IN THE WORLD OF FATHERHOOD

IN ANOTHER WORLD AND THE FATHERHOOD IN ALL OF US

I want to be a father without passing through the eternal insanity of mourning my children and without experiencing the ritual of watching my children return homeless bodies folded like a prayer mat, without spending my nights telling them the stories of a hometown where natives become aliens searching for a shelter. I want my children to spread a mat outside my house and play without the walls of houses ripped by rifles and I also want to watch my children grow to recite the name of their homeland like the lord's prayer, to frolic in the streets without being hunted like animals in the bush, without being mobbed to death in another world, I want my children to tame grasshoppers in the field to play with their dolls in the living room to inhale the fragrance of flowers waving as wind blows, I want all these things above because of the fatherhood in me and may be you want it too, for me it's the Fatherhood in me that loves the forest in which i wake, sees and hears its foreigner and flora and revels in their names, it's the Fatherhood in me that you hear in my spirited conversation that shakes my shoulders as i sob my sorrows or laugh my insides and inside out it's the Fatherhood in me that keeps me reading books and novels deep into the night and causes me to stroke the sinuous muscles of my striped domestic cat and kiss the muzzle of my gently nickering horse it's the Fatherhood in me that has taught me how to love and patches up the fragments of my soul after each disaster and renews my zeal and increases my understanding in preparation for the next onslaught it's the Fatherhood in me that has carried me from my first baby breath and will support me to my very last I know you do have that in you too.