Grandfather

Hi all,

I called my grandparents up tonight. It has been a while since I last talked to them. My grandmother picked up the phone and she was ecstatic to hear my voice. I talked to her, asked her about her health and all. I asked to speak with my grandfather, who has been somewhat bed-ridden as he is really sick. When I heard his voice on the phone, I became really emotional. His voice had changed so much from the last time I spoke to him. He was barely audible and his speech was slurring at times.

He was no doubt very happy to hear from me, and started reminiscing about how much he enjoyed spending time with me more then 8 years ago, and started praising me. I felt so attached to him, and I wanted to drop everything I was doing, catch the next flight to Pakistan and be there with him.

No matter what, at the end of the day, he is my grandfather, and I have spent three years with him in the same house while I was in high school. Those three years had its share of good and bad says, and there have been cases where my relationship with my grandfather was tense and upsetting. But, in my heart, he was always the grandfather I’ve come to love and respect the more I spent time with him. Under his tough exterior, he had a warm, loving nature. I remember as I was leaving Pakistan after high school graduation, I wrote a two-page thank you letter to my grandparents for being my guardians, and my grandfather wept over my letter. That was the first I had heard of him weeping. He would never weep otherwise, not even at his younger brother’s funeral. He always had this tough, strict exterior. But, someone just needed to tell him that he is loved. And I did just that.

What I loved most about my grandfather was his intellectual state of mind. Whenever I would visiting him in Pakistan, he would ask me or anyone else for that matter, general knowledge questions. These topics could range from the littlest of things to the biggest. His questions would be wide and varied, and as kids we would be ashamed if we didn’t know the answers. Since his eyesight is weak, us kids would look to each other for answers, and then pretend that we knew it all along. He never did that to test us or to grill us, but he would do this to impart knowledge.

Simple questions like: what’s the distance between the sun and the earth or when did the World War II ended would leave me stumped, and he would know the exact figures and dates. Timbuktu is the capital of what country? Um, I know its some country in the Himalayan region, is it Nepal? No. Mongolia? No. Tibet? No. I give up, where is it? It’s in Mali, in Africa! I was so ashamed to not know that one of the most famous capital in the world is in Mali!

Today, as he is bed ridden, with very weak eyesight and a slurry speech, I pray for him and his health. I am in sitting in Dubai and he is in his bed in Pakistan. I wish I could be there to keep his spirits up. All I know I can do is continue to pray for his health and his life.

Mansur