It was 3:45 pm. I was sitting crossed-legged with twenty other seven-year olds under a wall of flat glass windows. An eerie calm had settled outside, where a short time before there had been whipping winds and a sky as green as Kermit the Frog. My mom whisked into the building, her sensible yet fashionable heels clicking on the worn linoleum, and the petals of her flowered dress rippling with her gait. Shocked that I was not huddled in an enclosed room, she took one look at my position under the windows and told me it was time to go. That was the last time I ever saw my after-school program. Everyone knows not to take cover under glass during a tornado.

On the way home, my mom angled the car around downed branches the width of tree trunks and garbage cans lolling down the curb. The world was spent: siding dangled from the edge of condos, and telephone poles were precariously tilted, if they stood at all. People ambled about, assessing the damage as the neighborhood settled into a collective sigh. A policeman at the end of the lane directed traffic to make only a right turn onto the main street because of downed power lines to the left, the direction of our house. My mom said, exasperated, “Now we’ll never get home!” My mom, always tough and calm, was worried. It wasn’t until that moment that I got scared too.

We did, eventually, make our way to our still-intact home. Thinking back on that moment, one of a few post-tornado moments during my Indiana childhood, I note most how my fear was derived from my parents’ fear. I always felt safe and happy when at their side, but in the rare moments when they were fearful, I became beside myself with terror.

When I was growing up my mom and I would sometimes watch horror movies while sitting on our worn, brown suede couch. When the background music began its inevitable, this-is-the-scariest-part crescendo, I would turn my head 90 degrees to the right and look straight into my mom’s eyes. For the entire duration, my mom would calmly report that the masked man was bludgeoning the babysitter or wryly observe, “Oh, looks like the psycho wasn’t dead after all.” Sometimes she’d insert an, “Ew, gross!” exclamation when something bloody took her by surprise. I got all the emotion I could handle by looking into her eyes during those parts; she became a sort of “closed captioning” for me—recapping what my senses wouldn’t let me experience first-hand.

When I was a child and swam competitively for years with the local swim club, my parents attended every swim meet I participated in. They would sweat it out on the hot bleachers of the indoor pool deck, fanning themselves as they sat for hours in the backless bleachers waiting for my race to begin. If I became nervous before my event, as I always did, I’d scan the population of faces in ordered rows until I found my parents. My dad, always looking for me, would catch my eye and give me a thumbs up with a double eyebrow raise and a big smile for support. I would immediately feel relief and was instantly braver because he believed in me.

When I graduated from my small-town college and decided to move to New York City without a job, a friend, or a long-term place to stay, my parents took care not to discourage me. Instead, they threw an early birthday party for me and did the tough thing—they bought me luggage, in acceptance that I had to live my dreams, even if they took me far away from family. Upon unpacking that luggage, I found a tiny yellow post-it that my parents and older sister signed that said, “Love ya!!!” with each of their familiar signatures surrounding it. Beneath it was a card that said, “You Must Take Your Chance.” Never once did they remind me of my shy demeanor or annoying tendency to throw up repeatedly when travelling on my own. Never once did they ask me to stay with them forever, even though their eyes might have mentioned it.

 As an adult, I still gauge fear by my parents’ eyes. A few years ago, during a phone call that bridged the 1000-mile gap between our homes, my mom told me my dad was diagnosed with a brain tumor. She spoke flatly, like a tiny person standing in the mouth of a huge cave, every syllable clear and solitary. There were no reverberations, no hints of emotion. I tried to be the echo of her stillness. But when I arrived at my parent’s house and looked into my mom’s eyes, I knew we were in trouble.

The night before my dad’s brain surgery, he and I sat in cushioned deck chairs on the shaded back porch of the house. He looked intently into my face and asked if I thought he was doing the right thing by having surgery and if I thought he was going to be okay. His doctor had given him 6-12 months to live and flatly stated that this condition had a high mortality rate. Surgery could buy him time, but most likely he would not survive. My dad’s tumor gave him short term memory loss, so he forgot all of that. What he remembered was that he trusted me. What I knew was that every moment we’re given here on earth, we are living. If there was even a one percent chance that my dad would live, what’s to say he wouldn’t be in that one percent? Sitting on the porch that night, I breathed in, collecting all the calm I could from the cheerful summer day, erased fear from my face, and answered, “You’ve improved so much in this past week on medicine alone. I think you’re going to be fine.”

