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Fathers And Daughters

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When I was a little girl, myfather used to take me to the sea. This was not just any ordinary visit, we hadto make sure it was the fourteenth night of the moon, so I counted all I couldon my little fingers that the moon would come faster, but the moon only camewhen it will. Years later, he gave me a ring which could have been stolen fromone of the moon's fingers.

I used to run after the moon, but in the car thatmy father drove, the moon was always running after him. I could watch it comeso near to us, the wind sending it our way. The car used to be driving fast onMai Kolachi, that new road they build only so that he and I could travel fasterto the sea, and also that there was a reference point now, ?lets take MaiKolachi that one that runs to the sea.?

In time, words and phrases erode, just like thecolor on your hair does, and we started saying ?oh just to Mai Kolachi? eachtime someone had asked us where it was we were going. My mother and sisternever came along, though my father had wanted us three to go together.

I sometimes liked to visit alone, and hear thecars passing by on the street. These were the days when my father and Ipretended the two of us didn't exist for each other. The wind would embrace mycalm then, and while he drove the car, I spoke several things in its ears. Ionce told the wind, ?I'm about to sink into solitude.?

When Abu liked to talk of the moon, sitting by thesea, he was quite the man. He would tell me complicated things about life, andhow to live it as a running clock with no hands. To feel its essential present.The waves would crash on their shores. Each word of the sea, brought calm tothe mind of water. Everything came back to its own roots and shores.

At around fourteen, when I declared to my fatherthat perhaps God didn't exist after all. He mentioned his own period of burntatheism in his life, and said: ?one comes back to one's roots.? I despised hisresponse. It was allowing me freedom, but only at the cost of a certainty Icouldn't really care for. I was just embarking towards my life and the subtletyof his questioning glance burnt me deeper still. In any case, he said ?yes, youcan.? And I did.

A couple of years later I told him: ?one is notborn into a relation, you have to create it every day, like making sun out ofyellow paint ? the paint isn't everything.? This had startled him, and he hasnot understood clearly up to this day, how I could say that. When my fatherspeaks English I'm sometimes reminded of Spaniards or Native Americans, who speakfrom their heart.

He works on theories that he calls ?theories ofthe wave.? All the time he is talking about currency markets and foreignexchange, and yet the constant in his language came to be, what was constant tome as well: the moon. He had a theory that the moon affected the waves, and soa similar pattern could emerge in the currency markets that also moved likewaves. Or this was what I understood about his sketches. He is with his paperand pencil all day, sketching graphs that rise and fall, and keep the rhythm ofwaves: each thing falls, he once said to me, and the history class teacher hadsaid: ?nations as well as people, have their infancy, adolescence and old age.?

At an early age I learnt that the Fibonacci seriesof numbers had a special significance, because it was also the number of yourfingers, and your hands, your arms, and Michelangelo believed in it too. Fatheralways had crazed eyes, as if he had seen something, known someone yearsbefore, and all this was certainly very important ? more important than dying,giving up, not laughing, or laughing. Abu had a terrible friend who left him,the way no man can ever leave another. He never told me this. I found out onlytwo months ago that Bali even existed.

My Bali was a musical man, he could sing orcompose a tune within a second of his fingers running on water. He played thedrums, the harmonica and the guitar. He was the friend of my father's life.They used to play squash together, run together and go to office-meetingstogether. They used to laugh as well. Bali was someone you could rely on tocome up with a solution to every anguish, be it of why she wasn't talking toyou, or why there wasn't enough cash coming in. He had a solution. He hadlaughter. He had music. When Bali Chacha died, I was three years old. Abu hasnever been the same. And my mother, time, his contacts, all forgot to mentionthis death to me. So I have pretended like it didn't exist.

It must hurt a man. His daughter too thinking hispain doesn't exist. As if, Bali's leaving and missing and singing and talkingand not talking anymore, wasn't enough. My father is one of the best men I haveever known. Except for one answer, he's been able to give me all of the rest,and except for one person, he told me about all of the rest.

I sometimes wonder at what happens tofather-daughter relations in Pakistan these days, or from always, I don't know.There was a time when the moon hadn't shone so brightly on my street, at thattime I used to know the difference between right and wrong. Now thedistinctions are all not quite that clear. Perhaps fathers are our brothers,when we become older, instead of just well-wishing friends out from thedistance in our married lives, or work lives, or party lives, or whatsoever lives.

I sometimes feel, that on coming of age, therelationship dynamic between a father and daughter ought to change. If he neverrealizes that the girl has become a mature young woman, she has a heart that isincurable or a mind that is furious, then he'll miss out on the beauty of themoonlight. This would be a terrible thing to happen to a father, who has lovedhis little girl ? when she was a little girl ? oh so very well. So very well.

He brought her all the right gifts, on all theright birthdays, took her as a princess on those sun-died days. I know that myfather bought me the white horse I couldn't get my eyes off of, the one thathad a magical carriage behind it, so it could trail behind the horse like themagic that is dust-shine behind Cinderella's pumpkin-carriage.

He got it for me, not caring it was expensive, orinappropriate. [I mean, it was a horse, with a golden mane, and a fierce bluered light on its forehead, it struck me then, it was an ordinary horse thatcould become a unicorn at will, upon a lighted touch.] It was important for me,his little girl, and he made sure I had it. Just like he made sure I had silverearrings, matching shoes, and an exquisite bracelet.

When one grows older, these things shouldn't slipoff our minds, like old shoes. It is so important an hour for a father. He isgoing to miss this for the rest of his life.

I think between fathers and daughters, is a sacredtrust ? but I also think, if this trust doesn't reach its own avenues ofbeauty, and change shape over the years, then the life that is lived, will belost to the life that could have been lived. In my case, it was my poetry thatdid it. When I had my book of poems ready, I called my father after severalmonths of agitated absence and said: ?Abu now I am like you, I'm anentrepreneur too. I wrote my book, it's a risk I took on life, just like you.?

Little girls want to be like their fathers too,it's not just the boys that harbor this desire. I was a poet to the moon, hewas a sketcher of graphs that made sense to no one but himself. We did have ameeting point, it's just that it took us several years to realize this. A womanin love, is altogether a mystery to a father, he approaches it like someonecoming near mysterious white birds on the Karachi sea, that will disappear themoment he says ?Can I sit here with you?? The sea is lost, it's uncertain, it?salways present. This is what I am to you, father, is it not. It's what you areto me, as well. It's what you are to the white bird, the sky on the Karachiretreat, to Bali's haunting voice that keeps singing, over all of my life andyours. He is with us as well.

Abu didn't realize I was going to be Bali for him,when I grew up. He didn't see it coming, but friends like metamorphosis onGreek nymphs, can take place anywhere. We are to be friends, I just know it.

HiPakistan has alarge variety of free articles that have been written by consulting 'experts'in the Marriage, Romance and Relationship fields. Find out more at HiPakistan.com.

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