Mo

Just got done watching Mo and I really wish there was more such stories on TV. Mo is the story of a Palestenian refugee in USA who has been waiting for his asylum case to be heard for 22 years. The family fled from Kuwait during the Gulf War and the father died a few years after they arrived in the US and now it’s Mo, his autistic brother Sameer, their mother Yusra and sister Nadia who is married.

The show is a comedy and we initially meet Mo as a bumbling but charming son doing his best in the absence of a work permit to support his family. And we follow his life, his relationship with his girlfriend Maria and all his travails and tribulations and it’s all fun and games but towards the end it becomes such a meditation on family and it made a profound impact on me.

The absence of the father, the suffering of the family and all Palestinian people, the yearning for home, the gaping void left in the soul at being disconnected from one’s history - all of it was done so nicely. When I was younger I never understood what the big deal was about family. I could barely stand mine and I never missed them. Even when I got married and had a family of my own I just somehow assumed that this thing, this family, was some sort of trap.

But then slowly, through marriage and having a kid and going through life, I learned what it is. And then we got marooned at my in-laws place during COVID and I got the full Punjabi family experience over an extended period. The unconditionality of it. The beautiful chaos that fills up the void of loneliness. I see my son, loved and adored from both sides, all the support, all the people rooting for him, all the prayers and it fills my heart with such a love for my family.

I’ve started to miss my cousins. I’m making more of an effort on these relationships. I want a huge table on holiday with four families around them, three generations, dozens of people - and I feel this is all I will need to feel like the richest man on earth.

And even though the father is missing, Mo is also a meditation on fatherhood - the father who came to America and had to be a shopkeeper after being an engineer and just did whatever he had to to keep the family fed and clothed. Mo realises what a fuck up he is after he remembers what his father went through. Remember the father. And the mother. And your ancestors. They’ve been guardians of the lineage that birthed you.

These were some of the thoughts I had while watching Mo.

Damn, I am becoming such an uncle in my old age.