During the war, my father was not afraid unless we were around him. If he was alone, he didn’t care. His fear was that we would die in front of him and so he thought of us all the time, which is not what he wanted. I heard him say this to my mum: I feel like I am one of those people born to stay alive while everyone around them dies. When the frequency of the clashes intensified, he raised the volume of the radio to disguise the sound of the bombing. This meant we always knew when he was afraid. He had a skill for finding a song we hadn’t heard before: pop, rock, folk, jazz or classical. We would ask him to explain the song lyrics, and he would say that it was about a person who lived a life where nothing happens. He told us it was the same song we listened to last time.

It was amazing to us kids how my dad managed to find the same song every time but set to a different tune. We also thought that his insistence we go down to the shelter without him was so that he could fight with the armed men. With all the armed parties that had spread around us, we did not understand which of them were the ‘heroes’ and who were the ‘thieves’, but we were certain that my father was on the side of the ‘heroes’. The truth was quite the opposite. As soon as we went down to the shelter my father would lie on the floor of our sitting room with his sketchbook, covered in the five heavy, fireproof blankets we received from our subsistence aid. He wanted to be a comic book artist. His imagination did not help him to write stories, but he persisted, drawing characters that didn’t speak, like children’s drawings. Mostly drawings of gunmen and children. But with no text. He was saying that he could not write because nothing happened in his life with us.

One day, while the boys at school were talking about the armed men who go into battle, how no one knows their faces, and about the unarmed men who roam the streets, I said that my father goes to fight when we go down to the shelter. One of the boys asked me to describe his uniform, so I borrowed from a gunman’s uniform my father had drawn in his notebook. Days later, we arrived home from school and learned from the neighbours that armed men had taken my father from our house and that they were looking for a military uniform – the same uniform I had described to my classmate. Apparently, my father had smiled, saying that something was going to happen at last. I told my schoolmates that my father had been kidnapped by gunmen, but that the heroes would save him. Weeks passed, then months and years, yet there was never any sign of my father.

Later, we were forced to leave the building along with the rest of the other residents. We were displaced and told we had no right to stay in our apartment after the war ended. My mother hung a note with the address of our new home on the door for my father to read when he returned. The piece of paper stayed there for months, until the owner of the building removed it, as part of the internal and external restoration work. My mother knew this and asked me to write something in the newspaper urging my father to return. I told her my father was missing. She insisted that he was alive, but that he was a fool and might assume we were among the dead, and so he might not make enough of an effort to search for us. My mother asked me to write to him, something to let him know that our life was not as he always said: that nothing happens in it. She told me to make sure the letter was in a different format every time. She said your father is an artist above all else and if he sees that we write the same note every time he’ll think that we don’t appreciate him enough, and that he was right to leave us.

So I did.

That was my first attempt at writing. A simple notice of three or four lines that I published monthly in the newspaper. My mother never read what I wrote or asked any questions about its content. She was busy working and just gave me the money to cover the cost of publication. She said that if she read it, she would feel pain. A strange intuition told her so. But she was convinced that my writing would bring my father home. Thus, I remained with those few lines, describing one subject, the same subject, but in different forms over and over. Exactly like the songs my father used to describe on the radio during the bombing. Until what my mother expected to happen finally happened, and my father came back to us one day. He was in dire straits, with signs of anxiety, exhaustion and sadness visible on his face. However, within half an hour of his return, his expression changed to one of anger and we quarrelled. He told me that if I decided to become a writer, I should avoid personal writing, because I was not good at it. If I ever tried it, he was sure I would misuse it.

Despite his defiant tone of voice, I sensed that he was actually asking for something else: help. But I didn’t do anything. I even stopped writing.

Now, after all these years, recalling my past self is like following a holographic shadow that might mimic the shape of another person at any moment. For this reason, I usually end up writing about other people I once wished to be. My father is of course not one of them. Yet I am more than willing to write about him, realising that my failure to capture his character gives me the opportunity to appear as if I really am misusing the writing, just as he said I would. So I write about someone else. Someone my dad wished he could be.

If you were wondering what I published in the newspaper, what I felt could attract my father’s attention, in only a few lines so it would not cost much – it was a notice on the obituary page. Almost every month, I would post an obituary commemorating the death of one of my three brothers, who had initially been upset before it became a joke. When are you going to write your own obituary? they joked, describing me as an obsessive. In their view, it was useful that I wanted to be a writer. My dad never returned to comics. Today, he rarely listens to music. He also thinks that I only write to remind him of when he left us. Often, the moment he starts fighting with me, I open a playlist on my phone and turn up the volume. He approaches me and says: You’re afraid! Ha? Afraid. Say it! Say it!

Artwork © Simon Pemberton