When I was a teenager and still living in London, the coolest bloke on Fox Hill was my friend Atta Badar.
He was four years older, hair slicked back, favored black leather moccasins and had a Datsun he sometimes drove at maniac speeds down one-lane roads at night, with me in the back seat.
“Why do you like those odd shoes?” my mother once asked.
“They’re cool,” I told her. “Atta wears them.”
Atta was the big brother I didn’t have.
Now, I was back in London, visiting from Chicago for my father’s 92nd birthday — a good time, I thought, to look up a friend I hadn’t seen in 39 years.
My trip to England — my childhood home — was about not having regrets. I was there for Papa. I wanted to see the 16th Century mill my parents once owned — a cottage with a rescued child’s gravestone in a corner of the living room.
From London, I drove for six hours along a motorway that, by night, was down to a single lane so narrow the ancient hedgerows scraped both sides of the car.
I drank cloudy cider in a pub with ceiling beams worm-eaten and so low it looked like they’d been built for Hobbits. A man with a frizz of white hair invited my father and me into the mill that once belonged to us. Little Tomasina’s gravestone was still there.
I spoke at Papa’s birthday celebration, telling him his greatest gift to me is his thirst for life. Papa wiggled his hips to Stevie Wonder’s “Happy Birthday.”
Days later, Papa left for South Africa, and I took the train to my old neighborhood, Crystal Palace — named for the monumental cast-iron-and-glass structure built for the Great Exhibition of 1851.
I hiked to 21 Fox Hill, my old house. Two houses down, I knocked , and a woman I didn’t know answered: Naseem, Atta’s wife. She was sorry to tell me that Atta had had a stroke weeks before and was in a coma.
“You’re welcome to visit him in hospital,” she said. “But you might not want to.”
Yes, I wanted to … if only to say I’m sorry.
I had written to him in 2021. He wrote back: “Dear Stefano, I can’t tell you how delighted I am to hear from you after all these years. I have constantly wondered what had happened to you.”
He sent his phone number. But it was during the pandemic. I’d call later. I never did.
Now, I took the train to the hospital. Atta’s sister Shahida was there. As a little girl, she had to come in from playing long before her brothers. She’d watch enviously from a window. She’s 54 now. Married. Three kids.
She stroked Atta’s hand: “Atta, it’s your old friend Stefano. He’s come from Chicago to see you.”
I hardly recognized him. He’d lost his hair, had a thick, gray beard, and his chest expanded with a ventilator’s assist.
I held his hand and told him: “Atta, I have so many wonderful memories. You have to wake up. We have so much to talk about.”
He looked at peace — the opposite of the others in the room, all willing him to return to the conscious world.
At his bedside, we played catch-up. I remembered the shoebox filled with candies we ran back and forth on a cord from my house to his.
Atta has three daughters, four grandchildren and a Porsche. Naseem showed me a snapshot of Atta, his arms draped around two young grandchildren, sparks shooting from a cake for his surprise 60th birthday. He’s smiling.
After a time, I said my goodbyes, hugging these people I wished I’d kept in my life.
Back in Chicago, I’ve joined a WhatsApp group for Atta. Sometimes, he opens his eyes. But no one knows whether he’ll make it.
I’m pulling for him. I have so much to say. I’d like to go for a ride in his Porsche. Not at night, though. Maybe this time I’ll ask Atta if I can drive.
