The Day I Found My Father’s Voice in My Own

I remember the first time I yelled like my father.

Not just a raised voice—not anger. I mean the deep, commanding tone that filled a room, the one that made people pause and listen. I was 26. Standing in a dusty site office in the middle of a chaotic interior fit-out job in Dubai, wearing a high-vis vest that didn't quite sit right. I was in the middle of a long day. My team was misplacing timelines, subcontractors were going silent, and I’d just discovered someone cut power to the wrong section.

Then it happened.

“මොකද මේ වෙන්නේ?! What is going on here?” My voice echoed. And I heard him.

Not just his words, but him. My father.

That was the moment I realized I was becoming the man I once feared—and later, deeply respected.

I grew up in a quiet town in Sri Lanka. My father was a strict man, an engineer who rarely smiled unless we brought him perfectly rolled drawings or made tea exactly the way he liked. As a child, I feared his silence more than his anger. When he did speak, it was precise, low-toned, and sharp like a compass point. There were no second warnings. No room for sloppiness.

When I told him I wanted to work in the UAE, he nodded. That was it. Not a "Well done," not a "We’re proud of you." Just a nod.

I left with that nod tattooed into my spine.

Dubai was a beast. Shiny on the outside, but inside—behind the skyscrapers and shopping malls—it was sweat and concrete dust. I started as a quantity surveyor, climbing scaffolding, triple-checking estimates, and arguing with suppliers who swore their delivery was “on the way” when it wasn’t.

But that day… that yell… was different.

I didn’t plan it. I didn’t mean to sound like him. It just came out. A commanding voice, full of frustration, but also full of control. My team stopped. One guy dropped his phone. And then—they listened.

Not out of fear. Out of respect.

And something shifted in me. I remembered being a boy watching my father fix a broken generator during a monsoon, yelling instructions to neighbors trying to keep their homes dry. That wasn’t anger. That was survival. That was leadership.

That night, I sat on my bed in my tiny flat in Al Qusais, looking at the ceiling fan spinning lazily in the heat. I called my father.

He answered, as usual, with no hello.

“Yes?”

I told him what happened. The site. The mistake. The voice.

There was silence on the line. Then he said, slowly:

“Now you know. It’s not easy. Being responsible.”

That was the first time in years we spoke more than five sentences.

He told me he used to be scared of his own father too. That he wasn’t born with that voice. He earned it—through mistakes, fear, and standing tall when no one else would. And now, I had started earning mine.

Since that day, I’ve paid attention to the moments that remind me I’m alive.

Not just the big wins. But the raw ones. Like crying alone after finishing a big project because I had no one around to celebrate with. Or laughing so hard with my Sri Lankan friends over spicy kottu on a rooftop that I almost fell off my chair.

Or the night I watched a building I helped finish light up for the first time.

Those moments—that’s what this story is about.

They are mine. Not AI-generated. Not polished. Not pretend.

Real.