Last night, Amira was supposed to spend the weekend with her biological dad, Jamal. My wife, Zahra, dropped her off after school Friday, and everything seemed ordinary. Then Saturday evening, my phone chimed with a short message:
“Hey… can you pick me up?”
I grabbed my keys and went straight there. When I pulled up outside Jamal’s building, she was already waiting, backpack half open, arms wrapped around herself, eyes glued to the street like she had been tracking every car that passed.
She opened the door before I’d even fully stopped.
As soon as she buckled her seatbelt, she looked at me and asked, in a small, nervous voice, “Is it okay if I call you Dad again? For real this time?”
I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or pull over to hug her — so I sort of did all three at once. She had no idea how much those words meant after a decade of being in her life.
But to understand that moment, you have to go backward.
When I met Zahra, she was raising a toddler on her own. Amira was still waddling around with crooked pigtails and socks that never matched. Jamal was already fading in and out — one month showering her with promises, the next disappearing like smoke. I never understood how someone could be so inconsistent in a child’s life and still expect the world to revolve around them.Continue reading…
