Private Reverie

I don’t realize I’m in a state of happiness until it passes. One morning, after we arrived at Sidi Bou Said, the blue and white city that made us want to explore all of Tunisia. I’m traveling with my cousins, it’s been a month, so I know no one will be up at this hour. I step out to the terrace of our Airbnb where I have a clear view of the mountain. It has felt like a heavy presence over my shoulder since the moment I stepped off the plane. Despite the Mediterranean sea between me and the mountain, the hill this town sits on brings me to eye level with the tip of the mountain. I’m feeling the blue of the ocean, mountain, and sky seeping into every cell of my body. I close my eyes and allow the silence to engulf me. The ocean is calm, but I’m feeling a wave of awakening. I love my father and it wasn’t only for the sake of Allah. A moment of realization washed over me, allowing me to feel a flash of happiness in my chest. I open my eyes, sit down, and allow myself to enjoy this happiness. 

My relationship with my father is made of moments. When my family decided to make the big move to America, my father stayed behind for reasons I still don’t know. Since that move, I’d only seen my father two times. I cling to those moments because that is all I have as a form of a relationship. 

December of 2008, the night my family and I were finally moving to America. I was seven years old at the time. I don’t remember much of that day because our flight was leaving at night and I was dead asleep for the journey to the airport. I do remember my father holding me while we waited for our flight to start boarding. He embraced me as I

clung to him like a koala. It is this memory that has me yearning for that same fatherly love and gentleness. This memory became a seed my seven-year-old self would bury deep into the center of my brain. 

I’d spent 13 years watering that seed by imagining all the things we would do, him and I. You and I. When I finally got to see you. You would take me to the neighborhood we used to live in and tell me the stories mom doesn’t. You would share all the family photos and items we left behind with you. You would take me to your workplace and finally tell me what it is you actually do. You would take me to the Mosque you were praying in the night I was born. You would tell me about how you would sit outside with me for hours during the first two years I was born because of my asthma. After I got a fill of my childhood, I would then have you tell me about yourself. Things I should know as your daughter. What was your childhood like? What really happened to your brothers? Why did you insist on never coming to visit us?

 Year after year since I was seven, I'd relied on that delusion rather than creating a real relationship with my father. It was the idea of that perfect reunion that kept me hopeful whenever I realized it had been months since I last called him. That same idea allowed me not to worry whenever mom mentioned his poor health because the day would come when I would be taking care of him. Embracing him with the same love he did with me.

13 years later and the day has finally come. It’s August of 2021 and I’m in the car with uncle Balbal as he drives through Dubai's confusing highway. I’m 11,458 km away from home but just 10 miles away from my dad. The humidity in this city made me glad I stocked up on my inhalers. mom has traveled to Dubai many times since our move to America but it was my sister and I’s first time back. My dad would be staying with us in the apartment hotel we booked for our one-month stay. 

Seeing my dad for the first time, I was forced to face my own betrayal. The reality was drowning me with the severity of my own delusion. How could that memory, from all those years ago, that small seed, be able to conceal this much? My brain had abandoned me during that month, leaving me in a state of despair. I made it to the end of that month with new memories that I safely stored in my heart. 

See I’ve always believed self-awareness was an awful trait to have. There’s no rest when you’re aware of your heart that no longer beats but shakes, rapidly against your chest. There's no peace when you're aware of your inner monologue becoming a wheel that your brain constantly runs on. 

But that morning in Sidi Bou Said, my self-awareness draped me blue. Grounding me in the present. Guiding me to finally realize, my love for my dad was far more real than the reverie I’d been lost in. 

Childhood dream or childhood nightmare? Either way, it has come back to haunt me in adulthood. The deceiving need that made me cling to my childhood for all those years has done nothing to prepare me for the death of my dad. That morning in Sidi Bou Said, my dad left me a voice note. 

A voice note I have yet to listen to. Two months after that voice note he passed away. It has been six months and I have nothing. No memory or delusion can comfort me. 13 years of endless delusion and I’m numb now. My brain can’t feed me any more lies. My heart is heavy with regret rather than memories. That voice note my dad left is a mountain that now haunts me. One I will never be ready to face.