A Daughter's Heart: Tribute to My Father

A DAUGHTER’S

HEART

TRIBUTE TO MY FATHER

BUSHRA ZULFIQAR

Copyright © Bushra Zulfiqar 2011

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

ISBN: 978-1-4497-3126-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-3127-4 (e)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-3128-1 (hc)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011961849

WestBow Press books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

WestBow Press

A Division of Thomas Nelson

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.westbowpress.com

1-(866) 928-1240

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Printed in the United States of America

WestBow Press rev. date:12/21/2011

Contents

PROLOGUE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

About the Author

For Chachu Sarfraz

Who is truthfulness to the core & love to the extreme

&

Of whom I am a replica

PROLOGUE

15th October 1994:

I was extremely happy and excited for this long awaited day. My father was finally coming home, after spending a two months long summer vacation in Switzerland with his youngest brother and my favourite Uncle, Sarfraz. I was getting ready to leave for the airport, to receive him and bring him home together with the rest of my family members. Under my mother’s hasty instructions, our house bearer Yousaf Lala was running last minute checks of the family reunion dinner. It was late afternoon, around 4 pm and as we were just about to leave, the telephone rang. Someone picked up the phone and gave it to my mother. It was my father’s sister, Aunt Mussarat from Lahore with an unexpected, if not bad news. She informed us that Daddy had slipped at Dubai airport and had a minor foot twist. He was alright but could not travel immediately. So, after resting for a couple of hours, he would catch a later flight to Islamabad, arriving by mid night. My mother was visibly down when she hung up the phone and broke the news to us, bursting our bubble as well. We were even more disappointed because all of us, the children had especially dressed up for this day. Daddy was coming home after being away from us for the longest period ever, two months had lingered on without him very slow. We started consoling each other by saying that it was a minor foot injury and he obviously needed to rest his twisted foot. This could be a very uncomfortable position to travel in. He would inevitably be home by midnight or worst case scenario by the next morning. We sat together in the rectangular drawing room while my mother’s sister Aunt Bilquees comforted us by saying that slipping on a marble floor could be extremely dangerous. We should be glad that he just had a minor fracture and was lucky to have survived any major injuries.

Somehow, we were not as glad and as the hours passed by, we began growing impatient and restless. There was nobody we could contact to get an update about him so we tried calling Aunt Mussarat back in Lahore, to find out who had told her. Nobody answered the phone. Where had everyone gone? When was the next flight from Dubai supposed to arrive? My father’s best friend Uncle Zia had been calling to get updates as they were also coming to the airport with us. Suddenly people started gathering in our house. My maternal grandparents Barray Abu and Bari Aunty walked in. Their unexpected arrival and unusual quietness worried me. Why is nobody saying anything? This silence was unsettling me. My mother’s worry intensified, she was now panicking. ‘Zulfiqar calls home daily, from wherever he is. How come he hasn’t called today? He knows that we were all anxiously awaiting him’. It was when Aunt Mussarat made a sudden appearance in our drawing room that I completely lost my control over the situation. The cities of Lahore and Rawalpindi are at a three hundred kilo meters distance from each other and in those days, a serious bit of logistical planning was required, if one was to commute between these two cities. What is she doing here? Something has gone wrong, something much more than what we know. I followed her to the kitchen. She looked pale and as I went close to her, I saw that she was trying to hide her eyes from me. I grabbed her by the arms, tight. ‘Please tell me that my father is all right.’ It just came out of me immediately. She avoided making eye contact with me. ‘Please tell me that nothing has happened to him, please don’t say anything else. I don’t want to hear anything else.’ I started shaking her uncontrollably, nervously. She held me back, paused for a moment and in between tears said that if I prayed to God, my father will be alright and be back amongst us very soon.

God, no Gods but God became my lifeline. Suddenly, in a situation of nerve wrecking uncertainaity, when the environment was filled with fear of the unknown, I felt compelled to do what Muslims always do in desperation; to seek refugee by connecting to the superior, divine power somewhere above in the skies. ‘Alright Aunty. I will go say a prayer now.’ I ran upstairs to grab my grandfather’s prayer mat and spread that greenish yellow cloth sheet on the terrace. Out in the open, under the dimming stars of that chilly October night, I offered my prayers. It seemed to be taking longer than usual. Mosquitoes ruthlessly bit my arms and feet but I remained engrossed in the important task at hand. I believed that my prayers were always answered and in that moment, I only needed my father back. I begged God for my father’s safe return home. I cried for mercy on him, on me, on my family and on everyone around him. There could be no other possibility. I needed my father back, unharmed. I started arguing and even bargaining with God. I offered Him not asking for anything else for the rest of the year. Not even grades at school, I bribed Him in desperation. Little did I know that it had already been twelve hours to my father’s death.

Downstairs, Barray Abu was sitting in the guest room, making telephone calls to his contacts in Dubai. He had locked the room from inside. It was around midnight that my mother who had kept her cool since evening, sitting with others in the drawing room, instinctively threw her rosemary away and stood up. She rushed towards the guest room and started beating the door hysterically. ‘Open the door. I want to know where my husband is.’ I had seen my mother’s composure in testing times but by now, she had enough of this suffocating silence. By now everyone was tense and the uncertainty was becoming too much to absorb, too heavy to breathe in. We joined her at the door equally fearful of what was to come. If there was one person who ought to know about the exact state and location of my father, it was Barray Abu. He finally opened the door, with features dimmed in the smoky white, defeated color of his face. His cry was louder than my mother’s. ‘Be brave my daughter. Zulfiqar is no more.’ He held my mother, pressing her head against his chest. My head and heart became still. ‘What is that supposed to mean?’ A bundle of knots aroused in my throat as I screamed at him, as if he was responsible for this. ‘No, no, no…this cannot be true.’ I fell on the wooden maroon sofa, screaming with such force that my entire frame shook.

