“Did You Ever Get Lost as a Child?” Our son Saqib asked.
I don’t believe I did. Not that I recall. And if I had, my parents would have told me about it over and over again. But I do have a story or two about my child getting lost as a child.
Saqib must have been five at the time. We had gone with our friend Fawzi and his daughter—also Saqib’s age—to the annual auto show at the New York Coliseum on West 60th street. As we circled the Rolls Royce and Bentley, I pointed out the convertible with the top down to Saqib. Getting no response, I looked down to my side where Saqib was supposed to have been standing and—you guessed it. He wasn’t there.
“Khalid, is Saqib with you?” Khalid was two steps behind me.
“No.”
Was he with our friends?
No.
“He must be here somewhere. Maybe behind that car?”
Or that car.
No Saqib.
Panic.
We fanned out. Our friend Fawzi, holding his daughter’s hand, went looking in one direction, Khalid in the other, and I the third. One of us had Asim in the stroller.
No Saqib.
Sheer panic! Where could he have disappeared to so suddenly.
We looked and we looked. We would come full circle, hoping to see a smile on the face of one of us, but all we saw was a shake of the head.
“Let’s report it to Security.”
Khalid literally went running to the Security staff standing by the entrance. Fawzi and I chased after him, holding tight to our little ones.
There, standing next to the Security staff was Saqib, looking bewildered and oh, so lost.
Phew! Hugs! Thank God. Thank God. Thank God.
“I was about to call you on the overhead paging system,” the guard said.
What happened? How did he end up with the guard?
“This little boy walked up to me and asked if I could direct him to the parking garage,” the guard said.
Saqib looked up at me. “I couldn’t find you, so I wanted to go to the parking lot.” We had parked our car in a nearby garage.
OMG! What if he had walked out looking for the garage. Oh, thank God he stopped to ask the guard, thank God the guard didn’t let him walk out. Anything could have happened to him. What if . . . what if . . . . can’t even think about it. On the long ride home to Staten Island, no one spoke. Fawzi was silent. It could have been his little girl.
I came home and stood in prayer for as long as my legs held up, thanking the Almighty for watching over little Saqib. Even today, when I think about it, I shudder.
This wasn’t the only time my child got lost. Saqib must have been three when he wandered away on the boardwalk of Atlantic City. My mother-in-law was visiting from Pakistan, and we decided to join a few friends in south Jersey and meet up in Atlantic City. At one point we posed for a photo. “Say cheese,” and the shutter clicked. When I turned around, Saqib was gone. It was a crowded boardwalk. We ran off in all directions looking for a little boy in a sea of people by the sea.
What if we don’t find him?
“One of you, keep an eye on the beach.”
“You go that way, I’ll look this way.”
And then we saw Khalid’s brother Arshed, walking in our direction holding Saqib’s hand.
“He was standing by the arcade, watching people play,” Arshed said.
Exhale!
When the Kodak film was developed—this was 1975—there we were, smiling into the camera, and in the background, Saqib wandering away. If Saqib ever denies getting lost, I have proof. Arshed often related this lost-and-found story with a chuckle.
These stories were a lifetime ago. Saqib lost his uncle Arshed in 2013 after a long bout with cancer. Last year, our friend Fawzi let go of his little girl’s hand when he laid her to rest after her fight against cancer.
As for me, I didn’t get lost as a child, but I did get lost as an adult, literally and figuratively. Sometimes I took a wrong turn and there were consequences, though nothing as disastrous as Bonfire of the Vanities. Sometimes at crossroads I took the wrong path and had to find my way back. Often when darkness enveloped me, I couldn’t see clearly and lost sight of myself; other times I was blinded by the glamor of dazzling light. Every so often, I would hear but not listen, or the other way around, shutting my ears to the sounds of dissent or the murmurs of sage advice, and losing my way. Frequently, propelled by the treadmill of life, I got entangled in the web of priorities and lost my bearing.
I have been missing in life many a time, but thankfully, I find my way home, where I belong.
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