Turab Saiyed
Once a Year
At twenty-two, I kissed my bride goodbye, her hands trembling with henna under Surat’s sun. The plane to Dubai groaned like my heart, carrying me to scaffolds and sandstorms, a construction site where cranes claw the sky. Each brick I lay is a promise—roti for her table, books for her dreams. One year, I’ll return, I swear, clutching a year’s wages in a plastic bag.
The foreman’s whistle splits my days, sun scalding my neck, rebar bruising my hands. In the barracks, I trace her letters—“Zainab’s first word was Abbu.” I wasn’t there. I’m never there. Eid comes, and I fly home, a stranger to my daughter’s toddling steps. Her eyes don’t know me, and my wife’s smile hides a new crease.
Years stack like the towers I build. At thirty, I miss Zainab’s first day of school, her dupatta brighter than the desert noon. At forty, I send money for her nikah, watching grainy videos on a cracked phone, her joda swaying without me. My wife writes, “The house is bigger now,” but her words feel hollow, like the concrete shells I pour.
The flights home blur—once a year, a visa’s mercy, a thief of time. I’m a guest in my own life, missing birthdays, fevers, fights. My son, born when I was sweating in July, calls me “Chacha” by mistake. I laugh it off, but the ache settles, heavy as the steel beams I haul.
At fifty-five, my back creaks like old wood. Zainab’s married now, her husband’s face a stranger’s in photos sent by text. My wife’s hair is gray, her voice softer, as if she’s speaking to a ghost. I sit at our table, one week a year, and the silence asks, Was it worth it? The money built their lives, but I’m outside their stories.
Now sixty, I shuffle through the site, dust in my lungs, my hands gnarled knots. The young workers call me Nana, not knowing I’ve missed my own grandchildren’s names. I send rupees still, wired to a home that’s grown without me. Each year, I land in Surat, older, smaller, a shadow at the gate, watching my family live a life I bought but never lived.