Grief was a familiar language which I had picked up solely from my father. At thirteen I was fluent in its rhythm, its pattern of intonations, its slang and its formalities. Grief came in my father in as many forms as there are countries in the world, and each manifestation was worlds apart from the last, shifting the plates of my understanding of the emotion. For as long as I could remember, grief never came to my father alone. It joined forces with another violent state and infiltrated the dying landscape of his soul. And soon enough it never left. There was a war of attrition taking place beneath his skin. It manifested physically with deep lines forming on his forehead and around his eyes. I used to pinch the back of his hand and watch the tiny mountain of skin slowly sink back into place. His fingernails and toenails became yellow and hard. Each day he would return from his long day heaving woks and cleaving meat with fresh bruises and occasional cuts and burns. My mother would apply toothpaste to the burns and massage it with the ball of her palm, making my father grimace with pain and annoyance.

My father was a plain man, unchanging, stubborn. He wore the same armour and wielded the same weapon for as long as I could remember. It drove him deeper into the defensive while my mother rose up. I watched as the trenches were dug deeper inside of him. Grief manned the trenches, taking aim at other encroaching emotions until they were wiped out one by one. Soon enough grief only had itself as the enemy, and thus began my father’s war against himself.

A war between two enemies will always come to its end. There are many tactics and strategies that have been tried and proven in the discursive history of war. Each party vies for its own end and practises their own means, however distinctive or similar to that of the opponent. A war in which the belligerents are reflections of themselves will forever be engaged in a grotesque dance of primitive, ceremonial movements. My father was the figure caught between two directly opposing mirrors, infinitely reflected in maddening clarity.

Note:

Good morning, all! This is a passage taken from a novel I am currently writing, named In Search Of Ignorance (working title). It is based off true events, so it resonates with me greatly. The novel will take a few years to write, I’m suspecting. Thank you for reading.