The Saturday We Never Reached JOYLAND

Editor’s note: this piece describes domestic violence.

It was a beautiful Saturday morning. The specific kind of morning that seemed to have been made especially for children. Birds were chirping somewhere beyond our windows or maybe sitting on a wire, the sunlight spilled lazily across the curtains, and the sky was a mix of light and dark blue that it looked almost unreal. The whole house felt warm with happiness. There was laughter coming from every room, doors opening and closing, slippers dragging across the floor, and the occasional argument over who was going to sit in the front seat of the car.

We all were going to JOYLAND.

My younger brother had been talking about it for days. He had memorized the names of the rides and had already decided which one he was going to take first. My sisters were standing in front of the mirror, arguing over what to wear as if the entire park was going to stop and judge them. I had already imagined each and everything. The screaming on the rides. The cold drinks. The smell of fried food. The ridiculous amount of food we would somehow convince our mother to buy us. The photographs we would take. The tiredness on the way home. The kind of tiredness that only comes after a perfect day. At breakfast, everyone was happy.

I remember that. God, I wish I remembered less. My father’s phone began ringing. He was in the washroom, so my mother picked it up.

“Hello?”

A woman’s voice came from the other side.

“You haven't come today.”

My mother stopped moving.

There was something in her face that I had never ever seen before. Suddenly, her fingers tightened around the phone.

“Who are you?”

The woman hung up. No explanation. No goodbye. Nothing. The call ended, but something else had begun. My mother slowly placed the phone back on the table. The rest of us continued eating.

At least, we tried.

I was too young to understand what had happened, but old enough to notice that my mother was no longer really sitting with us. Her body was at the table. The rest of her seemed to have gone somewhere else. When my father returned, she asked him about the call. His face changed. For a moment, neither of them spoke.

Then he said,

“She is my maternal uncle's daughter.”

My mother stared at him. She already knew. Years ago, before our family had become what it was, my father had wanted to marry his cousin. My mother had lived with that knowledge for many years. Perhaps she had convinced herself that the past was where the past belonged. Perhaps she had believed that some doors, once closed, might stay closed. She was wrong. Some things do not die. They wait.

My mother began to cry. At first, it was quiet. A few tears. Then more. Then suddenly she was crying so hard that it seemed as though years of silence had found a way out through her eyes. We could not see her like that. My sisters stopped eating. My brother looked at me. I looked at him. Neither of us knew what to say or what to do. The food was still there on the table. The sunlight was still coming through the window. The birds were still singing outside. But somehow, the morning had changed. My mother called the woman's mother.

“Do you know about this?”

The answer came calmly. Too calmly.

“They are cousins. It is very common.”

My mother was silent. Then, in a voice that I still remember, she said,

“What should have been common was telling me before.”

She hung up.

And then our house exploded. Voices collided. My father shouted. My mother screamed. Words flew across the room like broken glass. And then came the sound I wish I could erase. My father hit her. I remember freezing. I remember my sisters crying. I remember my younger brother looking terrified. Then my father picked up a hammer. And suddenly, we were no longer children. We rushed between them. I don't remember any word at that time. I don't remember who grabbed whose arm. I don't remember how we managed to pull them apart. I only remember one thought.

Something is going to happen to Mama.

That thought has never completely left me. Relatives came. People talked. People shouted. People tried to calm everyone down. My father denied everything. But still somehow everything was sorted out. He said my mother was just imagining things, she is mistaken.

Eventually, everything was cooled down for a moment. He went back to Dubai, where he worked. And for a little while, we allowed ourselves to believe that perhaps the storm had passed. We were wrong.

One day, the phone rang again. My father was on the other end.

“Go to my uncle's house and ask for forgiveness.”

My mother frowned.

“Forgiveness for what?”

“Go.”

She said nothing.

“Or I won't send you any money.”

That was the moment money stopped being money. Until then, it had been something adults worried about. Something that bought groceries and paid bills. Something that came and went. We had never understood its real power. Now we did. Money was food. Money was school. Money was electricity. Money was the roof above our heads. Money was the difference between eating dinner and pretending we weren't hungry. Between sitting in a classroom and staying home. Between light and darkness. Between having a house and wondering where we would sleep.

My mother sat with us that night. She cried. We cried too. I remember looking at my sisters. One was in tenth grade. Another was in twelfth. My younger brother was still a child. I was a child too.

Yet somehow, that night, we were all discussing things children should never know how to discuss. How would we eat? How would we pay the bills? How would we stay in school? Who would look after Mama? The questions kept coming. The answers never did.

So, we ate potatoes. Potato curry. Again. And again. And again. Eventually, potatoes became our family joke. My brother would look at his plate. Then at my mother.

“Again?”

My mother would smile. It was a tiny smile. A tired smile. The kind mothers give when they are trying to convince their children that everything is fine while quietly calculating how many days the remaining money has to last.

“Eat,” she would say.

So, we ate. Because children can survive almost anything when someone tells them dinner is ready. But sleep was harder. At night, the house became unbearably quiet. Like Dead Quiet. Sometimes I would wake up and see my mother sitting alone. She thought we were asleep. I pretended to be. She would sit there with her hands folded in her lap, staring at nothing. Sometimes tears would fall silently. She would wipe them away. Then another would come. And another. There is something cruel about watching your mother cry when she thinks nobody is looking. Because that is when you realize that mothers are not the invincible creatures children imagine them to be. They get tired. They get frightened. They get hurt. They break. They simply learn how to hide the pieces.

