From the thousands of words that could be used to describe my father, ‘affectionate’ was not one of them.

My idea of what a father should be was primarily shaped by movies. The idea was a somewhat unrealistic version of a person that can only do so much. Had I realised this in my youth, I would’ve repelled numerous unnecessary problems. But, of course, making mistakes is a part of growing up.

With his handlebar moustache, hefty build and a voice deep enough to make a mountain quiver, my father looked every inch of the intimidating personality he was. The personality that I, embarrassingly so, managed to despise over the course of 24 years.

To the villagers, he was a hero. His house, a safe haven. Throughout my childhood, I observed a stream of people going in and out of our house, asking Abbu for this, requesting his presence for that. Unlike my sisters, who were the sole recipients of Abbu’s unabashed love, I welcomed the crowd. The bigger the crowd, the less chances of me encountering him.

My father was a man of principle. One of his laws proclaimed that he never hit his children. But his bark was worse than his bite. With commands punctuated by a loud “Do you understand?” my father could shrink me down to the size of a pea. And with every scolding, my resentment for him grew.

Playing with my cousins one evening, I managed to knock down my uncle’s teacup by a misdirected cricket-ball. The cup shattered immediately and the ball proceeded to destroy two more cups.

In the fiasco that took no more than ten seconds, Abbu had already spotted me as the culprit. Other adults took to cleaning up the mess as my father rose from his place. His crisp, white kurta was now stained with tea. Clasping his hands firmly behind his back, he took slow, deliberate steps towards us kids.

“Who threw the ball?” his voice was calm yet assertive. He threw a cursory glance around. “Hassan? Laiba? Anas?” his eyes settled on me. “Zaid?”

Murmurs of “I don’t know,” went around.

“I did,” Hassan answered definitively.

Everyone looked at him. I smiled weakly because he always took the bullet for me. I smirked victoriously at Abbu.

“Are you sure, Hassan?” Abbu kept his eyes on me.

“Yes, chacha.” Hassan’s father began to scold him, but Abbu stopped him by raising his hand.

Another one of Abbu’s law was to never lie. He established it by striking me in front of everyone. The sheer humiliation he caused was the last nail in the coffin.

Eleven years later, a fortnight before my 25th birthday, I came back to Pakistan after my graduation.

Welcomed with a shower of roses and kisses at the airport, I missed my father’s absence. He couldn’t act more egoistic. One lie and he refused to see me even after I spent the last five years in an alien land.

He didn’t attend my welcome dinner either, which suited me just fine for I did not care enough to inquire his whereabouts. It wasn’t until after dinner, when everyone had departed, that I asked my mother about him.

She gazed at me for a long time before shaking her head. “I’ll never understand you both.”

“What do you mean?” I sat on the sofa as she cleared away the remnants of the party.

“First you two fight for God knows how long and then you try to make me the middleman for your love, as if you don’t know how to talk directly.”

“He asks about me?”

“It’s all he does,” Amma rolled her eyes fondly. “Every day at 4 am, he wakes me up and tells me to call you because he knows that that’s when you have your lunch break.”

“Every parent does that. It’s not a big deal,” I sighed in feigned carelessness whilst trying to quieten my pounding heart.

But Amma had already moved on to another topic. I realised later that she never answered my original question.

Walking into my old room, I saw everything was how I had left it. The only thing out of place was a framed picture of myself. My brown kurta seemed oddly important and I recognised it as the one Abbu himself stitched for me.

I remembered how the neighbours’ kids had made fun of me when I’d proudly shown them my father’s work. How they’d called him a woman and teased me incessantly. That was the first time I had blamed my father unjustly and never stopped.

A knot formed in my throat and I turned away. I opened my wardrobe and it felt as if I had hugged Abbu. His thick cologne filled up the entirety of the closet and I was astonished. How could I feel his presence in a room I thought he never stepped inside?

I reached for the brown cloth peeking out from the pile of clothes. I thought about how my father was such a masculine, yet gentle man. How he had been so frustrated when he had to pass threads through needles and how my mother had laughed lovingly at him while trying to teach him sewing.

My father had loved me so much that all tradition went out the window when it came to me and my wishes. His affection had been concealed, yet I found its signs everywhere; in the frame he put up of me, in the way I imagined he had hugged my clothes.

I went straight to his room. My stomach lurched at the sight of him.

My brain registered that it was Abbu lying on the bed, but my eyes saw a bony frame looking at the window with glassy eyes. A hollowed stomach rose with every breath and a weak hand fingered some praying beads.

“Abbu ....” I sat beside him.

He turned towards me and smiled weakly. Beckoning me closer with his shivering hands, he blew a prayer on me.

“Abbu ....” I choked on my tears as I tried to speak again.

He tried to say something, cleared his throat, and tried again, “Zaid?”

“Jee, Abbu?”

“I never meant to hurt you,” Abba’s eyes shone. “Please don’t hate me, it kills me, Zaid. It kills me.”

I realise, almost instantaneously, that he’s not talking about one incident. He’s talking about all those times I complained about him to my mother, all those times I told my sisters that he unfairly loved them more than me. All those times, he had heard my harsh words.

Presently, when I took his hands in mine, silent tears rolled down his sunken cheeks. I kissed both his hands and pressed them to my eyes. All those years, I had kept his ailments at an arm’s length as some sort of revenge. Guilt washed me over.

I didn’t apologise with words as that wasn’t enough. I rested my head on his chest, his ribs poking out, as I hiccupped with tears. He held my head, and I promised to myself that for as long as I was alive, I would never let Abbu cry again.

Published in Dawn, Young World, February 8th, 2020