toronto Pearson Airport ten days after escaping from Alam’s house. It was a rainy afternoon in late fall; beautiful Canadian fall color had captured my beloved Ontario. Standing in the airport I cried like a baby. You were still a tiny existence inside me, I didn’t even feel you, just the knowledge of you somewhere inside my womb, and I already had fallen in love with you. I felt I had brought you home. But little did I know how far I still was, we still were, from being home. The struggle had just started, for both of us. Your grandma had come to the airport to receive me. She looked tired but relieved. She worked full-time and was involved in numerous social activities. I knew how overworked she was, often not getting enough sleep. My father knew nothing about my return to Toronto. He didn’t want to know. Mom knew there was no way he would allow me back home, not after what I did. He considered it as a betrayal. I wouldn’t blame him for that. I hurt his ego. Your grandma, however, had always been a person who could rise beyond any emotional challenge and do her best to make things work. We hugged each other for a long time in the airport lobby, both crying, a small crowd gathered around us, some with teary eyes. Later, sitting in a snack shop in the airport, drinking coffee, I told your grandma about you. I don’t remember exactly what her first expression was, but knowing her I knew if there was one person in this world that I could confide in, it was her. However, she had questions. The first question was if you were the child of a marriage. Coming from a Muslim family, with a relatively stricter social binding, it was important to her. I lied. I don’t know if she saw through me or not but she never said anything about it. The next question was a straight one, which she asked with her hands on my arms, a real calmness in her voice. Do you want to keep it? I didn’t have to think. You were already an integral part of me – through my morning nausea, cessation of my period, wild mood swings, and lack of appetite. You showed up in my dreams every night with this puffy little body and the prettiest smile. I nodded. Decisively. Mom kissed me on my forehead. That told me everything that I needed to know. I was relieved. Without her support, I couldn’t even start this struggle. She was the key to my life, she would soon turn out to be the key to yours as well. I couldn’t go home. We didn’t think it would be wise to bring you up to your grandpa, not just yet. He was still mad at me and the news of the baby could actually make things even worse. Mom had a friend who was divorced and lived alone. She graciously allowed me into her home, temporarily, until I found something more permanent. I was grateful, and relieved. I wasn’t ready to live all by myself yet. I had no job and no money. Mom could only support me so much, considering between her job at school as an educational assistant and dad’s work as a building security guard they made just enough to live a decent life. I knew I had to stand on my own feet, quickly, for me, for you, and of course for my parents, before they went broke. Slowly but steadily, things were working out. I was able to get a job in a store, initially part-time with the promise of going full-time in a few months. It was close to where I was staying and worked out very well for me. I could just walk there. The lady manager was very nice to me. A white woman with a bitter look, she had bestowed me with her affection, especially after knowing I was carrying you. Everybody I met was so supportive that sometimes I cried in happiness! Then trouble struck. Yes, you guessed it right. Alam had come back to Toronto, looking for me. Since I returned, I have not connected with my friend Nila, knowing that he might find my whereabouts from her. No matter how much Nila loved me, she was still his cousin. I had to be careful. But he knew where my parents lived. That was the first place he went to look for me.  He dared to bang on our front door until my parents felt helpless to answer and demanded to see me. My father, dumbfounded, had very little to say. Mom plainly denied knowing my whereabouts, which he clearly didn’t believe. When he got rowdy Dad threatened to call the cops. He left that night but promised to return. For the next several weeks he followed my parents, sometimes secretly, often openly, suspecting they might try to visit me. Fearful, Mom stopped visiting me completely. We spoke on the phone. We were scared, continuously wondering what Alam was capable of doing. Would he hurt me if he found me?  Days passed, amid all that worries. You were growing inside me. I could feel you now, moving inside me – the tiny kicks! The feeling was so exhilarating that I did not have words to express it. It was like magic happening inside me, waiting to appear with a blast, soon. I could not wait to see you, hold you, kiss you. A few more days! The excitement and the curiosity – no words can capture that feeling! Alam, failing to find me, had visited your grandparents several more times, sometimes drunk, cursed them, threw rocks at their house, but somehow didn’t find the courage to physically harm them – a huge relief! If something bad happened to them because of my decisions, or my mistakes, I could never forgive myself. And you would have carried that stigma all your life. I couldn’t accept that either. Unfortunately, there was not much I could do. We couldn’t go to the police because that would almost certainly ruin my cover. Mom braved a few times to come visit me at her friend’s house. She took plenty of caution, coming very early mornings making sure Alam was nowhere around. Finally, the day arrived. My water broke. I was at the store. The kind owner had allowed me to continue to work through my pregnancy. She was the one who was at the store with me. She took me to the hospital and called my mother. You