My father came from a long lineage of military men. They held distinguished titles like Air Marshall and Brigadier General. In the early 1960s, before I was born, my father retired from the Pakistani Navy and went into the chicken business. After that he was still known as Commander Afzal Khan or Commander Saab.

My parents were married in 1954. My mother, Sunnaiya, or Sunny as she was called affectionately by family and friends, was just eighteen years old, my father about nine years older. Shortly after their wedding, my father was posted to the UK. And my mother, who came from a wealthy family, had to adjust to living on a military salary. She wrote in a letter to a friend in November 1954, “Can you imagine I do all the sheets and towels by hand? I cook, clean, wash, iron, and in short am a drudge of all work and yet don’t seem to mind in the least as Afzal’s image is always in my mind and his love in my thoughts.”

The love between Sunny and Afzal was strong, but I’m sure living on a tight budget had its challenges,  especially for a woman who was used to every luxury. At one point while they were living in England, as my mother once recounted to me, she said to my father, “I wish we could have chicken for dinner just one night.” And he replied, “If you wanted chicken for dinner, you should have married someone else.”

Hearing this story growing up, I always thought it was romantic that my father chose to go into the chicken business. His business choice probably had more to do with the fact that Pakistan was a new nation, not even twenty years old, and there were many opportunities in building the agricultural infrastructure of the country, but I think it’s romantic that he chose chickens.

In any case, he purchased a subsidiary of Arbor Acres Inc., which was headquartered in Glastonbury, Connecticut and went on to become a very successful businessman until he became ill and passed away in the late 1980s. Now the family company is basically defunct, although  my eldest brother continues to benefit financially from my parents estate. He’s the only one among us who got anything from their estate, refusing to share it with his siblings, but that’s another story.

In its heyday, the motto for Arbor Acres  was “Chicks is Our Business.” I wonder if I took this very literally on  some kind of subconsious level. For one thing  there is this issue that I am a lesbian, and now I work in women’s philanthropy. Chicks is my business too.