my father was a chartered accountant.
this matters.
he knew how to make
numbers confess.
knew what belonged
in which column,
what could be claimed,
what could be written off,
what had to be carried
into the next year.
he made good money once.
enough
that poverty was never
the explanation.
still,
he could make a pound
feel hunted.
three tins.
three shirts.
three of anything
on offer,
because saving money
was almost holy
if the money
was his.
he hoarded bargains
like proof
that the world
was always trying
to cheat him first.
meanwhile
my mother worked.
paid.
planned.
stretched.
built.
he lived
in the block
behind ours.
read that again.
not another city.
not another country.
not some father
lost to distance.
behind.
close enough
that absence
had to be
maintained.
when i was born,
he came to the hospital,
ate the food
they had brought
for my mother,
and left.
sometimes
a whole marriage
can fit
inside
one lunch.
he liked people
who made him feel
clever.
men he could correct.
men he could outtalk.
men beside whom
his intelligence
looked taller.
he had an ego
with expensive taste
and a work ethic
too proud
to knock.
jobs, apparently,
should come
looking for him.
a man could sit
in the same chair
for months
and still believe
the world
had failed
to recognise
his value.
my mother
separated from him
in 2011.
some endings
do not know
how to remain
ended.
then came
the stroke.
and suddenly
the man
who would not
move for us
could not
move
without us.
there are jokes
too cruel
even for irony.
his body
folded
around itself.
language
narrowed.
whole sentences
collapsed
into one sound:
wotiriwon.
wotipe.
again.
again.
again.
they have seen.
that is what
the words mean.
i still do not know
what
he thinks
we have seen.
we have seen
my mother
build a second life
around the ruins
of the first.
seen her
find somewhere
for him to live
when the family
that shared his blood
would not become
his home.
seen her
work
to pay bills
for a man
who once watched
her pay ours.
seen her
cook his food,
sort his care,
make calls,
move appointments,
solve the thousand
small emergencies
that disability
creates
before breakfast.
seen her
care
for the man
who had not known
how to care
for her.
wotiriwon.
yes.
we have seen.
what he has not seen
is the labour.
he sees
the plate.
not the shopping.
the clean room.
not the hands.
the appointment.
not the call
before the call
before the call.
the carer
arriving.
not my mother
arguing
until somebody
finally sends one.
perhaps dependence
is another kind
of blindness:
to live
inside the finished thing
and mistake it
for something
that simply appeared.
he orders
from the chair.
cook this.
move that.
clean there.
some habits
survive
the parts of us
that don’t.
his body forgot
how to obey him.
he did not forget
how to expect
obedience.
and this
is where
the poem becomes
difficult.
because sometimes
he is
almost
a baby.
not innocent.
that is different.
but helpless
in ways
that make anger
feel obscene
while you are
holding the tissue
to his mouth.
there are things
a body can do
to morality.
resentment becomes harder
while fastening
someone’s clothes.
history becomes awkward
when the person
who hurt you
cannot stand.
you begin
to feel cruel
for remembering
what he did
when he still
could.
but disability
is not baptism.
a damaged brain
does not wash
a clean past
into existence.
the stroke
did not travel
backwards
through time
and make him
visit.
did not put money
into my mother’s hands.
did not return
the meals
he ate
without noticing
who had gone
without.
did not make
the block
behind ours
any farther away.
did not turn
neglect
into prophecy
because one day
the neglectful man
would need care.
before the stroke
he counted money.
after the stroke
we count
tablets.
appointments.
steps.
hours.
how long
since he ate.
how long
since he moved.
how long
my mother
has been doing this.
accountancy
again.
only now
everything important
refuses
to balance.
assets:
a brilliant mind,
once.
a good salary,
once.
a wife
who kept trying
longer
than she should have.
children
close enough
to really love
if he had
crossed the road.
liabilities:
no.
there is not
enough room
on the page.
sometimes
i wonder
what he remembers
of himself.
whether somewhere
behind
wotiriwon
there is still
the man
waiting
for the world
to call him first.
whether he knows
my mother
has spent years
answering
on his behalf.
whether he knows
that the woman
he once made
carry everything
is still
carrying him.
whether he understands
the obscenity
of that sentence.
perhaps not.
perhaps that
is another debt
he will never know
he owes.
and maybe
that is what
angers me most.
not simply
that there is
no apology.
that there may be
no mind left
capable
of giving
the apology
its full weight.
no courtroom.
no confession.
no final scene
where the father
understands
what the daughter
understood
years ago.
only
wotiriwon.
they have seen.
yes.
we have.
i have seen
a man
become dependent
without becoming
innocent.
i have seen
a woman
continue caring
without the past
becoming forgivable.
i have seen
love,
duty,
pity,
anger
sit at the same table
and eat
from different plates.
i have learnt
that compassion
does not require
amnesia.
that you can lift
a glass
to someone’s mouth
and still remember
the years
he would not
lift a finger.
that mercy
is not the same
as acquittal.
my father
was a chartered accountant.
so somewhere
there should be
a final figure.
a line drawn
under everything.
what he gave.
what he took.
what my mother paid.
what i learnt
too early.
a balance.
but every year
the same impossible sum
is carried forward.
my mother
keeps paying
a debt
she never made.
and my father,
who spent his life
counting
what things cost,
may never know
what he cost us.
Bint of Bint Faruk
⸻
This story is part of the SisterLink community – a space for Muslim single mothers to share, heal, and rebuild.