TRUE-LIFE
As Dad ran for his life, his last thought was of us
Mariam Hijab, 27, Birmingham
Dressed in my black robe and square cap, I stepped on stage and took my scroll.
‘So proud of you, Mariam!’ my dad, Mohammed Istakhar, then 40, boomed from the audience.
I chuckled.
Typical Dad.
My mum, Nasira, then 41, stood beaming beside him, cheering, too.
It was July 2019 and I’d just graduated from Aston University, in Birmingham, with a degree in audiology.
The eldest of five, I was the first in our family to go to university.
I owed it all to Dad. ‘Couldn’t have done it without you,’ I told him after, burying my head in his big broad chest.
Dad had always worked so hard.
Since the age of 18, he’d juggled back-to-back shifts sorting parcels and working as a cabbie.
Thanks to him, my sister, Kainatt, then 20, and brothers Arslaan, 18, Ubaid, 13, and Ayaan, 7, lived in a lovely extended house in a nice part of town. 6 Dad even built an extra floor for his two sisters, and his dear mum, Khulqoo, 80. We had three German Shepherds and a couple of cats, too.
A big happy family all under one roof.
At the end of a busy week, Dad and I would curl up with our British Shorthair cat, Zimba, and watch Antiques Roadshow.
And that night we all celebrated my graduation with family party at home.
Fast forward to November 2022, and I was working full time as an audiologist, checking people’s hearing.
Dad, then 44, was finally considering ditching the night shifts after 26 years.
‘Maybe I’ll retire at 50,’ he joked one afternoon. ‘Let you kids take care of me!’
‘You deserve some rest, Dad,’ I said.
Later, he said goodbye and headed out for his parcel factory shift. He got home at 2am. Ate the curry Mum left out for him.
By 3am he was behind the wheel of his taxi. That morning, I left to get my train to work at 6.30am. Dad’s still out, I thought, noticing his Vauxhall Insignia wasn’t in the driveway.
Only, at 10.30am, I was seeing a patient when Ubaid, then 16, called.
Must be important, I thought, popping outside to answer.
Ubaid never called me at work.
‘Something’s happened to Dad,’ he cried.
My mind whirled.
‘What?’ I blurted.
‘He didn’t come home,’Ubaid said.
Mum had called Dad a hundred times, then a stranger picked up his phone, which had been abandoned in a car park.
He was a security guard at a local football club and offered to show Mum CCTV to help find Dad.
‘When we arrived, it was a crime scene,’ Ubaid told me, saying the lane was cordoned off and a dead body was being put into a bag.
‘Don’t worry. It��
