Remembering My Father on Father’s Day
By C. Naseer Ahmad
“Father’s Day is a celebration honoring fathers and celebrating fatherhood, paternal bonds, and the influence of fathers in society,” according to Wikipedia. This annual celebration has its roots in Catholicism and only in the 1970s, it was declared a national holiday celebrated in June.
In the Muslim tradition, the respect for parents - the father having an equally critical role as the male parent - is deeply entrenched, especially within the five daily prayers, which include verses from the Holy Qur’an. As an example, Surah Ibrahim 14:41 says: “Grant Thy forgiveness unto me, and my parents.”
These days, holidays have become all too commercialized. But sales promotion by department stores cannot and should not diminish the spiritual essence of holidays with noble traditions like the Father’s Day.
One way to honour this day is to pray for the fathers and by recollecting precious memories individually and then share the blessings by honouring all those males playing the fatherly roles.
“My father didn’t tell me how to live. He lived and let me watch him do it.” – Clarence BudingtonKelland. These are the words I choose to bring alive the beautiful memories of my own father.
“Son, I started my work life by cleaning army latrines,” my father Col Aziz Ahmad would say, as he changed from his three-piece suit or a tuxedo into a farmer’s dhoti every evening. Almost every night in those conversations, he would remind us “he’s just a sufaid posh - meaning a respectable person living within modest means.” In his simple words was an unmistakable message that there is no substitute for hard work, and it is up to us to make our own destinies.
It was the mid-960s and he had left the army some years ago. His unique role as the “Resident Representative” for a multinational engineering firm engaged in a large construction project in Pakistan, where I grew up, that thrust him to engage with the business community, members of the judiciary when litigation came into focus and union leaders to prevent work stoppages. He had found his calling, but he did not lose his soul.
His last beverage of almost every evening was a glass of hot milk, sometimes with honey. Among the things he talked about was his love for his grandfather and often he would discuss some of his favorite verses from the Holy Qur’an in Surah Maryam. Often his concluding remark used to be: “It is just the Mercy of God that got me this far.” He would also tell us that he had learned this from his own grandfather Hafiz Fazal Din.
In addition to my father’s love for his grandfather was the love for his own father. I would witness this during their loving conversations during breakfast whenever grandfather was in town.
I learned from my grandfather MoulviAbdurRehman, who was then a retired high school principal, that he was against my father’s enlisting as a recruit to fight in World War II and he grudgingly gave into my grandmother’s wish to answer the call of community leader to raise an army unit in the fight against Nazi tyranny - during the waning days of the British rule in pre-partition India. My grandfather had other suggestions and ideas for my father’s career. But while my father began at the lowest rung in the army, he became a commissioned officer and then a civil engineer.
Father, a tall man himself, was an obedient son and as his stature in life saw new heights, he would continue to honor my grandfather’s request to help anyone in need of employment or reprieve from injustice when requested. During my travels to many continents, I have come across many people whose lives were transformed by little things my father did to help them whenever asked.
A meticulous man, father was always smartly dressed. The sweet morning whistles when he was shaving still rings in my ears, as does his singing of poems by Pakistan’s famous poet Faiz.
My father taught me how to play chess and he encouraged me in every effort including my love for the game of cricket. I love and miss the snowball fights with him.
The amazing thing about father was that he never let us feel that we were his second family let alone talk about his deceased first family. Only through photo albums and perhaps from our grandfather did we learn about the love of his life and his son dying soon after his first marriage. Father never wanted to marry again but it was some dreams that my grandparents on both sides that my father then again as an obedient son agreed to marry my mother who was sixteen then.
Losing his first family was not the only challenge my father faced. He lost my youngest sister when she was sixteen years old. Throughout his life, he saw many tragedies and difficulties, but they never broke his spirit just like the many successes he had never made him lose his moral compass.
Throughout his life we were recipients of father’s unconditional love. My father was after all a human being like everyone else and his loving legacy remains long after he has been gone. In fact, tears roll down the eyes of his friends, who have survived him, whenever they talk about him with me.
Sometimes one learns things after the loved ones are gone. After the death of my father, one of his friends came for condolences and said that he almost never agreed with my father but always had a respect for him as a person. A Christian janitor who worked in my father’s office also came for condolences and told me that he was once accused of a theft in the office and the only person who stood by him was my father. He told me, “When the real culprit was discovered, your father asked everyone to apologize to me for falsely accusing me of theft. And, they did on account of your father.”
The objective of this story is to help rekindle precious memories of the readers’ fathers and respect for those who are already fathers or soon to become one - because fathers - obviously along with mothers - provide the foundations upon which societies thrive.
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