“Be careful, Rana,” I pleaded, my voice hushed and deceptively calm while my insides roiled with anxiety. “Be careful. It’s an unfamiliar locale, and he’s a strange man.”

I was warning her away from her own father — ironic that the man who was to protect her now needed to be protected against! But he had long since separated from her mother for reasons unknown to me, and he no longer lived with nor supported the family – he hadn’t done so since she was a wee little girl. Instead, he visited every few months and whisked his adult children off to vacations at far-away resorts and other exotic places. She had confided to me how uncomfortable she felt when he hugged her to him and kissed her passionately on the mouth, sometimes repeatedly – even as she defended his exuberance in the next breath. She laughed as she described how he told her she was the very image of her mother – only sweeter, younger, happier than the older woman could ever be. And he had called her ‘luscious’ – which father would do such a thing? I could not hide my dismay when she told me how he had insisted upon sleeping with her in the queen-sized hotel bed. You should tell him that isn’t right! I exclaimed. She had refused, she said, and that was more than enough. He had become angry, almost petulant, it seemed from her description to me, lashing out against her, telling her she didn’t love him as she did her mother and was always trying to push him away. And yet she insisted he did no real harm, even when he took her about on his arm, seemingly unaware of her blushing hesitations as he flirted with her over expensive late-night dinners and hand-fed her delicate morsels of meat. Worse, he pretended she was his wife, encouraging her to play along in front of the local people. It’s for your own good, he insisted, they won’t lavish their attentions upon you this way.

I tried to ask her why she didn’t just say something to him, for I was not quite sure how to understand her pretend indifference. It seemed she felt that speaking out would mean acknowledging that something untoward was taking place, and for some reason that horrified her. Perhaps this was her way of denying the strange circumstances in which she’d been placed. And yet she seemed to appreciate her father’s attentions, for he had been absent from her life for so very long, and now here he was, spending days with her and complimenting her and buying clothes and jewellery to her heart’s content.

What scared me most was that there was a lot she did not tell me, a lot that went on that I did not know. Every time she returned, she was shattered. Bitterly angry not just at him, but at the male population at large. She hated them, she would exclaim. Those disgusting, vile creatures! I witnessed the way she treated those poor unsuspecting males who dared cross her path in the midst of those turbulent times and could only shake my head in sorrow at her unfortunate circumstances.

Then she told me how he had called her the other day offering the usual sweet nothings and excited promises. He wanted to take her to Italy. Without her sister this time. And she was packing her bags to go. How could she go back to him, after all that she had told me about him?

She did not look at me, and not wanting to hurt her, I did not voice my objections. But the silence became oppressive, and she broke it suddenly with a burst of anger. “I love him, okay? He’s my father! I have an obligation towards him!”

“No,” I murmured carefully, my heart sinking because I knew nothing I said would change her mind. “You are an adult, and first and foremost, you have an obligation to protect yourself!”

“But he’s my dad! You don’t understand! You have a normal life! I don’t, okay? I don’t!”

She was screaming now, and I did not know what to do. “Look, Rana, he’s behaving in an unfatherly fashion! You know that! How could you not? Perhaps the best way to fulfill your obligations to him as daughter is to stay away!

But she was soon gone, and I lived uncomfortably with the knowledge that I had pushed her away. Others told me about her, how she had quit her graduate studies and gone off to Egypt, how she had married an older man and soon divorced him. No, she did not speak to me thereafter, though I happened upon a notice in fine print on the last page of the local paper one day: Kamal Hassan was out of jail awaiting trial for the rape of a 26 year old girl. Rana Hassan, his dutiful daughter, had put up thousands of dollars in bail for him.