''I'll only be gone for a few days,'' my father had promised, embracing me.
Chilly gusts of wind blew the leaves off of trees and onto the street. Another day, I might have marveled at the bursts of reds and oranges that surrounded us. But right then my lip was quivering and a torrent of tears was streaming down my cheeks. Goosebumps rose up on my bare arms as soon as he let go. Unease bubbled in the pit of my stomach while he closed the back door of the cab. I had been a mere child, but I had enough sense to know when something was incredibly wrong. Long after he was gone, I stood outside for a while, thinking about something that i would regret for years to come.
I hadn't gotten to say goodbye - the word was stuck in my throat.
That had been the last time I saw my father. It was just days prior to my fifth birthday and a few days after 9/11. After the vicious attacks in New York, the government had deported hundreds of illegally-immigrated Muslims - my father among them. Years ago, he'd illegally fled to America and applied for asylum to save his life from the corruption officials that had targeted him back home. Still, the government was given no choice, the attacks on the Twin Towers had left the country shaken and citizens needed to be protected from further harm. They didn't know what would happen to him, nobody did. The circumstances were far beyond our control.
Whispers followed him around wherever he went the second he arrived. He was assassinated just weeks before he was allowed to return. Both the men who'd killed him vanished without a trace as he bled out.
At 1:17 AM, the landline trilled. Hoping that it was my father, I eagerly snuck out of bed and picked up the other phone, listening in as somebody else answered it. My heart shattered as soon as I heard the words that made me realized that I wouldn't see him again. I hung up immediately, climbing back into my bed, trying not to think of my father's death but thinking of nothing else.
Those two men had knocked over the dominoes that would entirely change my life. My mother, brother, and I had to move so we could live near the rest of our family. My mother worked multiple jobs to support us. We rarely got to see her. My little brother didn't have a father to blow out the candles with him on his first birthday, and even now he doesn't know how he can miss a man he cannot remember. As time went on, my memories of him grew foggy. I even forgot the sound of his voice, though I swore I wouldn't forget. But that isn't what bothers me most - that would be something else.
To this day, my one regret still remains that goodbye that never made it past my lips.
