“Daddy, Javed hit me,” I said to my father.
My dad was sitting in the living room, reading the paper when I walked in crying. I was six, or not quite. Javed was the neighborhood bully, a skinny, wiry boy, probably just a year older than me. Every time he came across us little girls in the playground, he would beat us up. We learnt to scamper and hide whenever we spotted Javed lurking around the corner. Anyhow, this time he got me. I don’t recall if he pulled my hair—probably not, or his hand would have gotten stuck in my curly thick hair. He must have just hit me. I burst out crying and went running to Daddy. Surely, he would fix it or fix him, or do whatever it takes to teach that Javed a lesson.
He looked up from the newspaper.
“Don’t come crying to me. Go back and hit him.” He kept looking at me until I turned around and sulked away, feeling chastened.
Of course, I didn’t go back and hit him. I was scared. We girls just learned to hide from him, and one day, Daddy got transferred out of Quetta and we left town, leaving Javed behind, hopefully forever. By the way, Quetta is a city in the western part of Pakistan, close to the Afghanistan border.
Never again did I go crying to him. He taught me to fight for myself and not rely on anyone to fight for me, not even him. That was lesson #1.
Lesson #2 was: “Never tell a lie. I won’t get upset if you tell the truth; but I will get angry if you lie to me.” So hardwired was that in my psyche, that even today, if I ever utter anything that is untruthful, I stutter, stammer, choke, or go red in the face. A total give-away. That is a lesson I drilled into my children, and now my grandchildren. I tell them that that is what my Dad told me. And I know that one day, they will tell it to children of their own. I hope.
I first heard the story of Adam and Eve from Daddy. We were in bed outdoors—in the years prior to air-conditioning, we slept under the stars—my sister Neena and I lay on either side of Daddy, as he told us the story of the first man and woman. “And then they had children, and their children had children, and on and on, until we were born,” he said.
“We are their children!” I was awestruck. That, more than the apple and the snake, is what struck me.
Often when Neena and I were playing in the lawn, he would call us in, and have us sit on the carpet facing the radio and listen to the songs on Radio Pakistan. We would have preferred to play. He had us sing along with Lata and Mukesh, the love song Abhi Na Jao Choor ker (don’t leave me now). At times he would play western instrumental music on his tape recorder—the one with the spool, ‘this is a violin, that is the sound of a trumpet.’ At that age of nine, I fell in love with the saxophone—something about the melancholy, lonely sound. He started recording our songs, in little girl voices in the 1950s, then tweens, later as young ladies. Daddy and I sang together all the years through, in the 1980s at Neena and my brother Salman’s wedding, at Saqib’s wedding, and the last time at Asim’s wedding in 2007.
I am not done with my childhood. When we had visitors, Mummy would be chatting with the ladies, the men talked among themselves, sitting in the verandah, and Daddy? He played with the children on the lawn. Actually played with us. And we gathered around him, begging to be lifted and swung around until we were dizzy. He played treasure hunt, made up games on the spot, and we children just loved it. The aunties would remark to Mummy: “Kazim likes playing with children.” I found it odd that they found it remarkable. He was our Daddy and he played with us, and that is what fathers do. Or so I believed, seeing the world through my life. Oh yes, and he was always dressed in a suit, with a tie. Playing in the lawn in a suit.
Although I didn’t see it, people would tell me that my father was a handsome man: tall stature, light skin (a mark of beauty in Pakistan), curly light brown hair, and hazel eyes. He was so British, all the way; a thorough gentleman, and a military man who honored his profession. Daddy dressed only three ways: mornings in his khaki army uniform with brass buttons on his lapels, and shiny metal insignia of a galloping horse on his cap, standing erect in his military posture; returning home from work, he dressed in a suit; and later at night, changed into pajamas. That was it: uniform, suit, and PJs. He spoke with a clipped British accent, adopted the ways of ‘ladies first,’ and was ‘proper’ in all ways I can recall. We had an almost military like routine, breakfast at 7, school at 8, lunch at 2, siesta at 3, tea at 4, homework at 5, playtime at 6, and dinner at 9, and no sleepovers. Table manners were drilled: don’t eat with your mouth open, chew your food, no talking with food in your mouth, say “pass the salt—don’t stretch, finish your food—there are hungry children on the streets, no elbows on table, no slouching, and say ‘please’ and ‘excuse me.’” And “never be late—its rude to keep people waiting.”
Oh my God! I must tell you about the whistles. Do you remember the Captain in The Sound of Music? Of course you do—Christopher Plummer at his handsomest. Well, Daddy was handsome too, but whereas he did not run his house quite like a military establishment, he did whistle to call us. Not using one of those metal whistles, or whistling with his fingers, but blowing a tune.
“To call out your name when you are at the other end of the house, I have to shout. Whistling sounds gentler,” he said. He had a two-syllable whistle-tune for Neena, a three-syllable one for my me, and another for Mummy. When my brother was born, he had to compose a fourth tune.
Picture this: It’s 1971. I am a 20-year-old newly wed, my husband Khalid and I are visiting our parents, Khalid hears the sound of a whistle tune from the room beyond, and his bride yells “Coming” and rushes out.
As for the Javed-the-bully, our paths never crossed. What are the chances I might yet run into him on the streets of Manhattan or while watching the ducks in Central Park? It is a small, small world after all. Javed, if you are reading this, know that I look nothing like the girl you knew.
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