What happened after that I don’t know. I just know that our house which was full of life and festivity only hours before turned into a sight one had never imagined. People, hundreds of people gathered in our house over night. Furniture pieces were pushed to the corners of the walls to make room for people flooding in our house. White bed sheets were spread over the carpets, which had been washed in the morning to thoroughly clean up everything before Daddy was home. My mother fainted and remained unconscious for hours. I kept screaming from the top of my lungs. It felt like trying to breathe, it felt like begging for oxygen. I vividly remember falling flat on my face in the slopped doorway, to be pulled by somebody. That night we saw what hell breaking loose meant. Screams and cries did not stop all night. We were all shell shocked, in a state of denial. The suddenness of the shock had been most devastating. Slowly, bit by bit, details came in. Daddy had travelled from Zurich to Dubai safe and sound and was on his way to catch his onwards connecting flight to Islamabad. Tragedy had struck at the Dubai airport, when he was boarding, climbing the stair case of the air craft that he suddenly fell down and collapsed. Within less than three minutes, he died of cardiac arrest. There had been a death on board that fateful Emirates flight. By the time he was taken to the airport medical emergency unit, he was dead already. A passenger died on his way home. Too cruel to be true. Sarfraz uncle was bringing his dead body to Pakistan the next morning. How and when the time for his funeral was fixed at 2 noon, I don’t know. I don’t know how Madiha, my courageous sister called up the world to break this tragedy which had struck us with full force, in the spring of our lives. I only recall Yousaf Lala crying loudly but still trying to convince us sisters to nibble some bites and prepare ourselves to receive thousands of people the next day. I salute his loyalty to my father. Even today he visits us and the mere mention of my father’s name fills his eyes with priceless tears, shed out of lasting love and sincerity. Such loyalty is hard to find and much to be valued.

The next morning changed the course of life for us all, forever. That morning in our beautiful home 16-B RR camp was struck by great tragedy of death at its ruthless. Daddy was brought back to this house, which he had left only two months back immaculately dressed in his light brown safari suit, in a coffin box carried on the shoulders of a dozen men. It was complete destruction, an irreplaceable and uncompensatable loss. Thousands of people ran after his dead body and gathered around it, screaming and wailing. I did not go near him for a long time, I did not want to because I still believed that he would come back. I knew that this could not be my towering, beautiful looking father whom I loved more than anyone else in the whole wide world. Daddy symbolized life for me, how could he die? I kept standing at a distance, listening to the ear penetrating sounds of women and wondering why it had to happen this way.

Only two days back, I had turned thirteen. Scenes from my birthday party flashed before my eyes. Happy faces, cheerful girlish laughter and the clumsy outdoor games we played on the same lawns. Did that happen at all or was this a nightmare? Forty eight hours could make such a difference, they were enough to turn life completely upside down. I was lost in the middle of these two extremes. The so happy past and the grievously tragic present. How do I surface out of this quagmire? I did not understand the meaning of death, nor could I make much sense of what was happening around me. Somebody pushed me towards the dead body. ‘See him and cry as much as you want to. He is your father and you will never get to see him again.’ Relatives from our ancestral village of Punjar screamed in my ear. I was still very far from the coffin because the crowd was huge and uncontrollable. Aunty Zia gave me another push and shouted ‘Give her the way at least, she is his daughter.’ Someone paid heed to her so there I was. So close that my knees touched the wooden box containing my father. I took my first look at what everyone was calling his dead body. It froze me. I just stood there, paralyzed with shock. I could feel electrical currents, stirring from my head down to the toes. This has to be a nightmare. It will be over. I swallowed hard. ‘Daddy, Daddy please. Please sit up.’ I started talking to my father. ‘We wanted to give you a grand welcome reception. Everything was all set but somewhere something has gone wrong. Daddy I am here, standing next to you. Please get up so this high drama of death can end and people can leave us alone.’ I whispered and cried and screamed and begged to my father, asking him to come back, to not die, to not leave me like this. His eyes were closed. I had hardly seen him with closed eyes. He would wake up long before us and sleep late after us, so I had never seen him so motionless. Cotton buds had been put in his nostrils. He looked peaceful, as if in deep sleep with a light smile on his face. I reverted to denial. ‘But he is just sleeping, resting. He must have been tired.’ I screamed at full force but my words were no more than a painful sigh. My father’s radiant face which I would kiss every morning and every night was before me, lifeless. The wailing around was a proof that he was no more. Standing next to my father’s lifeless body and witnessing his encounter with death, a part of me died as well. It crept inside that wooden box carrying him and got absorbed in the folds of the white sheets draped around him. The grief of this October afternoon sank to the deepest pit inside my heart and got blended in my being.

I looked around for familiar faces and saw my eldest sister Sadaf standing towards my father’s feet. She had covered her face with both her hands and was crying her heart out. I thought if she kept crying this much, she would die as well. From the corner of my eye, I saw my grandfather reciting Quranic verses while tears kept flowing endlessly from his old eyes. He seemed to have aged over night. Another Aunt of mine made her way forward, beating her head and chest violently. She started