My father glows godly underneath the downward cast of a streetlight. He marches, hands crossed behind him. His head swivels to the right. Long enough for a judging glance at a two-story house—the upstairs a new add-on, a bedroom light the only visible sign of life to the outside observer. His gaze finds a new target, now taking in a white Jaguar parked in the driveway. I wait for him to make his usual comment about British cars: “Pretty but clumsily built.”
But he says nothing.
Tonight he wears a pakol atop his head, soft and circular, without a bill. When he first brought it back from a trip to Pakistan, it was arctic white. Now it’s pale yellow. Any time my friends or their parents see him wearing it, they grow uncomfortable. Like they’ve seen too many pictures of Afghani soldiers or freedom fighters or terrorists or Taliban or mujahideen or Pashtun warriors or jihadists or human beings living in a very different part of the world—take your pick. And by relation, they grow uncomfortable with me too. Jihadi Junior, their eyes speak.
He continues along the sidewalk, bouncing on the balls of his feet, each powerful step fortifying his pride. The hat somehow stays connected to his skull, never sliding a centimeter one way or the other. Further into the late night he goes, chin held high.
And I follow closely behind.
The chess matches have been put on pause. The recent debt was paid off. But not in full. We settled on a more comfortable figure. That figure, a little puppy, fat and chunky, has grown to the rambunctious, slender, four-month-old golden retriever, full of rebellion. He fights with his leash. Pulling into the street. Back toward the house. To a tree. To a set of thick bushes, dense with sharp twigs and rubbery leaves, the kind of bushes in which neighborhood kids spend countless hours searching for a lost baseball. He pulls in every direction but the desired one, straight ahead.
“Astro!” my father scolds. He rolls the R in our dog’s name when he’s pissed at him. At anything. Which is often enough that I listen for these clues. Know when to give him space. But his temper is made worse the longer the rage demon burning within him is left alone.
So I stay close. Don’t say a word until he’s ready to step out of the dark recesses of his mind—returning to the here and now. And if necessary, I absorb any of his turbulence upon reentry, which is how this late night began.
“I give you a dog, but you don’t do anything for him,” he said to me before we left on our walk. He speaks through clenched teeth during these episodes. “If I have to walk him, so do you. Understand me?”
I nodded.
“I’m talking, aren’t I? I asked you a question.” He leaned over, his hand starting to raise for a cobra strike across my face.
“I understand,” I muttered.
The slap never came. But it’s been twenty or thirty minutes of violent silence since.
Astro’s ears perk when his name rockets out of my father’s mouth. The puppy’s joy melts, and despite the dog’s inexperience, he recognizes an alpha’s fury. He sits, like he’s known that command for years and not days. Ears pin back. Tail slides underneath his legs. Father stands over him. They each hold their pose. The dog’s eyelids widen, pupils so glossy you can see your reflection—the old “I’m only an innocent creature” routine. It works. My father’s eyebrows, cocked and loaded since the start of this walk, begin to disarm. His face softens and empties its chamber of bullets. “Astro, Astro, Astro.” A smile forms underneath his mustache. The puppy, sensing a tonal shift, unpacks his tail and returns the smile with the canine version, wagging side to side. Astro, by way of golden retriever magic, has broken my father’s spell. I decide to take advantage of the opening and stand at my father’s side for the first time tonight.
“You have a silly name,” my father says. He massages Astro’s ears.
Everyone assumes the dog’s name comes from The Jetsons. But the truth is I can’t stand Hanna-Barbera cartoons. The art sucks, and the stories feel even older than the original broadcast date. But I did steal the name from something else. I watched a made-for-TV movie about a dog raised by thieves that helps them rob banks. But the dog runs away and is taken in by a random boy who names him Astro. Of course, the thieves come looking for the dog, and the boy and his family learn the truth about the dog’s criminal past, as if that really matters.
Dad looks up at me. Sends his smile my way. “You can’t get mad at animals, especially dogs. They depend on us to care for and protect them. Simple things. And in return, they give us nothing but love. It doesn’t matter if they get a little disobedient here and there.” Astro is already pulling and hopping against the full strain of the leash. My dad tosses his arm over me and pulls me in close. “I’m sorry,” he whispers into my ear. “I didn’t mean to get mad at you.” My face smooshes into his armpit, nose brushing up against his white shirt. He holds me tight for what feels like an hour. I want to lash back out and make him feel more guilty for his inconsistencies. For his unpredictable moods and standards. But the easiest path is always the same in moments like this—just take the white flag offered and move on.
He softens his grip on me. “You look tired.”
“I’m not.”
But I am.
Because nothing drains one’s energy more than the presence of anger. And then, anger washing away—retreating like bubbling tide—is only a mere consolation, too meager to save you from the undercurrent.
Astro is now running around us, wrapping the leash around our legs.
I know my father wants to extend the walk so the ratio of time spent angry at the world and the dog and me and probably even himself is balanced with time spent in a state of contentment.
“I’ll be okay,” I say.
We cut through neighborhood streets and main suburban avenues. Our conversation starts soft, him asking me about school—me answering in one-word responses, not because I am trying to be cold but because I’m afraid if I overdo it, the rage demon will awaken. The confidence in our current state—his current state—grows after ten minutes, fifteen minutes, thirty more minutes of walking, and now we’re laughing and teasing each other, and each pause between questions and answers and jokes is filled with embraces. But eventually, the banter and jokes simmer instead of boil, and the pauses chill until a full state of silence is reached. I can tell whatever pain he felt has come back.
“Promise me you will have a good, professional job,” he says. “Something that gives you some respect in this world.”
These kinds of forecasts into the future are usually just as much about the past.
“A customer spoke to me so rudely today.” His voice cracks. The final syllables of each sentence are swallowed. At work—where he is now an assistant manager at a car garage—a customer was dissatisfied with how long his oil change took. “He asked me where I was from. ‘Did you even go to school?’ he said to me. I couldn’t respond.”
He lets the story hang in silence for a moment. I can feel his own disappointment in where his life has led. He came to the US in the late seventies and was accepted into UC Berkeley for engineering. His father, a big shot back in the Pakistani military, sent money for school as it was needed. But his father, my grandfather, had a deadly stroke only a year into college. Financial records were never found. Before long, my dad was out of school, a world away from his home, on the path to hourly wages.
“Finishing college is the key. When you do—that will be a great day.”
For the first time, I can see a specific point in the future, a destination I must reach.
He has given me a mission.
He places his warm palm on the back of my neck. Stride for stride, we move further and further from our house into the abyssal parts of the night, landing at the end destination—one he would choose time and again.
A car dealership.
I follow my dad, getting distracted by a sports car or two, a glossy German sedan or three, losing my close proximity to him as I check out the sticker prices pasted to the car windows, trying to find him above the raised bodies of the SUVs, and as the rows of sedans and trucks start to dissipate, the outline of my father—now standing on the other side of the used car dealership—comes back into full view, his face washed away under the streetlights, his white shirt blurring, his green sweatpants still discernable from afar.
The Next Chapter Begins in 3, 2, 1 . . .