LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth |
Rubber-Banded Letters Bind Father and Son |
by Mubarak Dahir |
The most recent letter came several weeks ago. Picking up my mail, I recognize it immediately, as I do all of the letters that come from Sabir, my father. With the red and blue border distinctive of international mail, the envelopes that contain his letters easily stand apart from the usual clutter of bills and junk mail and plain white envelopes in my post office box. I've been getting the letters for exactly a decade now. Ever since I stopped talking to him. Tales of the un-accepting father incapable of dealing with a gay son are hardly rare. Sadly, they are all too common. And it wouldn't be fair to say it was harder for him. Whether the premise is religion or culture or morality, reasons and excuses come handily to those parents who reject their gay and lesbian kids. But it is accurate to say the odds were not favorable that Sabir would ever be able to embrace his gay son. Though Sabir is a Muslim, it is not religion that poses such an insurmountable obstacle. Sabir is a Muslim who would sometimes eat pork, and occasionally drink alcohol. That never made him "less" Muslim. Most people pick and choose what they want from their religion, and Sabir is no different.Culture is far more a factor than religion. A Palestinian, Sabir was raised in the Arab world, where the need to have sons carry on the family name is a colossal imperative. Also, in Arab cultures the topic of sex of any kind is all too taboo. The notion of homosexuality remains virtually unspoken. I remember the singular time in my life that my father spoke to me about homosexuality before he knew I was gay. I was a teenager, and we were living in the Middle East, where it is not uncommon for men to be affectionate with one another. Best friends of the same gender can be seen walking down the streets holding hands. That was normal here, he explained to me, but if a man ever "touched you there," I should kick him in the groin and run. That was all he ever said about homosexuality, until years later when my mother and he found the personal letters I thought I'd stashed safely in my bedroom at home while I was off at college. We were back in the United States by then, and I had hoped the more liberal environment would help moderate his attitudes. After all, my mother, an American, eventually progressed from thinking I was mentally ill, to mailing me condoms to help ensure I was practicing safer sex. But the leap was too big for my father. He continued to refer to my gayness as "my condition." I continued to grow more militant about introducing him to boyfriends. When he retired and moved with my mother back to the Middle East, I couldn't help but think it was at least partially to escape me. But he could never escape that I would not give him a son. Soon after their return to the Middle East, the news came that after 30 years Sabir was divorcing my mother to marry a woman half his age. If his only son would not produce the obligatory grandson, he reasoned that the burden of carrying on the family name once again became his. My mother moved back to the United States, one last time, to live out her final years with me. And at the age of a grandfather, Sabir became a new dad again. He did eventually father three more sons. But as far as I was concerned, he had lost his oldest son, me, forever despite the periodic letters he has been sending me for ten years now. He sends about half a dozen each year. I never write back. I open this latest letter, already knowing what is inside. All the letters are the same. "I love you," he writes. He talks about his age, now 77, and his fragile health. "Why don't you write me back?" he asks, in what I assume must be a rhetorical question. I keep all of Sabir's letters. They are tucked away neatly in a filing cabinet, held together by a frayed rubber band as worn and fragile as the biological bond that holds me to him. I go to install his last letter into its chronological place in the filing cabinet, but instead find myself leafing through ten years of Sabir's handwriting. As I reread them, what stands out is less anything on the pages than what is missing from them. He never utters the word "gay." He never writes, "I'm sorry." He never asks for my forgiveness. I sit staring at the empty pages full of words and wonder if I could forgive him even if he asked. In anger and hurt, I tell myself he is still convinced he did nothing wrong. Even as I stand there holding them, I ignore the pile of letters that would be evidence of a different story. All these years I have held out for those simple words, insisting I cannot budge until he acknowledges his wrongdoing, not against me, but against my mother. As I watch his most recent letter trembling in my fingers, I find the old adage quite mistaken: Time does not heal all wounds. I wish it did. Instead, I find time working against me in yet another dimension. Although I cannot guess how much of it is left, I do know the time remaining to respond to Sabir's letters, to make whatever kind of peace with him I may be able to find, is finite, and shrinking. Surprising myself, I vow that this last letter will not go unanswered. I only wish I knew what to say. Mubarak Dahir is a regular contributor to Letters from CAMP Rehoboth. He receives email at MubarakDah@aol.com. |
LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 10, No. 2, Mar. 10, 2000. |