As my father laughed, I could hear the heaving in his breath as he desperately reached for another cigarette. The edge of his chiseled nose hovered over his mustache, and the peak of his rose pink lips ever so perfectly opened to reveal a joyous smile. Blanketed with flaws, he hugged me tight, and told me he loved me. He wore a ceramic blue t-shirt, stained with car grease, tucked into a pair of tattered jeans with enough holes in them that you could see through to his soul crying out.

            “BAM! Who’s cookin’ baby?”

            “You are…”

            “Who’s cookin’? Not Emeril!”

            “You are…” I’d respond half enthusiastically. Nothing, and I mean nothing came between my dad and his cooking.

            Of Middle Eastern descent, his blood flowed thick, his character always strong, but his heart, fragile, loved like Jesus himself. His blood is tainted with Captain Morgan and nicotine, but he is my best friend.

            “Pa, wake up, you need to get your bed. Pa…Pa…Pa!” 5-year-old me said, as I routinely tugged at the shirt of my father, who had passed out drunk on the couch- just like every Saturday. His eyes subconsciously bolted open after about four minutes of me poking at his shoulder- for a 5-year-old, I left a mean bruise.

            I withheld moments of reflection every time I’d see him in this state of numbing his exhaustion. His bones held the weight of trying to please my mother and me, of trying to provide, and of the tormented secrets of his past that he never once spoke to me about. But I knew. I knew very well that his mother gave birth to him at 16, abandoned him three months after, and left my dad with my grandfather, who passed my dad back and forth between him and his brother. Raised by his uncle and cousins, my dad found refuge in his family- but we share the same blood; I know he still hurts. His lips started kissing the tips of a cigarette at 13. He couldn’t stop and somehow at 5 years old, I thought I could stop him.

            At 8 years old, the shine in my eyes displayed a mix between finding joy in making people happy and of trying to find faith in a world I initially found no purpose in. The chocolate colored spirals of my hair met the collar of my navy polo shirt as I skipped from my classroom to the school auditorium. I looked up in the crowd of parents at yet another awards ceremony, and my eyes grasped the soft grin of only my mother. Minutes later, tears stained the seams of my khaki uniform skirt as I wanted my dad to see me win awards for my good grades and attendance, but I soon realized that wouldn’t happen. I soon got over it and the rose flush of color in my cheeks matched the pressed pink smile I displayed for the world, knowing they needed it more than I did. I tied the shoelaces on my light up sneakers with the same force I held myself together with for having to understand that my dad worked that day, and perhaps didn’t understand what this meant to me.

            You could show me a hurting world, and I’d cry, and I’d then try to fix it, but to have my dad cry- that was to break me and not be able to fix myself. Late in the night, I walked into the kitchen for water, and heard my dad on the telephone. As he hung up, my eyes met the red vessels in his eyes, and in that moment, he was naked. The bruised state of his heart exposed. The tattered stains of a rough past- unveiled. I always prayed that God would show me what my dad really felt deep down inside, but the weight of his burdens was too heavy for my fragile heart to feel, and I soaked it all in.

            “My half-brother, Nijim died,” he said through the muffled sobs of his staggering breath. He was sober.

            “I’m sorry…” I responded with a knot so painful in my throat I thought I could feel the tears streaming from his eyes coat my lungs.

             “Nazli… I love you. I love you a lot. But promise me you will be nice to your mother. That you will love her and not fight with her. Nijim had no one. If I die tomorrow, she is all you will have. I don’t want to die, but it can happen any day now.”

            “Okay.”

            “Okay” was all I could say. I saw my dad hurting for someone who had hurt him. I saw the humanity in his eyes, the breath of God in his heartbeat, and the past no longer sheltered in his tears. Somehow, in that one moment he managed to plant a seed of fear in me, that one day, sooner than usual, my best friend would die of drinking, just like my grandfather. That one day, he wouldn’t be there to walk me down the aisle. That one day, he wouldn’t be there to hold his grandchildren. That one day- I wouldn’t be able to see my reflection in anything else but a mirror, and I hated that. You don’t need to get a man drunk for him to cry, simply brush upon the pain of his past, and his knees will touch the ground.

            The best of days came when my father took me out to eat early on Saturday mornings.

             “Why can’t you stop smoking and drinking?” I asked him over the hum of his 1990 BMW as we reached a stoplight.

            “I’ve tried, countless times, and you know that. But I can’t stop. I started at a young age and I am stressed out, Nazli. I am tired and stressed out. If I could stop right now I would, but I can’t.” The disappointment on his face became apparent as the only thing he knew I desired fought with the reluctance of his body to stop.

            I just cried. Somehow the words I exchanged with my father in the deepest of moments became few, but those words told me enough of what he felt. And I felt helpless. On days like those, I went to my room, hopped on my bed, cradled my pillow, and talked for hours to a God I was sure made me by mistake at the time. Somehow, in the midst of all the laughs we shared, and in the way my father loved unconditionally, he remained a hero in my eyes.

            At almost 20 years old, I sit and look at my dad as he stares out my dorm window. Years have passed and yet I remain that 5-year-old telling him what to do. I am now a woman of faith, strongly rooted in the love of a God I am sure loves me, and I am a parallel of my father in the rarest of ways. Our life choices are very different- as to where he smokes and drinks to get rid of all languor, I find myself running to a faith I once questioned. But it is deep down in the core of our hearts that I know that my father and I share the same vision and heart for humanity: to love with a relentless compassion. A love that truly knows no bounds. My father, the greatest paradox I have had the pleasure of knowing, is not the man he was years ago. As he drinks less, he is slowly learning that life is not found at the end of beer bottles, but in the smile of his daughter, and in the mercy of a loving God. If there is something my father taught me, it is that you can’t save someone who doesn’t want salvation, and that to love, is to become vulnerable to the weight that one’s bones carry. He is my best friend, and my hero, and our hearts beat alike. 

**Update: For purposes of honesty in the narrative and its content, as of September 2017, my dad is now clean from his drinking habit and has changed his lifestyle dramatically.