The train conductor kept my father’s seat empty

Dear Delyara, My father took the same train to work for thirty-four years, always in the second carriage, always beside the window, always with a steel lunchbox on his knees. After he retired, he still rode the route every Friday because he said the conductor would miss him. He died in January. This morning, I boarded that train for the first time since the funeral. The conductor recognised me immediately. He did not say he was sorry. He simply placed his hand on the window seat and said, “Your father sat here.” Then he stopped another passenger from taking it. For the entire journey, the seat remained empty beside me while people stood in the aisle. I wanted to tell him not to inconvenience anyone, but I could not make the words come. At each station, vendors called out tea, newspapers, boiled peanuts, and the whole carriage moved around the absence as if it were another passenger. When I reached my father’s old stop, the conductor tapped the metal frame twice, exactly the way he used to signal that Father should wake up. I got off carrying no lunchbox, no briefcase, only the strange comfort of knowing one ordinary man had occupied one ordinary seat long enough for someone else to remember the shape of him.