The Holiness of Our Fathers

My father left us while I was elsewhere

because he’d been unemployed for nearly

15 months and knew, despite whatever

reassurances people reflexively offered,

his chances of finding decent work

as a 58-year-old who had never finished

college were much too slim to not look

beyond Chicago. The nearly 25 years

he’d spent in steel had left him without

options, and secretly depressed. So when

my uncle, my father’s only brother,

who years before had relocated to a region

of Oklahoma summered by tourists

to try his hand at running a gas station—

a venture destined to fail by the second

winter—called to share his discovery

that a Nissan plant outside of Nashville

was hiring contractors to lay the electrical

wiring for a new wing, my wistful

father recognized the beckon of another

migration. The hours were 6 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.,

seven days a week, half hour for lunch,

two 15-minute breaks. The hourly wage

wasn’t considerable, but with ample

overtime and a 30-dollar per diem,

the job was too good to pass up. Plus,

my uncle, who’d been down there a week

already, assured my parents everything

was safe and clean, the fellow workers

kind, or quiet enough to tolerate.

He’d already secured a spot for my father,

insisted he just come. It wasn’t until

I returned jet-lagged from a week spent

with college friends in Belgium over

my winter break holiday that I heard

the story, learned from my four siblings

that my father barely packed before hitting

the road, determined to arrive in time

to start the next day. My mother couldn’t

say when he’d be back. It was work,

she sighed, and all work was good,

especially now, so the longer he was there

the better. Upstairs, in my childhood

bedroom, I sat under the covers, a stack

of ungraded student essays on my lap,

unable to stop imagining my father

and uncle living small like newly arrived

immigrants, cramped together in the cheapest

double at a Howard Johnson in Smyrna,

Tennessee, eating tasteless meals out

of a microwave, reminiscing about

their fatherless boyhoods in Pakistan,

the looping chatter of Headline News

always burbling in the background,

even during those fleeting hours of sleep

when each descended into dreams

about their own long-forsaken dreams.

In the morning, the two cautiously

sipped scalding hot tea from Styrofoam

cups as they drove through the icy darkness

toward the Nissan plant—neither man

taking a single day to rest, not even

when their aging bodies ached so badly

they needed the other’s still-mighty strength

to uproot them from their beds. Despite

how much they missed their wives

and children, pined for the heartening

commotion of their homes and the familiar

contours of their own shabby pillows,

they silently cherished this time together

after having endured for decades the quiet

misery of separate lives. They prayed

constantly for more work, and more

chances to mend the fraying silhouettes

of their lives’ respective trajectories,

understanding that one day too soon

all the wiring would be in place—and so

their lives no longer needed, cut loose

once again. And there, as a bright Chicago

snow fell outside, I sat in the haunting

stillness that had taken hold at home,

with the sweet soot of handmade truffles

still on my fingertips, feeling suddenly

disgusted with myself, with a belief

that a person should do what he loves,

a luxury my parents unceremoniously

traded their futures for. What epic self-

centeredness and ingratitude, to have

become a teacher who felt entitled

to leisure and comfort, who squandered

hours of free time writing frivolous

poems about the joy-giving power of fresh

flowers or the tender charity of the stars

instead of pursuing law or medicine,

or whatever immigrant parents dream of

for their children—anything that could’ve

paid me well enough to call my father right

then, cry, Come home, Daddy, and bring

Chacha with you, because I’m back,

and I’ll take care of everything.