After his surgery, my mom, sister, and I walked down the hallway to see my dad in the intensive care unit. I have a nauseous fear of hospitals, one I inherited from my dad: a feeling that the hallway is too long, that the patients behind the floor-to-ceiling windows are unprotected so near to the thin glass walls, their bodies storming inside. We shakily entered Dad’s room, and he smiled at us and groggily said, “I feel fine,” then crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue to prove his normalcy. I relaxed, seeing his face, seeing he was okay. I think he did it for that reason.

I guess that is what love is—reassuring each other in the eye of a storm, being the wall of calm and protective peace within the whirl of a tornado.

Whenever our father was upset, we would ask him to take us to Luna Park, and he would. We never took any of the rides; not the cars, nor the wheel we adored watching so much. But it would make dad happy again. All the troubles plaguing his mind would be gone. Perhaps he was thinking how funny we were, and as he silently chuckled to himself he was forgetting his distress. Perhaps he was being proud of our rather early display of maturity.

Whenever our father was upset, we would take him to Luna Park, not the other way around.

How could this piece of information solve my problems? This little sentence cannot really answer all of life’s possible dilemmas, can it?

I am walking home on the unusually dark street. I am only used to seeing it in the brightness of day, when the flowers are in stark contrast to the shortly trimmed grass and the voices of other kids fill the air with their sweet, bell-like melody. It has been a long, long day at my best friend’s house. We have played hide and seek for hours, we have painted suns with her new water colors. But it is late now and my big brown eyes are almost closing. As always, I do not want to admit that I am tired. It seems shameful and boring. Only old people get tired! To the bouncy, curious 6 year-old that I am, sleep is the ultimate waste of time, especially when constant adventure is waiting around every corner.

It would have probably seemed frightening to see the neighborhood so empty, so suspiciously silent if I had to walk home by myself. My excessively wild imagination would have made me shudder at the thought of all the horrific monsters, dragons, witches and ghosts whispering and quietly planning their evil moves in the darkness. But I am not alone. A strong, tall man is walking next to me, holding my little hand. Dad. He is there to guide me through the summer evening. His presence makes the place seem warm and inviting. The dim lights coming out of the windows of the houses around me appear to soften the atmosphere, making the moment almost dream-like.

I suddenly remember a very important question I wanted to ask him. I have been wondering about it all afternoon but the logic of it seemed to be beyond me. It is undoubtedly an adult matter. I turn up to gaze at his friendly round face and ask with urgency:

“Dad, which side is better, the left or the right? I can’t decide which one is my favorite.”
He smiles from under his black moustache and wisely answers, his green eyes sparkling:
“The left of course. It’s where your heart is.”

Adults have it so easy. They simply have all the answers. Of course the left side is the best one! I nod, completely agreeing and feeling overwhelmed with my father’s undeniable expertise at life. I am also a bit disappointed that I did not reach the conclusion myself. I wish I was like him.
…

From that day on, I had no doubts. Every time I had to choose between turning left or right at an unfamiliar cross roads, I chose left. Every time my best friend wanted me to choose in which of her two clenched fists she had hidden a candy, I chose the left one. I never doubted my dad’s conclusion for a second. Choices, choices… who said they were so difficult?

My father died shortly after that walk. Nobody warned me that my source of endless adult wisdom would abandon me and my beautiful mother so abruptly. I did not manage to ask him even one hundredth of my questions. I could not ask him why boys were so annoying at kindergarten or why my first grade teacher had such an enormous belly. I knew he would have had the explanation. He would have dispersed the fog of my confusion in an instant.

Later, my questions changed but I still wished my dad were there to help me with the riddles. Why were boys even more annoying as I got older? How could I heal my broken heart? The more I grew, the harder the questions became. Why did he have to leave so early? Would he be proud of me? Was I making the right choices? Did I choose the right university? What would he think of my boyfriend? I had the feeling he might not have had all the answers. I was starting to realize that nobody does. But I wanted to ask him all the same.

I had so many questions but so few memories. The more time passed, the less I remembered. I remembered he was so fun, that he would play with me and a balloon in the living room until it was time to go to bed (and even a little longer when my mom wasn’t watching). He liked to fish; it was his passion. He had many friends, and our apartment was always full of smiling, warm people.

With time, however, I started forgetting these memories. I forgot the important details – I no longer remembered his smell, his voice. The most difficult was that I did not have any recollection of his words to me. I craved to know his opinion, to have his advice, to feel him guiding me once again. But the only real memory I had of his wisdom was the short little answer to my silly childish question. The left side was better because my heart was there.

