9The war in Kuwait ended in February 1991 but even then no letter arrived from my father. My mother called my grandmother’s house several times but all she received was insults and shouts, and then the usual tone you get when the line is disconnected. She asked women working in Kuwait to look out for any news of my father but nothing came of that. She asked after him in the Kuwaiti embassy in Manila but there was no response from the people working there. She waited a long time, but he seemed to have disappeared.
The first person to gloat, my mother said, was Aunt Aida.
‘All men are like that. They’re all bastards,’ she said.
From that day on my mother would reply with her favourite expression: ‘Except Rashid.’
The days passed, but my mother’s faith that I would go back to Kuwait one d
