Shuja Sohrewardy talks to his friend Lauren Macioce about his late father, whose nightly bedtime stories in Urdu were an important part of Shuja’s childhood.
Originally aired August 19, 2005, on NPR’s Morning Edition.
Transcript
Shuja Sohrewardy (SS) and Lauren Cacione (LC)
LC: Who was the most, or is, the most important person in your life?
SS: The most important person in my life is probably my father. He passed away about a year and two months ago.
LC: Say his name.
SS: Sayeed Mon Amin Sohrewardy, that’s my father.
LC: I didn’t know your middle name was from your dad.
SS: Yeah, it’s from ym dad. It’s part of our culture that my dad would tell me a bedtime story. I slept with him in the same bed because, you know, we had a queen-sized bed and my mom worked at night. I used to look forward to going to bed simply because my father would paint this elaborate, elaborate story in a faraway distant land. The whole entire thing would be strictly in Urdu. It always started off in that same way: “Ay khani hummat kohl sa-nan-gay,” — “I’m going to tell you this one story.”
And then every single story always ended the same way. Like in English there’s “Happily ever after,” but with my dad it was, “Khani hattam”—story’s finished—“passa hazam”—money’s gone. I just loved it, so when a story would go on, I’d ask, you know, in the middle of the story, “Khani hattam passa hazam?” you know, “Is it finished?” and he’d be like, no, no, not yet.
Then my mom would come come around midnight and they would put me in my bed. And that was the routine for about two or three years.