How could this piece of information solve my problems? This little sentence couldn’t really answer all of life’s possible dilemmas, could it? It couldn’t tell me how my father first knew he was in love with my mom. I will never know that. It could’t tell me if he would approve of me studying abroad. Had I wasted my time with my dad on a meaningless, pathetic little discussion …

Forgetful creatures we humans are. If we live abroad long enough we could forget our own language, they say. I’ve also heard that, once vested with too much power, some people forget where they came from. This is a dangerous kind of amnesia. It can, of course, be a good thing – they say forgetting helps you heal faster, helps you deal with loss and pain. This, they say, is the good kind of forgetfulness. In my case, loss and pain did not disappear with time. Only memories.

This stupid human nature tricked me – I suffered the worst kind of amnesia – I was forgetting my father. It felt like I was being unfairly robbed of the little I had left from him. As a teenager, I tried to rebel against this stupid memory loss. I wanted to simply turn off all my thoughts about him, I excluded him from all conversations; I would not say the word ‘dad’ – I just skipped it. But it didn’t help. Late at night, I kept looking at pictures of him from our summer vacations together, hoping a memory would jump at me and help me get to know him better. But it never did.

The only real memory I had left was the silly conversation in the evening street. It was perhaps quite illogical of me but with time, I grew to believe that my precious recollection could, in fact, guide me through life. I chose to make the best of what I had left. My only memory of my father’s words became my life motto. ‘Follow your heart.’ It might sound cliche but I sure did not take it from the movies. It’s true that he never really said that to me. But I believe he meant it. I believe that if he could sit with the already grown-up me tonight for a cup of hot chocolate by the fire, he would tell me exactly that: to follow my heart. His moustache would be gray or even white, but his sparkly green eyes would be the same. He would tell me to follow my heart. After all, he was a wise man, how could he not agree?

This motto helped me finally answer my endless questions. It wasn’t my father doing all the work for me. I had to solve the puzzle myself. I simply followed my heart. I followed my heart when I chose to study law – I wanted to fight for justice. I followed my heart when I chose to go abroad – I wanted to help my inspiring mother have a better life. My heart took me places that were not easy. I had to learn to survive on my own among strangers and build my life from scratch. It was scary and it made me doubt my heart. My human nature had a tendency to betray, and this made me fear, and fear made me weak. But my heart never disappointed me. I stuck with it and it brought me to magical kingdoms filled with love, compassion and friendship. I will follow it again and again, and I will not hesitate. I have learned to trust it, because it knows best. And I know my father would approve. After all, he is also in my heart. He is still holding my hand, guiding me through the darkness with a smile under his moustache. And he would be proud of me.

I don’t really need to know all the answers. Nobody ever does. Some people know too much and yet they are not happy. Plus, where is the thrill of knowing everything? Where is the adventure? I am blessed to have what I have: my family, my friends, my love and my precious memory to show me the way. Supposing I have inherited my father’s wisdom (and I like to think that I did), I should be alright. Don’t worry about me.

Zainab believed, according to her religion Islam, that Allah, the loving Creator, prohibited certain actions to Muslims because those actions had the potential for the most harm. Gambling was one of the most destructive among them. So Zainab could not reconcile her father’s beloved status with the abominable act he was committing.

But, it was life, and her father did what many people do: rationalize the wrong he was doing when, in fact, the wrong he committed affected everyone in his life. It caused Zainab’s family to be dysfunctional and had a disastrous effect on her mother. This unhappiness rained down from the mother onto her children. And though Zainab’s parents tried their best to hide their shame and to protect their children from this wrong, they fought constantly in the house.

Many a night Zainab would hide at the top of the stairs silently cowering and listening, as the battle raged below over the gambled money-whether won or lost. Her home was a scary place that she forever associated with emotional turmoil. In Zainab’s home, the rights that were given to the children by their religion were violated each time she and her siblings were exposed to the wrong and the undeniable harm it caused. Her one thought was to grow up and get away from that house, from the confusion, the humiliation, and the pain.

About six months before he died, her father quit gambling. At the time of his death, Zainab was 25, and she had already succeeded in getting as far away from home as possible. She came back for her father’s funeral, went through all the motions, but she didn’t shed a single tear. She could never understand why because she had loved her father so deeply.