were born. And you looked nothing like him. You were a carbon copy of me, just in the form of the opposite gender. I was relieved! Oh god, I was so relieved! The hatred and abomination that I had grown for that man, the last thing I would have wanted was to have to look at your face and see him for the rest of my life. (Well, if it did happen, I am sure I would learn to live with it. Don’t take it personally.) Something really wonderful happened two weeks after you were born. I had taken you back to my temporary home at mom’s friend. Despite the risk of revealing our hideout, Mom came every day. It was obvious she had fallen in love with you at first sight. I didn’t know if she had informed your grandpa or not. I didn’t ask either. I knew he was still angry and had little to no hope of him ever accepting you. God, O’ God, was I wrong! One morning the doorbell rang. I opened the door to find Dad standing next to Mom on my doorstep. I didn’t know what to say and he didn’t even look at me. He quietly followed Mom to your crib. You were sleeping. He looked at you for a long time and said nothing. Mom whispered into his ears, “He looks like you, doesn’t he? Just like his mother.” He smiled. Nodded. Then he looked at me, the same way he had all my life since I was a little girl, with that same affectionate, patient gaze. “Pack up. You are going home.” I embraced him and cried like a little girl, after a long time. Neither of us said anything. There was no need to. He knew I was sorry. I knew he had forgiven. We instantly picked up where we left off. You came home, in your mother’s room – the room where I had spent all my childhood. Everything was exactly how I had left it – the posters of my favorite musicians, the drawings from my elementary grades, the flowers drawn on the walls, my bed, dressing table, reading table, all the books – everything. Mom had saved my room just the way I had left it. I held you dearly and cried some more. We were finally at home. The next few months were probably the best time of my entire life. Three of us were in a heaven of our own with you at the center of our universe. But it didn’t stay too long. Like a blistering sun came back the man I hated more than anything – Alam. Since I had returned home with you, despite all the precautions, word had gotten out, and our relatives and friends had learned about our return. Not sure how Alam found out but in a megacity like Toronto, a lot of people know a lot of other people. You must have heard about the six degrees of separation among all people on earth. However, in Toronto, there may be two degrees of separation before you find someone in some way known to you. It could be Nila, or someone else, but Alam knew I was home with our son. He returned with vengeance. Instead of approaching the situation like a man who really cared for his child, he came banging on the door and declared belligerently that he came to get his son back. He was asked to leave peacefully and return with a lawyer, but something didn’t go very well with him. When things were about to go out of hand Dad called the cops. He was arrested for disorderly behavior. We decided not to file a formal complaint, only to avoid unnecessary complications. But to avoid one, we had to invite another. We had to leave home again – you and me. This time we didn’t return to Mom’s friend’s house. That would be too obvious. Your grandma had some connections in Quebec. She had found out about this safe house through one of her close friends who lived in Montreal. It was an organization for women like me, whose husbands (or boyfriends, sometimes even family members) were either abusive or extremely possessive and violent, endangering their lives and often of their kids.  It provided safe shelter to the victims for as long as needed. The organizers had to carefully select locations and be extremely careful about the secrecy of the hideouts so that the disgruntled husbands didn’t somehow find them and put them in life-threatening situations. They had several locations all throughout the country. Sometimes it was a house, sometimes an apartment or condo. Usually, a group of women stayed together, some with children, like me. The only person who knew my location besides the administrators was my mother. There, away from everybody that I loved, started our secret life. It wasn’t a life that anybody would want to have. Just knowing that a crazy, aimless drunk is out there somewhere desperately looking for you is bad enough, when a child is added to that equation it turns terrifying. Mom used to call me from public phones or from her work, fearing that somehow Alam might track her phone calls and find the location of my hideout. She visited us once every month, alone, driving close to 6 hours each way from Toronto, always starting in the wee hours to avoid the prying eyes of Alam or any of his friends. By then she knew Alam had cranked up friendships with some of the folks in our neighborhood and was getting regular updates. This went on for a year or so. It was becoming harder and harder to continue, especially for Mom, who was too eager to bring us back home. The long trips back and forth Montreal at the top of constant fear of Alam were taking its toll on her. Once she almost had an accident on the highway and somehow survived by pulling off the road at the last moment. After that Dad started to accompany her. This was not easy on him as he had to take off from work. Alam, in the meantime, realizing that there was very little chance that he would ever find out where I was staying with you, finally resorted to courts. He claimed that I had stolen our son and went in hiding. My parents, amid financial hardship, went on to get the best lawyer they could find. The lawsuit however didn’t go too far as he eventually withdrew it. This came as a relief to all of us as we had this belief that the Canadian