Dear Nadia,
How are
you, my child? Have you grown taller? I hope you have stopped biting your
nails. I miss you so much, little one. I am in Turkey now, at a refugee camp, I
don’t know how long I will stay here before moving to another camp. I hope you
are at a safe place, and you get to eat your favourite food, you were always a
picky eater, so that worries me. Do you know? That day when the bomb exploded,
I was making you your favourite breakfast- Qarisheh.
You were fast asleep in your room, and I was hoping that the smell of Qarisheh would wake you up, and you
would come running to the kitchen, your hair in disarray, those loose curls
falling on your sleepy eyes. I know I have told you a million times, but you
have your mother’s eyes, Nadia. When I look into your eyes, I get reminded of
the most beautiful lady whom I was fortunate to call my wife; you were growing
up to be just as beautiful as her. When I see you, I see her reflection mirrored
on you, and it feels like she is still around. The day she left the world, I
promised her I would always protect you, and love you more than I ever loved
anyone. I am sorry I couldn’t keep that promise entirely. The Qarisheh was only half done when I heard
the loud rumble in the sky. I had heard it enough times before to know that it
was a missile pacing through the sky. When you had seen a missile in the night-
sky for the first time years ago, your eyes had lit up. You thought they were
firecrackers, and I didn’t have the heart to tell you the truth. However,
gradually you did come to know what they really were. You called them
death-rockets, I winced at the word. You were only a six year old girl, no six
year old deserved to get used to ‘death-rockets’ in the sky. That morning when
I heard the death-rocket, I started praying under my breath, “Not us, not
here.” It was really selfish of me to wish that the bomb explodes on some other
family. I was mad at the fact that the war was making me wish for someone
else’s death. I cursed myself and made a quick prayer of forgiveness. Those
days, all I did was pray. A prayer to keep us safe, a prayer for food on the
table, a prayer for our brethren who were dying at the hospitals, a prayer to
get the strength to survive this horror, and a prayer that we wake up tomorrow
to see another day. I wondered who I was praying to, because looking around it
didn’t feel like anyone was listening. The bomb exploded even before I could
finish my prayer. This time it was us.
When I
opened my eyes, all I could see was dust and rubble all around me, the ceiling
had caved in, so I couldn’t stand up. I tried to crawl through the debris to
get to your room, but my leg refused to move. I pushed my leg against what was
left of our sofa, the pain was unimaginable, but I had to get to you somehow. I
used all my strength to pave a way, but there were too many hurdles. I remember
having a silly thought just before I passed out from the pain, I was sad you
couldn’t taste the Qarisheh. I woke
up again, this time I was on a hospital bed, there was a tube attached to the
back of my hand and my leg was in a cast. All around me were men, women and
children covered in blood and grime. I searched for you in every bed, I didn’t
spot you. A feeling of panic began to bubble up in my stomach, I wrenched away the
tube from the back of my hand and tried to get out of the bed. This time my leg
didn’t pain so much. A doctor was alarmed to see I was trying to leave and he
told me get back to the bed, I pushed him away. I looked for you in every bed,
like a mad-man I ran through the building screaming your name. Everywhere I
could see wounded people, some too shaken to cry, and some bawling their hearts
out. But I was numb to all that, my eyes were only searching for you. I asked everyone
I met if they had seen you, they would always point me towards some other
little girl that was not you. Then I saw a board which read ‘Paediatrics ward’,
there were a lot of children inside cramped in a small room. This time I was
sure I would find you, I ran in and inspected all those faces, it was a right
pitiful sight, seeing the kids in so much pain, but none of them was you. I
asked one of the doctors there if he had seen you, I described the colour of
your eyes, your hair, your nose, what colour dress you were wearing, but he answered
all my questions in the negative. He put a hand on my shoulder and asked me to
check the morgue. I shook that hand away and hurled abuses at him, I told him
he was wrong, I told him I was sure my daughter was alive! I was saying it more
to myself than to him. Some men intervened and took me away from there, they
gave me false assurances and told me to calm down. How could I calm down,
Nadia? Now when I think about it, I do realise I shouldn’t have treated the
doctor that way, he was saving all the children there, he was doing a noble
job. But I only needed to know if my daughter was okay, if I could only see my
daughter once...
One of the gentlemen told me that a group of rescuers had
brought everyone in, and they would know where you were. I went to each one of
them and asked them about you, they said they had brought in everyone they had
found, and it seems they had not found you. That is when I took to the streets.