Five years after Zainab’s father died, she finally dreamt of him. In her dream, there was a room full of people crowding around the bottom of a long staircase, anticipating her dad’s arrival. He was delayed upstairs for some reason. Earlier in the day, Zainab had agonized over what to wear-just as she always did in real life-but she finally borrowed the perfect dress from her friend for this special occasion of seeing her dad after so many years of being apart. With the arising of a loud hum of excitement, she looked up to see her father slowly descending the stairs. He was pale and sickly looking, but he never said a word as he made his way through the crowd. He came directly to Zainab and took her in strong arms, hugging tightly. The desperation of the greeting alarmed her.

The next thing she knew, her father had some sort of convulsion and he vomited all over the front of her dress. She tried to push him away, thinking foolishly only of the borrowed dress, but he held her and pulled her closer. Zainab straightened her arms, trying in vain to get out of the embrace. But then her dad had another convulsion. He seemed to be weakening and leaning on her for support. Responding, Zainab finally gave in. Ignoring the ruination of her dress, she held his weakened body, making sure he didn’t fall. When she awoke, she was squeezing her wet pillow and sobbing hard. For over thirty years to come, she wondered about the meaning of that dream.

Then one day she was reading how practicing Jews fasted on the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) and asked God to forgive them their sins of the past year. It was interesting to learn that they must also ask for forgiveness from anyone they might have harmed. Thinking of the harm she had suffered as a child, Zainab suddenly realized the meaning of her dream: her dad had come to ask for her forgiveness. This revelation was really a shock to her. For so many years, she had held anger and resentment rightfully against her dad. Yet now, forgiveness was being asked of her.

In fact, her own religion Islam placed a great emphasis on seeking forgiveness from other people for the harms one might have caused them. So putting herself in her father’s shoes, Zainab could easily understand why he needed to free himself of this burden.

Zainab began her journey toward forgiveness by realizing how important it is to ask for forgiveness from Allah. It comforted her to know that one of the 99 names of Allah is the Most Forgiving (Al-Ghafur). A hadith qudsi (those words of Allah on the tongue of his prophet that are not part of the revelation of the Quran) reads as follows: “Oh son of Adam, were your sins so great as to reach the clouds of the sky, and were you then to ask forgiveness of Me, I would forgive you” (Al-Tirmidhi, Hadith). She dared to think that even she might be forgiven for her sins. Then she pondered: doesn’t everyone want their sins forgiven?

Still struggling to free herself from anger and resentment, Zainab sought the advice of a Christian friend who directed her to Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, in which he encouraged his readers to understand that as God has forgiven us, so we must also forgive one another. Paul’s words, like the hadith qudsi, described forgiveness as a gift from God.

These words strengthened Zainab’s belief in the Most Forgiving (Al-Ghafur), but forgiving another had never been easy for Zainab and granting forgiveness felt so much heavier than asking for it. But in this case, she wanted reconciliation more than anything. She wanted to feel her heart whole (not divided) again, as she did as a child. She wanted to forgive her dad… if only she could.

Then, one night, as Zainab was making a supplication, she felt the warmth of God’s love gripping her heart, and she heard herself whisper effortlessly, “I forgive you, Dad.” In that overwhelming moment, Zainab experienced forgiveness as both an act of giving and a gift from Allah. For Zainab, the greatest favor she had sought from Allah was forgiveness, and it brought her the peace and reconciliation that she had desired.

Mary Lahaj has a master’s degree from the Hartford Seminary in Islamic Studies and Christian/Muslim Relations. She is currently the first Muslim woman chaplain at Simmons College in Boston, an all girls’ undergraduate Liberal Arts College.

They took their muddy shoes and heavy coats off. Dad, looking very sad, sat down on the sofa while my mom whispered something quickly to my sister before vanishing to her bedroom. I could only catch some ominous words like, “…dead…. wake…. we got to go.” My sister did not ask any questions. In no time, Mom came out of her room dressed in black, kissed me on the cheeks, and left. Dad, who up to that moment had been silently gazing at the brown carpet, robotically stood up and followed her. On his way out, he reminded my sister to lock the door.

My sister turned the key twice as if the Big Bad Wolf might knock on the door in a minute. Then she turned off the TV-custom dictates that there is no music or laughter in a mourning house. We sat there looking at each other in silence. My sister looked pitiful, so I gave her some time to digest whatever Mom had whispered to her. Meanwhile, I started to decode what my little radar had caught.

Someone is dead-no doubt about it. Since the news was given sotto voce, it had to have been a shameful death like committing suicide or being shot while stealing. Or, God forbid, it might be an awful death like being crushed by a train or chopped to pieces by a revenge murderer. Since my parents were grieving, it probably involved somebody significant to us. Could it be one of their coworkers? A relative? At this point I grew so anxious I knew I would explode if I did not ask. “Who is dead?” I asked in a trembling voice. “Dad’s stepmother,” my sister answered matter-of-factly.