Two weeks later, my father called again. The message had not changed.

“Go there and ask for forgiveness.”

My mother said nothing.

“Or leave the house and starve.”

After going through the same pain again and again, she made up her mind. We begged her not to go. She went anyway. She went because of us. Not because she had done anything wrong. Not because she believed she owed anyone an apology. She went because four children were waiting for her at home.

When she returned, she did not speak immediately. She walked into the room. Sat down. Looked at us. And then she cried. She told us what had happened. The insults. The threats. The humiliation. She had stood there and listened to every word. For us.

I remember looking at her that night. Her face looked older. Not older in years. Older in a way that only suffering can make a person. And I remember thinking that there are some things a human being should never have to endure for their children. But mothers do. They endure them anyway.

After that, my father became a stranger. Not suddenly. Slowly. That was almost worse. He would still call. He would still come home sometimes. He would still sit among relatives and smile as though nothing had happened. And he was so good at it. He could laugh. He could tell stories. He could put his hand on someone's shoulder and make everyone believe he was the most kind-hearted man in the room. He could become a wonderful father the moment someone else entered the house.

But we knew. We knew what happened when the door closed. The shouting. The insults. The arguments. The fear. Sometimes he tried to hit my mother. Once, he threw all of us out of the house. And somehow, unbelievably, morning still came the next day. The sun rose. The birds sang. People went to work. Children went to school. The world continued as if nothing had happened. That is one of the strangest things about suffering. You can feel as though your entire world has ended, and somewhere outside your window, someone is buying bread.

My eldest sister got into medical school. He resisted.

My other sister got into one of the best business schools in the country. He resisted that too.

Then I got into one of the finest law schools in the country. He resisted that as well.

It was strange. The man who told people his children were useless kept trying to stop them from becoming something. He would visit relatives alone and laugh about us.

“My children are full of shit,” he would say.

“They haven't done anything.”

Sometimes people laughed with him. I remember that laugh. Really well. For years, I hated it with the depth of my heart. Now I mostly feel tired when I remember it. Because we had done something. We had survived. My sisters had survived. My brother had survived. My mother had survived. And somehow, I had survived too.

He wanted us to forget. We couldn't. There are things children forget. The names of teachers. The toys they once begged their parents to buy. The games they played until dinner. The birthdays that seemed so important at the time. But children do not forget the sound of their mother crying. They do not forget hunger. They do not forget the fear of losing their home. They do not forget standing between two adults because nobody else was there to stop them. And they certainly do not forget the morning they were supposed to go to JOYLAND.

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if that phone had never rung.

Maybe we would have gone. Maybe my brother would have screamed on the rides. Maybe my sisters would have laughed at him. Maybe my mother would have bought us something she couldn't really afford. Maybe my father would have watched us from a distance and smiled. Maybe we would have eaten too much. Maybe we would have taken terrible photographs. Maybe we would have come home exhausted, sunburnt and complaining about the heat. Maybe that Saturday would have become nothing more than an ordinary childhood memory. Maybe, years later, I would have forgotten what I wore. Maybe I would have forgotten what we ate. Maybe I would have forgotten which ride my brother was most excited about. Maybe.

But that is not what happened. Instead, JOYLAND became something else. A place I never visited that day. A place that exists in my memory like a door. A bright, colorful door. A door we were supposed to walk through. But we never did. Sometimes I think that is what childhood really is. Not only the things you remember. But the things you were supposed to experience and never got the chance to. My mother gave that family everything she had. Her youth. Her patience. Her sleep. Her dignity. Her tears. Her hunger. Her silence. And when she had nothing left to give, she still had us.

I cannot give those years back to her. I cannot erase the mornings she cried. I cannot make those potatoes taste like anything other than survival. I cannot return the childhood we lost. I cannot turn that Saturday into the happy day it was supposed to be. But I can remember.

Perhaps that is what remains when everything else has been taken away. We remember the people who stayed. We remember the hands that fed us when there was barely enough food. We remember the mother who walked into a house where she was humiliated because four children were waiting for her at home. We remember the nights she cried quietly so we would not hear. We remember the small smiles she gave us when there was nothing left to smile about.

And sometimes, when I think about her, I don't remember the shouting. I don't remember the hammer. I don't remember the threats. I remember a woman sitting at a dinner table, pushing potatoes onto four plates and saying,

“Eat.”

As if feeding us could keep the world from falling apart. As if four full stomachs could somehow make everything all right. And perhaps, for that one night, it did. Because she had given us dinner. She had given us another morning. She had given us herself. And that was enough.

For a long time, I wondered why I remembered that Saturday so clearly. Now I know. It was the last ordinary morning. The morning before we learned that fathers can leave a house without leaving it. The morning before my mother stopped smiling the same way. The morning before four children became older than they were supposed to be. The morning before happiness became something we remembered instead of something we expected.

It was a beautiful Saturday morning. The birds were singing. The sun was shining. My brother was excited. My sisters were choosing what to wear. My mother was smiling. And somewhere beyond the windows, the world was waiting for us. We were supposed to go to JOYLAND. We never made it.