courts were sympathetic to estranged parents regardless of history of abuse. To this day we do not know why he backed off but it is of our opinion that he simply lost his eagerness to harass me and lose tons of money in the process. It was hard to believe that he would have any attachment to you, someone whom he had never even seen. An alternate theory we had was that he must have met another woman and his mind veered off me. After that things remained calm, at least for a little while. Before he used to show up regularly at my parents’ place, often parking in front of their house for hours, sometimes even daring to ring the doorbell and asking for me, or just hurling insults from the street. He had made my parents’ life a living hell. They felt humiliated, scared to go out after dark, always on their toes wondering what Alam might have been scheming. The calmness felt good, relieving. After all, almost three years had passed since we had eloped. I was getting tired and immensely frustrated with my aimless life. I wanted to bring you home, get into college to complete my education, to move on with my life. We all wanted Alam to move on with his life too. We waited six months. Just to be sure. Alam didn’t show up. We didn’t hear from him. It seemed to be the right time to come back home. On a beautiful spring morning, your grandpa drove us from Montreal to our house. Finally, we were free – you, me and your grandparents. The evil force that had come between us, tried to destroy our lives, was finally gone. We celebrated your second birthday with lots of enthusiasm but still kept it confined just to very close family members. I was admitted to a college, studying finance and management. It felt like déjà vu. My life started again, with you appearing magically in it. Things were getting better. The scars of my nightmarish few years were starting to disappear. Now, of course, no nightmare ends without a final, potentially devastating, climax. Deep inside our minds each one of us fostered the terrifying possibility of him resurfacing, but we tried not to discuss this openly. Believe it or not, bad things happen when you least expect them.  It was a late summer night. We had just returned home after attending a family party. He was there. Dad had just pulled the car into our driveway. It was me who saw him first. He was sitting inside a parked vehicle, near our house. I was scared and asked my dad to pull out. Just to drive away before he had a chance to confront us. Dad was slow to react. He drove his car behind ours, blocking us. Dad asked us to remain inside the car, stepped out, and locked it. Not knowing what Alam had in his mind I begged Dad not to go out but he looked calm and composed. Alam climbed out of his car, clearly drunk, threw a barrage of insults at my dad, then picked up a crowbar from his trunk and came at our car, swung it hard at the rear window smashing it partially, screaming continuously, demanding to give him his son back. I sheltered you inside my lap and ducked down between the rows of seats, trying to call the cops with my absurdly trembling hand. He had now walked to the side of the car, smashed one of the side windows, and screamed obscenities at me he inserted his hand inside, unlocked the door, and opened it. At that moment, surreal it may be, I felt as if I was watching a movie and a lot of things were happening on the screen – him with a crowbar standing just a few feet away, the dispatcher’s voice on the phone pledging to provide her my location, my mom screaming at the top of her voice demanding Alam leave us alone and you crying under the pressure of my body and possibly with all the commotion that was going around you. And then something strange happened. Something hit Alam hard, on his head, he took a few steps back, shaken, and unsure, looked around confusedly, and then fell on the ground face down. Looking out I saw my father with a baseball bat, in his relatively frail structure suddenly he looked like a man on a mission, his eyes glowing, his face hard and twisted – never before had I seen him like this. A mild-mannered man had suddenly risen to the cause and taken matters into his own hands. He bowed down toward Alam’s heaved body and muttered, “I’ll kill you if you ever come near her again.” Police came. They arrested both Dad and him. An investigation took place. Dad was released of any wrongdoing. We filed a case against him. Soon his father came from Pakistan and with his assurance that there would never be any further disturbance we decided not to pursue the legal case. He went back to Pakistan with his father.   Regardless, my parents decided to move. There was no telling when he would decide to return to Canada again. Moving is a daunting task, especially when you have to sell a house and buy a new one. There are hundreds of issues that need to be considered. As both my parents worked long hours, this turned into a nightmare for them. But they went through it. They also had to do it as quietly as possible. There was no telling where Alam was and whether any of his connections were still keeping an eye on us or not. Somehow, after a couple of months, the move was complete. The new house was in a new town, forty kilometers away. It has been ten years now, almost. Our lives have moved on. Your grandparents had taken you as their own and brought you up with utmost love and sincerity. So, you see, if there’s anybody you should be asking about, they are these two people. Your father had ample opportunity to return like a decent person and ask for his visiting rights. He never did. And I don’t want you to go looking for him ever, because you won’t find anything there that you don’t already have. Appreciate these two people you call your grandparents and love them as if there won’t be a tomorrow. That’s all I wanted to tell you. Hope you understand. Happy birthday. Your mom.