Dhubai or Die 2

From the pictures sent via 'Snapfish' by my son of his orientation program at the Emerates Airline training facility I gather that the 'mixed up kid' is now quite officially one of the crew members of the Airlines now. Yeah... I am proud of the fact that my son has achieved his dream allthough he did fell short of what he had actually aimed for when he was in college. He wanted to be an Aerospace engineer when he initially set out to conquer the outerspace but hell the kid could not keep his head straight for awhile there what with all the girls getting in his hair in those days.
His mom deserves all the credit for she was a teacher and she taught him better than anyone could have on how to be an achiever in life for if it had been up to me he would be working in the packing house somewhere in GreenBay, Wisconsin. It broke my heart when she took him to Germany after our devorce while my son was five or six but I knew she did the right thing and accepted the fact, it was a blessing for all of us and thank you Lord for Your Grace in making it right all these years. I learned that loving someone does not have to mean that you own them but more so that you are willing to let them go. As it was i was in no position at all to carry the responsibilty of a father as my head was unscrewed during those years and saveral nuts and bolts were left loose. I was a very angry young man when i first started off in the United States, a scared and angry young man who did not know any better and got sucked into the Meat Packing House life of the Mid West where beer drinking was a norm, womanizing followed and dope smoking was waiting around the block.

I met Nazri's mother in Kuala Terengganu, onthe East Coast when she was on vacation from Mara Institute of Technology in Shah Alam where she was a foreign student from The University of Stevens Point, in Wisconsin sometime in 1973. One thing lead to another and soon we found ourselves a proud parent to this eager beaver who decided to join us in holy metrimony before we were really ready for it. But we got married in Sungai Pinang, Penang in what was considered by my peers who were then mostly the Hindu boys then as a cowboy or shotgun Muslim wedding. I was the proudest father to be on this side of the of the Sungai Pinang at that time. I could not believe it for a long long time untill I got a phone call one morning from the Asunta Hospital in Kuala Lumpur letting me jnow that I should be a proud man for my wife has delivered a baby boy tha morning. I was in Penang some three hundred miles away working at Hagemeyer Trading Company as a sales assistant. Apparently Naz's mom had driven herself (with him) to the hospital from the college where she was teaching in our clunker Beetle VW and got helself admitted and just had the boy!

When I got the call I was stund as we were not expecting him not for a month or two at least, but no!, no waiting for that kid. Fortunately being who she was Nazri's mother got everything that was needed for the baby and had them all packed away in a large suitcase all set and ready for the big day! I took the day off and headed for KL that afternoon but only made it to Ipoh and from Ipoh onwards I was stuck by the roadside with a large suitcase full of baby things standing at dusk in a drizzling rain and the whole area was lit up by the yellowish street light above my head. How can one forget such an event in one's life, when warm tears flowed freely and fear and despair almost brought one to the knees begging for help. It was the day of The Dead, Chinese all over the country visited their dearly departed and so there was hardly any public transportation available, the Planes were fully booked the train was fully booked, buses were fully booked the taxis, i manged to catch one only up to Ipoh and that was that.
As i stood there in semi darkness underneath a three to avoid getting soaked a Datsun came up and stopped in front of me. The driver asked me where i was headed and without much ado told me to throw the bag in the back seat and off we went. He told me he had one small condition if I were to ride with him to KL and that was i had to put up with the cassette record of the Hindu Puja (Hymms) to Lord Ganesha which he had always played while travelling long distances. He went on to talk to me about life and being able to cope with it in the darkest of times and the lightest untill we reached Asunta Hospital in Petaling Jaya, Kuala Lumpur.
I walked into my wife's recovery room at 10 pm. that night and she was still up and the moment our eyes made contact tears tarted popping out of her bluest of eyes, how can one forget such moments in life? Being way past the visiting hours I was allowed to see my son through the glass window from a distance, however a nurse came along and out of her kind heart led me into the room to hold my son in my arms and whisper into his ears the Azan which is the right of every Muslim father to perform as soon as a child is born. This was like Christening the baby, a solemn transmission between father and son of Faith,(Iman). So is my son a Muslim, as a father I say by birth yeas and so was his mother by conversion, however ib practice it is entirely up to their choices and what life has in store for them as "Man proposes, God Disposes".