The answer took me by surprise because I did not know Dad had a stepmother. I knew he had lost his mother suddenly at age six and had lost his father ten years later. I sensed a mystery concealed before me and I could have sworn my sister knew more. The question was how I could fish out the secrets my sister’s heart held so faithfully.

My sister, an ordinary eighteen-year-old, was nice to me most of the time except when I asked too many questions and messed up her drawers. She would never repeat what she knew about her friends and acquaintances, so at times I felt my sister was a mysterious person and I imagined her heart was full of secrets.

“Dad’s stepmother?” I repeated it in my mind over and over trying to define what it meant to me. I knew of only one stepmother, a pretty infamous one for that matter: Snow White’s stepmother. She was mean and cruel. Some people would rejoice at such a person’s death. Yet, everybody was sad. I made up my mind to go ahead and ask my sister no matter what the consequences. My assumptions were taking me nowhere. “Where did she live?” I asked, expecting to be hushed. “In our town,” my sister answered. “Is she nice?” I asked, then corrected myself. “I mean, was she nice?” My sister nodded. Seeing her handle my interrogation calmly, I was encouraged to ask more. Mercifully, my sister spared me all the sweating by revealing the story on her own.

“Dad was six years old when his mother died. Grandpa married again right away so that somebody would take care of his little boy. He chose to marry a close relative of his first wife. Apparently, everybody was surprised that an attractive man with a high standard of education married someone so plain and uneducated. But I guess he only cared that a relative of Grandma would treat his son nicely. He had three more children with his second wife, two girls and a boy.”

I stood there all ears, almost forgetting to breathe, listening to this astonishing revelation. Not only had I a step-grandmother, but a step-uncle and two step-aunts as well. I forced myself to stop wondering and focus on my sister, who, after taking a deep breath, went on:

“Grandfather was right. She took care of Dad so well that she didn’t make any difference between her own children and him. She continued to be good to him even after Grandfather died ten years later. She never remarried. She worked hard to make ends meet, and Dad, because he was the eldest child, helped by dropping out of high school to work full time. That was when he took evening courses and learned to be an electrical repairman.

“At twenty-six, Dad married Mom. I heard that his stepmother loved Mom and boasted to her neighbors about what a fine lady her son had married. In the beginning, everything was fine and they all lived happily together in the same house. After a while, Dad started to give less and less to the family budget and spent more and more from his pay on gifts and movie theater tickets. Mom and Dad used to like to go to the movies every week in those days.

“One night Dad’s stepmother apparently complained. She reminded Dad that she was having a hard time paying the bills. Dad accused her of being interfering and jealous of his love for his wife. His stepmother must have felt humiliated because she vowed that unless he apologized and changed his ways, she wouldn’t speak to him again. Dad insisted he had done no wrong and saw no reason to apologize. Both of them must have gone to bed feeling sore and angry at each other.

The next day, when his stepmother came home from work, most likely hoping that the new day might have helped him to see things in their true color, she found that Dad and Mom had packed up their stuff and moved out. She must have felt betrayed. The sting in her heart, I reckon, made her swear an oath that she never broke. She sent word to Dad telling him that from now on she would have nothing to do with him and warned him never to come back.” My sister stopped her narration and it felt as if time had stopped, too.

“This is too awful to be true,” I mumbled in disbelief. “Did they ever speak again?” I asked, hoping against hope. My sister shook her head. “Neither she nor her children ever spoke to our parents.” My sister continued, “They saw each other almost every day on the street, in the shops, at the stadium, at the hospital, at the post office, you name it. But they changed paths or ignored each other.” She shook her head. “Pride is such a terrible thing sometimes,” she concluded, and I could not have agreed more.

“You know, you met her once!” My sister startled me with this exciting remark. “I did? When? Where?” I impatiently looked into her eyes. “Remember the day when you hurt your knee in the park and when we were on our way back home, and you were limping, two old ladies stopped us in the middle of the road?”

“Yes, I remember,” I interrupted her. Although it had happened almost five years ago I recalled the incident clearly because that peculiar encounter had made quite an impression on me. The intensity with which one of the old ladies looked at me, the way my sister looked around as if she did not want to get caught doing something wrong, had naturally not escaped my curious eye.

