One evening when I lived in Kuwait, I was returning home in a taxi after a routine checkup with my gynecologist. I was perturbed as my reports were not something I could feel cheerful about.

I was fighting the worst negative thoughts. I wondered what would happen if something went seriously wrong with my health. I felt a ripple of fear inside me and the only face that appeared before my eyes was that of my daughter’s. How would she grow up without me? My thoughts raced ahead and I was mourning my own demise and imagining how the world would survive without me.

Just then, the taxi driver started off on his phone. “Oh please, not again,” I said to myself.  

It bothers me that most drivers talk over the phone, and almost always, they are loud. I prefer to read in the taxi or be lost in thoughts watching the world go pass by. But the driver’s loud chatter wrecked my chain of thoughts. I like to think I am extremely tolerant, but this thing just annoyed me.

The driver’s phone-conversation abruptly ended my chain of thoughts, but something was different about him. He wasn’t raucous and grating like most other drivers. His voice was quiet, stern and purposeful. He was speaking Urdu. His I-card said he was from Pakistan. I do not like to overhear others’ conversations, and I try to ignore whatever I overhear. But in this instance I was a captive audience.

He seemed to be talking to his wife. I could even hear her voice from the other end of the line. It went something like this (roughly translated):

Him: What is he doing? 

Her: He is getting very mischievous

Him: What does he do?

Her: Just some things

Him (sternly): Don’t tell me like that. Tell me exactly what he does? (This sounded really odd but I figured it out by the end of the conversation)

Her: He wants to play all the time; running around.

Him: What else does he do?

Her: Here, why don’t you talk to him? I am preparing rotis. (Passes the phone to the son).

Him (voice still stern, but now it has a streak of affection): Hello beta, what did you learn new in school today?

Son (Excitedly): I am learning tables. I know the table for eight.

Him: Very good. Will you recite it for me?

Son: Ok (and begins enthusiastically)

Him: (Listening attentively; hanging onto every word his son utters while also maneuvering the vehicle 
effortlessly. Though I didn’t approve of talking on the phone while driving, I felt like he had the ability to focus his entire being into two things at the same time)

Son (Done with the tables): Now should I recite the table for 7?

Him: No, that’s too easy for you. You should always try the more difficult one. Why don’t you try 9?

And so the conversation went until it was time for me to alight from the vehicle. This simple dialogue between the family-members melted me. I could sense in the man’s voice the longing for his family; the separation he is enduring to be able to provide them with a good life. I could visualize the mother cooking in a humble abode of a faraway land, bringing up the son with an absent father. It seemed to be an everyday ritual: his phone-call home and trying to find out every detail of his son’s growing up years that he cannot witness. It now made sense why he insisted on his wife to tell him everything ‘exactly’ how his son does.

And there I was, wallowing in an imaginary separation from my daughter. I am alive. Being Alive is a gift.  And until I am alive, I want to spend every precious moment with her.