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“Love, your Son.”
By Abdul Hanan Nawab
Introduction
Dear Baba,
I don’t know if you’ll ever hear this, but I’ve been writing this letter for years, in my head, in the silence of the night when you come to me, when I see you every time I look in the mirror.
I rewrite this letter when I dream about you. I go over it again and again, trying to shape the words more clearly — trying to say what I need to say.
It never feels like the words I have will ever be enough.
Every time I put pen to paper, it feels like the ink should have never hit the page.
I would ideally want this to be perfect, but that’s impossible.
Here’s my best shot.
This is my thank you.
My search.
My grief.
My love.
All in one.
Act One: Manhood
In the Afghan tradition, there’s a famous proverb that goes like this: “Manhood is not in dying, but in how you live.”
There are many definitions of what it means to be a man, and to embrace one’s masculinity.
To be quite honest, I never understood what it meant. And to this day, that question is yet to be answered.
As the son of immigrant parents, there’s almost a cognitive dissonance that one experiences.
The differentiating cultures.
The varying norms of the Afghan tradition, against the American / and Western view of what it means to be a man.
As a kid, I struggled immensely with this dissonance.
I didn’t know what it meant to be a man. What did it mean? How should I be? How am I supposed to act? What are my responsibilities? Is there a list of qualifications that I need?
And what would one do in my position? Well, they would do what any other kid would do. I looked towards you for direction.
Now Baba, you didn’t directly teach me how to be a man, it was more… indirect.
It was through your actions. You were a very interesting man.
Some would say that you were troubled, of course, but there was a beauty to your nature.
I took on your characteristics, at least that’s what others in our family tell me.
The way that I walk with my hands crossed behind my back.
The way in which I pace around a room. All down to the fine-grained detail.
The one aspect of you that I remember vividly, is your extremely loving nature.
Paired with your frustration, was love. With your deep sadness, came love.
Even with your God damn pride, there were seeds of love buried in there, somehow, and someway there was always this presence of purity in the way that you loved your family.
All in all, you were love, in human form, to me at least.
Your display of masculinity was not of the Afghan tradition, nor the American tradition.
You were something different.
You were unique, you were something special Dad.
I’ve never seen a human being as complex as you.
As a 17 year old, I have you as my point of reference of what it means to be a man. An extremely complex, and loving man.
Baba, you were a man of conviction.
When you believed in something, you believed it with your entire heart; your entire soul; your entire being as is.
Now, not everybody is perfect of course, and I don’t disregard your flaws.
But, you did your best given what you grew up with.
Act Two: Independence
I began learning what it truly meant to be a man the moment you left.
When you left, a part of me left too.
That moment, that loss, was when the lesson began.
It might not make sense at first, but losing you is what helped me begin to understand.
The answer to my question wasn’t something you could’ve handed to me.
It was something I had to discover on my own.
When you left, the weight fell on me.
Who would carry the family name?
Who would protect our legacy?
The day you left was the day my path began to take shape.
I started to find meaning in everything.
Before, I took so much for granted, even the simple gift of breath.
But Baba, your absence became the foundation.
You laid the first bricks of the road I now walk. You lit the way forward.
Where I am today, at Davis, studying Engineering, that’s your doing.
You are the one who paved the way, Baba.
Then, envy crept in. I wanted what others had.
I wanted what my peers had — fathers.
They didn’t even realize what they were holding.
They took that shit for granted.
They never imagined a day where their parents simply… weren’t there.
They didn’t understand my pain.
They never felt the emptiness I carried.
My heart felt hollow, filled with a silence that could never be replaced.
I was so alone.
How could you leave me?
How could you leave so early?
I was just getting started in life.
Grief etched itself into my chest like permanent ink.
No matter how goddamn hard I tried to scrub it off, it stayed.
This became my reality.
I would make a round-trip to hell and back for you, Baba, if it meant I could see you again.
I would give anything, anything, to hear your voice, even for a fraction of a second.
That would be a gift from God, left at my doorstep.
I just wanted to be normal again.
I wanted to feel like myself.
I wanted you back in my arms, Baba.
I just wanted to hear your voice.
One. More. Time.
But that’s not how life works.
I’ve learned how to be alone.
I’ve had to sit with this feeling.
Ponder it. Befriend it.
Understand it.
And I think… maybe a part of me knew:
I could never truly understand myself with you still here.
This was where I had to learn to stand on my own.
To learn how I was wired.
To learn how to cope.
Your passing was my transition, from a boy, to a man.
Act Three: Peace
Grief has become my closest friend since you left.
I feel his presence beside my shoulder, heavy, unshakeable.
He walks with me, step for step.
Whether I’m heading toward something good or something painful, he’s there.
They say grief comes in waves.
But for me, it’s been one endless surge, a killer wave that never pulled back.
No quiet lows.
No gentle pauses.
Just the highs, Baba.
No breath, just drowning.
Restlessness is the one emotion I’ve come to know best.
It keeps me awake at night.
You visit me in those quiet hours.
And no matter how hard I try, I can’t shake the weight of your absence.
Over the years, I’ve argued with that weight.
I used to hate it, used to fight it, run from it.
But slowly, I began to understand it.
And strangely, that’s where peace first crept in.
Not because grief left — he never did.
But because I stopped resisting.
I stopped trying to escape.
Grief became a mirror,
reflecting who I was becoming.
He taught me that pain could live alongside purpose.
That sorrow didn’t erase stillness.
Peace wasn’t the absence of grief.
Peace was learning to live with him.
To breathe with him.
To walk, not ahead, not behind, but side by side.
And that…
That was the beginning of my life, Dad.
Abdul Hai Nawab
Hajji Noor Agha
January 10th, 1954 – May 13th, 2019
A proverb my father used to say often:
“What is meant for you will reach you, even if it lies beneath two mountains.
And what is not meant for you will never reach you, even if it sits between your two lips.”