On Fathers and Cigarettes

Illustration: Bengisu Bilekli

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The first time I smoked, it had been at the insistence of a pretty girl with a septum piercing. I know her name, but 'pretty girl with the septum piercing' is how she's still saved on my phone. She taught me how to smoke in the smokers' area at Marriotts, surrounded by old men with grey hair. I never inhaled. I liked the fire.

The next time I thought about smoking, I stole one from my father. It was Capstan, the only one he ever smoked. It felt nice, different; the taste felt distinctly more pronounced than the Marlboros she had offered me, her eyes still ringed with red after she had told me about her own father. 'It's something about you that makes me feel like I'm okay and I can talk,' she told me after I wrapped my arms around her, a bit shocked by the speed at which events occurred. She’s dead now, I’m not sure how. Just that it happened and her ghost is one of the many that haunt me. I think about her often, her being on the national scrabble team. Striving to do more just so her father would look at her twice. I don’t think he ever did.

'I understand,' I had wanted to say. But I didn't, not truly, not yet. It was about a year and a half later, after many taunts of “Capstaan kon peeta hai?”" (Who smokes Capstan?) and me replying: “I don't like my nicotine expensive,” when a friend pointed out my dad only smokes Capstan. “Like father, like child,” he joked. I detested it. Detested being compared to the man, but I joked right along with him. The Same night, after smelling the familiar smoke filling my father's bedroom, I realized he was right. I did only smoke Capstan. Nothing else ever felt quite right.

Despite being born a female in Pakistan to parents still deeply stuck in their ways, I never hid the unorthodox things I did. At first, it was rebellion, a way for me to tell them: “look, I don't care. I don't care what you say. I'll do what I want.” Over time, it felt like the normal thing to do. I would rather bear my mother's disapproval than pretend to hide away a part of myself. So, I never hid that I smoked. Obviously, I never did it in front of them, but the telltale signs were there—the faint smell in my room, the odd cigarette butt on the floor, the discarded matches. My father sat me down one day to discuss my friendship with boys. He was making an effort to seem as supportive as he knew how. He leaned close, as if sharing a secret he mustn't: “I know you smoke, you know. It's okay. Even Fatima Jinnah did.” I didn't know quite how to respond. This was the first time we talked in over a year. The the12-year-old within me wanted to yell that this isn't how he makes up for the absence: his nails imprinted on my skin, the phantom pain in my skull from when he grabbed my throat and slammed my head into the tiled walls of our new kitchen, or the hurt. I just smiled. 'I know,' is all I said.

Since then, whenever he smoked out on the balcony, I got the urge to join him. Sit next to him in silence, the faint crackle following the orange light burning away white paper, only audible on windless nights. Both of us with one leg over the other, head bowed, cigarette-wielding hands down. But I never did. To know a thing in silence is better than acknowledging it outright.

I didn't quit on Capstan, a packet faithful to me, tucked away in my drawer. I quit on him, though. Met his silence with silence, gave up on hugs and no longer brought the same bounty chocolate bar for his birthday. I knew it will sit on his dresser untouched for weeks. The only things that connected us was the stubborn set of our jaw that we inherited from his father, the anger we got from his mother, and our packet of cigarettes. Finally, one day, he openly acknowledged what I already had acquainted myself with, ever since the long silences had started: “You're not my child.” He had said after a teary outburst in front of his brother. Despite the blood we share, I was no longer the wide, brown-eyed baby he had looked upon knowing she’d change the world. Now I was just an antagonistic stranger, one that reminded him too much of himself. My uncle had insisted he did love me, how could he not? I didn’t disagree but there was always the confused eleven-year-old me yelling at myself, “Well, why doesn’t he show it? Why does he shove me away each time I try to get closer?”

Eid was ruined. My uncle left soon after the tension. After he left, I yelled at my mother as her feeble voice called me cruel. Her hands shook, her face closed off, as she said the opposite of what she believed. In spite of everything, she thinks I still deserve a loving father. Even if he is simply imagined. I remind her, sharply, of all the cruelness he inflicted. She flinched as she always does and insisted I don’t remember it correctly. Eid that year was a break from tradition. We didn’t visit my eldest aunt. I sat in bed, drinking sprite, and smoking Capstaan as the sky turned into its evening orange. I remember the slight sting of the cold drink and the smoke that always made me hazy. My room was filled with smoke, it settled as a thin sheen on every surface, clinging on despite knowing it was time to leave.

A few weeks later, as prices soared and our family bent under the pressure, his packet changed to Kisaan. Cheaper and even unhealthier. A week later, I followed suit, grateful for the 40 rupee decrease in my weekly spending. No longer Capstaan, but Kisaan for the daughter without a father and the father with no daughter. And so, we continued. Still, the comparisons came. “You look just like your father!” exclaimed relatives after a long break. My mother snapped out the same comparison when I refused to leave my room to sit with them. My brother remarked the same as I sat with the downstairs neighbour, one leg over the other talking about inflation, hand dangling as if holding a cigarette. Even the neighbour’s brother pointed it out when I leaned my head back and closed my eyes to get away for a second. I suppose it doesn't stop.

It was the monsoon season when he quit smoking. His throat had developed some blockage, and my mother, ever disapproving of our shared habit, told him it must be those cigarettes. He had objected, but a day later, his stash was cleared out. He couldn't take a chance, not when he had three people depending on him.

It was a day of heavy rain when I asked him for cigarettes. Someone close to me had left, and my heart hurt as little had before. I craved the familiar burn, but my stash was out. It was cruel to get a bykea to bring me one in this rain. I stumbled out of the room, my face wet with tears but my voice surprisingly steady, I went up to him asking if he had any. He looked at me, something he hadn't done in a very long time and spoke softly. I don't know if it was his throat, which was still recovering from a recent surgery. His voice refused to emerge. Instead, it settled snugly in its base: 'I threw them away.' I asked if he had any stored elsewhere. He only shook his head repeating what he said then turned back to his book. It was the day the one person I loved fearlessly had left. The one person who had abated my acquaintance with abandonment with his promises to never leave. and I didn’t even have a packet of Kisaan.

I still smoke the same brand. Still get the same bemused smile when I ask for it at the khoka “Kuch aur nai chaiye, baji?” (“wouldn’t you rather get something else, sister?”). Things are different; people are replaced with ghosts. I remember them on the balcony when everything is silent. Head bowed, hands holding cigarettes dangling. My eyes closed, one leg over the other. Just like it never happened.

Now, when my phuppo picks up a book I'm reading and finds my signature and date on the first page and gives me a knowing smile, I just smile back. Weary resignation has replaced my fierce desire not to be him. Perhaps he's all I'll ever be—alone, shutting out the world, stubborn. With a packet of cigarettes that my child shares in silence. Perhaps it's all I can be.