My leg wouldn’t allow it, but I stumbled and limped through the dilapidated
streets shouting your name as loud as I could “Nadia Nadia Nadia”, I was hoping
you would call back to me, but you never did. I reached our end of the street,
I almost couldn’t recognise our house because there was nothing left of it. There
were two unsupported walls that were still standing, and contained within them
were bits and parts of everything that had belonged to us. We never had much,
but we had everything we needed, and within a few hours all that we had was
brutally snatched away from us. This ruin was all that was left now, and I was
searching for my daughter amidst the ruins. I looked for you under boulders and
loose bricks, it was like a cruel game of hide and seek. I don’t know how much
time had passed, but something inside me was beginning to break. Just then, I
spotted a body right across our house. It was camouflaged beneath a pile of
rubble, but the tiny feet sticking out told me it belonged to a child. I knew I
had found you. Urgently, but carefully, I yanked the body out. I looked at the
pale blank face, emotionless blue eyes stared back at me. This was not you, you
had grey eyes. This was not you. Thank God this was not you! I hadn’t cried
since the explosion, I had searched for you till dusk arrived, but not once had
I shed a tear, because I knew I would find you. However, sitting at this
desolate street with the body of a young girl who looked so much like you, it
completely broke my resolve. I softly brushed my fingers over her face and
closed her eyes. I couldn’t bear to look at those eyes. Suddenly, the world
seemed to be closing in on me, there was nowhere left to run, breathing became
difficult, it felt like someone had punctured my lungs. I was gasping for
breath and crying aloud. I kept saying ‘Nadia Nadia Nadia’, like I was chanting
a prayer bead. If I said it enough, maybe the universe would bring you to me. A
passing ambulance stopped and took me in with the girl. They thought I was her
father, and I didn’t bother to correct them. They took her to the morgue and I
went with them. The crying had been replaced with a much worse feeling now. I
felt like a pot with a gaping hole in it, no matter how much you tried to fill
it with water, it would always remain empty. I felt hollow, a kind of emptiness
I hadn’t felt even when your mother was taken away from me. Then I searched for
you at the last place that was left to search, the morgue. I didn’t find you
there either. I didn’t know whether to be relieved about it or not. Without the
certainty of seeing my daughter again, I felt like an un-dead corpse. I don’t
have a clear memory of what happened next, the doctors took me to the ward
again and treated me there. I let them do whatever they wanted this time, but I
desperately kept asking for you. Each time I asked, they would say no. Three
days later, I was discharged. I was taken to a refugee camp somewhere, life
kept drifting from one camp to another for months, I don’t want to bore you
with the details. It has been three years now since I started searching for
you. But it wasn’t until a year ago that I decided to write you letters. Every
camp I go to, I write you a letter, and I give it to the refugee camp head. I
tell them, “If you see a girl named Nadia Perez, with unruly curly hair, grey
eyes with a tinge of yellow in them, you give this letter to her, and you tell
her that her Papa was looking for her.” They always look at me with pity when they accept the
letter, but I don’t need pity, I have hope. Your name, Nadia, itself means Hope.
I may have lost everything, but I still have hope left that one day you will
find one of my letters and you will know your Papa tried all he could to find
you. However, I don’t want you to come looking for me. I don’t want you to
spend your life doing what I did, it will break you. Searching for someone in
every face, in every walk can get emotionally exhausting. Every time I mistake
some other girl for you, I die a little inside, I don’t want that to happen to
you. So, don’t search for me. I am not writing this letter so you can find me,
I’m writing this letter because I want to say goodbye.
Dear Nadia, always
remember, bad things may have happened to you, but find the strength and the
courage to be a good person. You have seen the world in its most wrecked and
cruel state, and that is exactly why you can’t let it remain like this. Go to
school, learn everything, I know you are a smart girl, become a doctor or a
teacher or a lawyer, or whatever it is that you want to become, but don’t
become like these people who have hurt us. Don’t emulate what you have seen.
Spread love. Be kind. Give more. Have hope.
I am sorry I could
not give you a world where you had a happy childhood; you were robbed of
everything that you loved, but that does not mean you cannot start over again.
Don’t let anything stop you from achieving big things in life. You may still be
a child, but you can do great things nevertheless. Stay safe, I promise you
will see a peaceful dawn one day. Look towards the horizon, your life is going
to be that long and that beautiful. One last thing, please don’t be so stubborn
about your hair. Let it grow a little please, you will look even more
beautiful. I want you to know that I love you very much, Nadia. Thank you for
giving me a purpose to live. I will look for you and write letters to you until
the day I die. And I hope we meet again in a world where we don’t go to sleep
afraid, where people laugh often, where children play until the sun sets, where
love overpowers hatred, where the sky is twinkling with stars, not missiles,
where the air is filled with the sounds of birds chirping and not bombs
exploding, where you can eat Qarisheh
that your Papa cooked for you. Until then, stay true to your name.
Yours always,
Papa.
Image source- The Guardian.
