The holiday is almost over. A father is packing his bags. Everyone at home knows he has to go back, but nobody wants him to.
His daughter asks, “Abbu, when will you come again?”
“Soon, my darling,” he says.
The truth is, he does not know himself when his next leave will come, or when he will have saved enough to make the journey home again.
As he packs, perhaps part of him wishes he did not have to go this time. To spend a few more days with his children, sit with his parents, be part of the life of the house. But next month’s expenses are waiting for him too.
So he picks up his bag and leaves home once more.
When I think about men like him, one question comes to mind.
What, in the end, does home mean to a man?
When a person is born, home is their first world: mother and father, brothers and sisters, childhood mischief, school days and then youth. So many years of life pass under that one roof.
At the time, no one imagines that a day will come when finding the time even to live in that house becomes hard.
In our society it is often said that a woman has no home of her own: first her father’s house, then, after marriage, her husband’s.
Sometimes I look at this from another angle. A woman’s life is at least tied to two homes, her parents’ and her in-laws’. It is another matter that not every woman finds in either the respect, love and belonging she deserves.
But a man’s life is no less strange.
He has a home, a family, his own room and his own things. Yet after youth, there is less and less time to spend in that very house.
First come his parents’ needs, then marriage, then the needs of a wife and children. Gradually, the house in which he spent his childhood becomes the purpose of his labour.
He earns for that home, and yet he often lives far from it.
If a man finds work in his own city, that is a blessing in itself. He leaves in the morning, works all day and comes home in the evening. He may be exhausted, but at least he sees his family’s faces.
بے وقت اگر جاؤں گا سب چونک پڑیں گے
Bashir Badr
اک عمر ہوئی دن میں کبھی گھر نہیں دیکھا
But how many are granted that comfort?
The search for work takes one man to another city and another to another country. There, he has a rented room, a few essentials and a day’s hard labour.
Even after work, his work is not done. There is food to cook, clothes to wash, a room to keep, and then work again the next morning.
Some mornings there is no time for breakfast. Sometimes there is the worry of saving money. He goes to work on an empty stomach and toils all day.
When he returns in the evening he is hungry, but so tired that he cannot face cooking. Sometimes he drinks a cup of tea and goes to sleep; sometimes sleep comes before he has eaten anything at all.
Not every man lives like this, but many working men certainly know such days.
What is worth reflecting on is this: a man who struggles even to meet his own needs still worries more about sending money home each month than about himself.
He knows his parents need their medicines, the children’s school fees must be paid, the household’s rations must come in, and there are many other expenses that will not be met without him.
Not every father has the means to send his children to expensive schools or fulfil their every wish.
But he does try, as far as he can.
His own shoes may be old, but he wants to see his children in good ones. He may not have bought new clothes for himself in months, but before Eid his first thought is his children’s clothes.
Now and then he must think of buying something for himself, and then some need at home comes to mind.
He leaves his wish for next month.
And for some wishes, that next month never comes.
I feel that a large part of a father’s love lies hidden in such small sacrifices, the ones he never mentions to anyone.
It would not be right here to overlook a woman’s labour and responsibilities either.
Woman is a great creation of Allah, the Lord of Honour. A mother raises her children, teaches them how to live and how to tell right from wrong. The influence of her upbringing is not limited to her children; it can reach generations to come.
Running a household and looking after children’s illnesses, education and daily needs is not easy either. Many women carry these responsibilities while also holding jobs and contributing to the family’s income.
So I do not see this as a contest between the sacrifices of men and women.
Both have their own hardships. Both carry their own share of responsibility.
I only want to speak of one sorrow in a man’s life that is often left behind somewhere amid talk of his earnings and his duties.
The sorrow of living away from his own.
A man who earns is usually measured by his salary or his wages: how much he earned, how much he sent home, what he bought for the children.
But rarely does anyone count how much of his life went into earning that money.
The time he could have spent with his parents. The evenings he could have played with his children. The small joys of home in which he, too, should have been present.
For a father living abroad, much of home shrinks to the size of a phone.
His child starts school, and a photo arrives. The child wins a prize, and a video arrives. Someone at home falls ill, and the news comes by phone.
He is happy, and he is worried, but it is not in his power to be home for every occasion.
Sometimes it is Eid, sometimes a child’s birthday, sometimes a family celebration. He sends something for everyone, but he cannot be there himself.
His parents are growing older too.
The ones who taught him to walk as a child now walk more slowly themselves. He wants to sit with them and listen to them, but often even that happens only over the phone.
To me, this is the hardest part of such a life.
On one side are the people he loves; on the other, the responsibilities he cannot abandon.
When he wants to stay at home, the worry of earning a living confronts him. When he leaves to earn a living, the memory of home goes with him.
And so the years pass.
The children grow up. The parents grow old. Many things at home change.
And he is still busy making sure his family never wants for anything.
When he comes home on a few days’ leave, he finds the children have grown. Their habits have changed, their way of talking has changed. Something new has happened in the house, too.
He sits among them all, but perhaps he is quietly thinking of how many days of their lives have passed without him.
Then the leave ends.
Once again, the bags must be packed.
He hugs the children, says goodbye to his parents, reassures the family and sets off again.
He knows why the journey is necessary, but knowing does not make the parting any easier.
I do not think every man longs for great wealth, a big house or an expensive car.
Many men probably want only an ordinary life.
To wake up in their own home. To ask after their parents, eat breakfast with their children, work all day and come back in the evening to the very people for whom they worked all day.
It sounds like a very modest wish.
But not everyone is able to fulfil it.
Some must leave their city, others their country. Some go for a few months and stay for years.
Most people leave home not by choice but because of work and circumstances. When I look at those friends of mine after years away from home, I feel that they have all won.
Zakir Khan
And one day a time comes in his life when his responsibilities begin to ease.
The children finish their studies and stand on their own feet. The debts are paid off. The family is better off than before.
Now he thinks he has worked enough, and that he should spend some time with his family.
But by then, most of his life has passed.
The children have grown up. The parents he longed to sit with have grown old. Sometimes they are no longer in this world at all.
The house is the same, but the life in it is not what it was.
This thought saddens me deeply.
A man who spent the best years of his life working for his children’s education and clothes, the household’s rations and his parents’ needs, finds that when he at last has some leisure, those years do not come back.
What he earned served his family. His labour made their lives better. Perhaps his children reached places he himself never could.
But he cannot go back to their childhood.
Not to those evenings when the children wanted to play with him, nor to those mornings when his parents wanted to sit and drink tea with him.
Nor is it necessarily the case that his family is unaware of his sacrifices. They, too, must have missed him and counted the days until he came.
But the distance remains.
I am not saying a man has no home.
He does. In that home are his loves, his own people and the most precious part of his life.
It is only that circumstances sometimes force him to live away from that very home.
And when I think about this, a man’s poverty does not seem to me to be only a lack of money.
Sometimes a man has everything for his family except time to spend with them.
All his life he keeps sending money home, sometimes a large share of his earnings, sometimes by cutting back on his own needs.
If only, along with that money, he could send a few evenings for his children, a few mornings for his parents and some of the days of his life that have already passed.
But how can time be sent?
And when, years later, he finally returns home to stay, he realises how much of the life he left home to improve went by in his absence.
Perhaps this is the greatest separation that falls to a man’s share: that in shaping his family’s future, he spends the time that was also his own to share with them.
This column has been translated from the Urdu.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Lahore Times.
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