The Author
A literary memoir · Seeking its first readers
A memoir by Zafar Sadeed
A father who gave his children everything.
Except enough of his time.
Twenty years. Four countries. A career built across
departures and a family that stayed. This is what it cost.
From Chapter One — The Cost No Spreadsheet Carries
The night before I leave, the youngest resists sleep. Water. Another hug. A question. A toy missing. The blanket wrong. The door too open. The door too closed. Each request is small enough to be reasonable and frequent enough to reveal the truth underneath it.
She is not thirsty.
She is keeping me in the room.
I sit beside her longer than planned.
Her hand finds my wrist in the dark.
“Are you going tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
“For how many sleeps?”
Children measure absence with sleep because sleep is the only unit that belongs to them. She counts on her fingers even though the number is too large for fingers. Then she starts again, as if the problem might become smaller if she counted it differently.
“But after that you come back?”
“Yes.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
She considers this with the seriousness of a child negotiating with the calendar. Then she takes one of my folded shirts from the suitcase and places it beside her pillow.
“This one stays,” she says.
Not a request.
A treaty.
— Eat Yours Before It Melts, Chapter One
This is what it reads like. Join the first readers →
The Book
Eat Yours Before It Melts is a literary memoir about what it costs to give your children a better life.
Written across twenty years of postings in India, the Gulf, Canada, and Qatar, it is a father’s record of what was built and what was missed — the birthdays attended by phone, the lunches that were not made, the ordinary Tuesday evenings that became the memories his children carry now, without him in them.
This is not a book about success. It is a book about presence — and what happens when the person who loves you most is also the one who keeps leaving.
“Not the pain of leaving — the pain of being absent from a memory while it was being born.”— from Chapter 23
The manuscript is complete. Thirty-nine chapters, seven parts, seventy-three thousand words. Written with the urgency of someone who has counted the cost, and decided it is time to tell the truth.
For readers of Educated, Crying in H Mart, and When Breath Becomes Air.
The Author
Get involved
01 — Beta Readers
I am looking for 50 readers before September 2026. You will receive a PDF of the full manuscript. I ask for one honest response — what worked, what did not, and whether you finished it.
No newsletters. One email when the manuscript is ready.
You’re on the list. I’ll be in touch when the manuscript is ready.
The manuscript is submission-ready. Thirty-nine chapters, seven parts, seventy-three thousand words. Comparable titles: Educated, Crying in H Mart, When Breath Becomes Air. Happy to share the full manuscript on request.
Get in touchTwo decades of work across four countries. If you arrived from LinkedIn, or would like to follow this book’s journey to publication, let’s connect.
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