Forgiveness isn’t a destination. It’s a journey. Mine began on an escalator at Berlin Brandenburg airport. It was a Sunday afternoon. I was heading up to the check-in counters for my return flight to Istanbul, where I’ve lived for the past few years. On the other side, people were heading down – fresh off flights into Berlin. I was daydreaming, my eyes drifting across bags and figures, when I paused at a brown leather bag and a light linen suit. Charming travel outfit, I thought. Relaxed. Timeless. Someone must’ve had a lovely weekend, maybe somewhere on the Mediterranean. I only saw the man’s face as he passed me – and suddenly I couldn’t breathe.

I knew him. He was my father.

Had he seen me, too? Unlikely. Who expects to run into their estranged daughter, whom they haven’t seen in years, on an airport escalator? For a moment, I thought about turning around, going back down, catching up with him and simply saying hello. But there was too much between us for a casual hello. And somehow, I liked the almost cinematic quality of the scene. We had, unknowingly, shared a moment – one that was tender, peaceful.

For the first time, I looked at my father differently. I didn’t see the man whose absence I’ve been trying to come to terms with since childhood. Here at Berlin airport, in all its unpredictability, he became just one of many. Someone who, like me, travels on Sundays, prefers a leather bag over a bulky suitcase and dresses casually. Someone you see on an escalator and think: nice guy. And that changed everything between us.

The American psychiatrist and therapist Phil Stutz knows this phenomenon. In the documentary Stutz, he describes how his own mother was abandoned by her father without warning – and spent 40 years trapped in a maze of anger and resentment. She refused to forgive him and held on to the pain. But Stutz is radical in this regard. He says: “We don’t have time for that kind of bullshit. Life is too short. And the restitution we’re hoping for doesn’t come........

© The Guardian