“You were young, no doubt. Your father’s area of expertise was bringing water to the outlying parts of Kabul and the surrounding areas. He had several ingenious irrigation projects that he pushed through the mountains of bureaucracy. And mountains of bureaucracy was when things were good.
“Later, there were much bigger obstacles in the way of his projects. There was no use trying to accomplish anything in Kabul at that time. People were scared. Nothing was happening. People were just trying to stay alive. When your father was killed, that left you and your mother to tend to the younger children?”
“Yes. We had no money. We weren’t sure if they would come after us and we felt trapped. We had to leave Kabul.”
“It’s never easy to leave one’s home, especially when there are only closed doors ahead of you.”
“My father left us with nothing. It was useless to stay there. Most of our family had already left. My aunt and uncle have been living in London. A normal life. Not like . . . not like this. My cousins never saw things get bad in Kabul. That could have been our story too.”
Saleem hadn’t meant to sound as resentful as he did. It was a sentiment he tried to keep buried, but it resurfaced from time to time, especially when he felt exhausted by their journey.
“It is possible that if your father had led his family out of Kabul earlier, maybe your story would be different. Perhaps you would be living somewhere in Europe, accepted as asylum seekers. But only if that was the destiny that Allah had in store for you. And there’s something else you should realize. You think that it was futile for your father to stay in Kabul, to continue his work, but there are hundreds of people who would disagree with you.”
“What do you mean? Which people?”
“Which people? Why, the hundreds of people who had water because of him. The hundreds of people were able to survive because of him. He was the only person insisting on these projects, demanding them. Other people looked for their own interests, money and guns fattening their bellies instead of helping to feed the people of Kabul. That is the difference that your father made. He changed people’s lives. He never knew their names. He never saw their faces. But he saved their lives.”
“I didn’t know,” Saleem said, his voice muffled with guilt.
“You would not have known,” the old man gently replied.
Saleem stared at his shoes and blinked back tears.
It takes a lifetime to learn your parents. For children, parents are larger than life. They are strong arms that carry little ones, warm laps for sleepy heads, sources of food and wisdom. It’s as if parents were born on the same day as their children, having not existed a moment before.
As children inch their way into adolescence, the parent changes. He is an authority, a source of answers, and a chastising voice. Depending on the day, he may be resented, emulated, questioned, or defied.
Only as an adult can a child imagine his parent as a whole person, as a husband, a brother, or a son. Only then can a child see how his parent fits into the world beyond four walls. Saleem had only bits and pieces of his father, mostly the memories of a young boy. He would spend the rest of his life, he knew, trying to reconstruct his father with the scraps he could recall or gather from his mother.
But first, he had to admit the last year’s worth of memories were tainted by a discreet anger he harbored for Padar-jan for keeping them in Kabul when they should have escaped. Now Saleem had learned his father had done so because he knew the importance of his work. When he’d realized his family was in danger, he’d made plans to escape but by then it was too late.
Reap a noble harvest, my son.
Saleem stuttered. “I . . . I loved my father very much.”
“Of course you did. You are asking questions. You want answers. That is natural. That is exactly as your father would have done.”
The old man had said something else earlier.
“You knew my mother as well?” Saleem asked, steeling his voice back to its normal cadence.
“Your mother, her name is . . . oh, my failing memory . . . what is it again?”