“I remember, one of the old ladies kissed you on the cheeks. Then she looked at me and asked her friend, ‘Is this his youngest daughter?’ Her friend said yes and then the first lady hugged me, wiped tears from my face with a tissue, and gave me two candies. Then you pulled me away. You said we were late and our parents would be worried. I followed you but I was looking behind, waving back at the nice lady because she made me feel so special. Later, when I kept asking you who she was, you hushed me. You were angry and sorry at the same time. I even saw you wiping your eyes. I thought you were crying because she didn’t give you any candies.”

“No, silly,” my sister tried to laugh, though I sensed that the same mood of anger and sorrow had overtaken her. “I was crying,” she explained, “for all the things we missed. Every day I came home from school with our neighbor’s son, passing by their door, stopping by just to breathe in the wonderful smell of baking bread and to envy the big smile of his grandmother, knowing quite well that a cold and empty home was waiting for me to turn the key. I was angry with Dad because his pride was depriving us of a God-given right-the wonderful presence of a grandmother. Why did everyone in town just stand by and watch this tragedy? Everyone was pretending to mind their business. No one had the courage to intervene and bring it to an end.”

My sister started crying and I felt pity for us my eyes watered too. Who knows what beautiful bedtime stories she might have known, who knows what delicious meals she could have prepared, and whether she would have had the ear to listen to me-the ear my mom, who worked full time, never had.

“But why did she kiss me twice and give me two candies?” I asked, almost to myself, fearing that my sister would reprimand me for such a stupid question. “She…,” my sister sniffed trying to collect her voice, ”she worked in the only day care our town had. So she practically took care of me and our big sister and big brother as a part of her job for four whole years each. When you were born she had retired. I guess she was sad that she never got to hold you as a baby.” I could hold the tears no longer. Her soft kiss on my cheeks and her compassionate, intense look lingered in my mind. She would have made a wonderful grandmother.

The doorbell startled us, and we hurried to open the door, wiping the tears on our way. Surprisingly, my parents had returned in much worse shape than they had left. Usually close relatives of the deceased stay at the wake until dawn. My parents had been gone for barely an hour. This time Dad, soaked to the bone with rain, his face swollen red from crying, went straight to their room. Mother looked distressed too. She sat on the coach and took several deep breaths.

“What happened?” asked my sister when she realized that Mom was not going to tell us without prompting. “We were not wanted there,” Mom managed to say before she broke down in tears. I shivered as I imagined someone yelling at my parents, “Get out of here!”

“Who told you that?” my sister demanded.

“Her son,” Mom said. I could not help but note that “her son” would have been our uncle, had all this not happened.

“He shoved us out,” Mom continued, sniffing. “He told us that it’s useless to honor the dead when we had shown her no respect in her lifetime.” That made sense to me as much as I wished it did not.

“What did Dad do?” asked my sister. I was becoming annoyed with Ms. Detective. I was afraid of what was coming next. “What could he do?” Mom took a deep breath. “Your Dad stood there speechless for a few minutes. He couldn’t confront his stepbrother. No one at the wake came to his defense, so we left the house in humiliation. He wept all the way home,” Mom said breaking into tears again.

A deep sadness flooded my heart as I realized that our step-grandmother had taken with her to the grave any chance of reconciliation and that I would never come to meet my uncles and aunts. I left Mom to my sister’s questioning and went to check on my dad. The door of their room was ajar. He was sitting on the bed, his back bent, his gaze fixed on the floor. I wished I could read his mind, but more than anything I wished I could console him. But how could I?

There sat my dad, a middle-aged man, proud father of a son and three daughters. There sat my dad, a diligent follower of politics who never missed the evening news in the election season. There sat my dad, a faithful patron of the coffee shop, and a big fan of soccer who could never get enough of the Brazil team at the World Cup. There sat a man sobbing like a child with his head between his palms. I wondered if he felt like a loser. For some unknown reason I could not side with him, although my heart was breaking with pity. And suddenly, I realized that I had spent the whole afternoon utterly fascinated by my sister’s account of my parents’ sins. Immediately, I felt sick and afraid. Did disloyalty flow in our veins? Was that to be the inheritance in our family?

Right at that moment Dad raised his head and looked at me with an expression pleading for something neither I nor anybody else breathing on earth could grant him: forgiveness. Avoiding my reproachful look, he raised his fists and started hitting his graying temples, shouting painfully to himself, “Ungrateful, Ungrateful!”

I could not stand watching him any longer. I backed out and closed the door. And at every rapid beat of my heart I prayed to God to have mercy on us all for what we had done to our parents and to show us a way of atonement.

Mirkena Ozer had her major in Turkish language and literature. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia.