My father

My father was called Dario, not Dário, like everybody in Portugal - annoyingly, irritatingly - insisted on writing. How dare they correct me? I know my father's name, it's Dario. No accent, you hear me? No accent, full stop. Dario, like the Persian King of lore, the father of that other great ruler, Xerxes. From the old Persian Dârayavauš. Also known as Darius. We are talking civilisation here, people!

My father died in 1996. I sometimes miss him a lot, like some kind of physical pain that grows inside my gut and then goes up my chest, straight to my heart. It squeezes. Old Egyptians were right to think that the heart was the centre of our humanity, so many of our emotions seem to grow in there. What would our brain do without the heart and the gut? It wouldn't feel the same...

My missing him comes in waves. Like a tsunami. Like today. I was standing by the kitchen door towards the balcony watching the rain of polen be swept away in the yard, and then this yearning for my father came rushing through my body. I so wished he was there, turning the corner, smiling at me. Sometimes it happens when I'm walking in the street. I just wish he would turn up and hug me. I wish I could run to him and hug him. Hug him long and long, and still longer. I don't cry, I just feel my chest growing tight, a sort of pain. A good pain of saudades.

I don't believe in the afterlife, I never did as far as I can remember. But my father lives in me, in my gut, in my heart, in my brain. And his name still fills the airwaves of my emotion. Dario. No accent. You hear me? You hear me, you fools? How could I not know how to write and pronounce my father's name. It's the same name of a famous old Persian King. Persia is today's Iran. Persia was a great civilisation. Dârayavauš. Darius. Dario. In the name of my father.