My Father's Notebook

by Kader Abdolah

  But this memento of its loved one merely made it weep.

  “Why bewail this token of your heart’s desire?” I cried.

  “It makes me long for her all the more,” the songbird sighed.

  The first words to reach Ishmael’s brain were about love, sadness and the longing for a loved one.

  Then Kazem Khan handed the child to Aga Akbar. “Here, your son!”

  The women uttered a cry of joy.

  Kazem Khan’s voice was the first voice Ishmael heard. Or so he thought. Years later, when he was trying to decipher his father’s notebook, he discovered that things hadn’t happened quite that way.

  Ishmael had always had trouble with his left ear. His father knew why. He’d tried to tell his son something about the midwife and the book and the ear and the stupidity of a new father, but Ishmael hadn’t understood.

  What actually happened (according to Aga Akbar’s notes) was this:

  I was sitting with the men. I didn’t know if the baby had been born

  yet. Suddenly I saw Kazem Khan’s gold tooth gleam. I knew then that the baby had been born. My aunt came in with the baby in her arms. I was afraid the baby would be a deaf-mute like me, and I wanted to see if he was deaf. I know it was wrong, but suddenly I stood up, ran over to my aunt, took the baby from her, put mymouth to his ear and spoke into it. The baby screamed and turned blue. Kazem Khan snatched him from me and shoved me out of the house. I went and stood at the window. Everyone frowned at me. I had shouted into the baby’s ear. Everyone said it would be damaged for good. It was stupid of me, stupid. Akbar is stupid.

  Damaged? No, not really, but whenever Ishmael was sick, or under stress, or feeling discouraged, whenever he fell down and had to stand up again, a voice shouted in his ear. His father’s voice. Aga Akbar was always inside him.

  BOOK II

  New Ground

  New Ground

  Ishmael is in doubt. He isn’t sure he can

  get his father’s story down on paper.

  After long hesitation, he picks up his pen.

  A well-known Dutch classic begins like this:

  I am a coffee broker, and I live at No. 37 Lauriergracht, Amsterdam. I am not in the habit of writing novels or things of that sort, and so I have been a long time making up my mind to buy a few extra reams of paper and start on the work which you, dear reader, have just taken up, and which you must read if you are a coffee broker, or if you are anything else. Not only have I never written anything that resembled a novel, I don’t even like reading such things, because I’m a businessman. For years I’ve been asking myself what is the use of them, and I am amazed at the impudence with which a poet or story-teller dares to palm off on you something that never happened, and usually never could happen. If I, in my line—I am a coffee broker, and I live at 37 Lauriergracht—gave a statement to a principal—a principal’s someone who sells coffee—which contained only a small portion of the untruths that form the greater part of all poems and all novels, he would transfer his business to Busselinck & Waterman at once. They’re coffee brokers, too, but you don’t need to know their address. So, then … I take good care not to write any novels, or make any other false statements. And I may say I have always noticed that people who go in for such things generally come to a bad end. I am forty-three years old, I’ve been on ’Change for twenty years, so I can come forward if anyone’s called for who has experience. I’ve seen a good many firms go down! And usually, when I looked for the reasons, it seemed to me that they had to be sought in the wrong course most of the people had taken in their youth.

  Truth and common sense—that’s what I say, and I’m sticking to it. Naturally I make an exception for the Holy Scrip ture….

  Nothing but lies! …

  Mind you, I’ve no objection to verses in themselves. If you want words to form fours, it’s all right with me! But don’t say anything that isn’t true. “The air is raw, the clock strikes four.” I’ll let that pass, if it really is raw, and if it really is four o’clock. But if it’s a quarter to three, then I, who don’t range my words in line, will say, “The air is raw, and it is a quarter to three.” But the versifier is bound to four o’clock by the rawness of the first line. For him, it has to be exactly four o’clock, or else the air mustn’t be raw. And so he starts tampering with the truth. Either the weather has to be changed, or the time. And in that case, one of the two is false….

  Nothing but lies, I tell you!

  And then, this business about virtue rewarded! Oh, oh, oh! I’ve been a coffee broker for seventeen years—37 Lauriergracht—so I’ve seen quite a bit in my time; but I can’t help always getting frightfully annoyed when I see God’s precious truth so shamefully distorted. Virtue rewarded? If it was, wouldn’t that make virtue an article of commerce? Things just aren’t like that in the world, and it’s a good thing they’re not. For what merit would there be in virtue if it was rewarded? So why do people have to invent such infamous lies?…

  All lies, abominable lies!

  I’m virtuous myself, but do I ask a reward for it? … And the fact that I am virtuous can be seen from my love of truth. That is my strongest characteristic, after my devotion to the Faith. And I should like you to be convinced of this, reader, because it is my excuse for writing this book…. I am, let me say, a coffee broker, 37 Lauriergracht. Well then, reader, it is my unimpeachable love of truth, and my enthusiasm for business, that you have to thank for these pages.

  Reader! I’ve included this passage from Multatuli’s Max Havelaar because what that coffee broker says has parallels to my story. Multatuli writes about a Mr Droogstoppel, a coffee broker living at No. 37 Lauriergracht. That same Mr Droogstoppel tells us, in turn, the story of Max Havelaar. And that’s how you end up reading a book about both a coffee broker and a man named Max Havelaar.

  In the novel, Mr Droogstoppel is given a package—the writings of Max Havelaar. He uses it to write a book.

  A few months ago, I, too, received a package—my father’s notebook. I’ve never written a book before, but I’d like to try and write one now, because, if it’s at all possible, I’d like to put my father’s writings into a readable form.

  “Nothing but lies,” says the coffee broker. “All nonsense and lies.”

  I admit that I’ve set about my work in the same way. I’m not a coffee broker and I’ve never been involved in the coffee trade. I’m a foreigner who’s been living in Holland for several years.

  My name is Ishmael, Ishmael Mahmud Ghaznavi Khorasani. I don’t live at 37 Lauriergracht, but at 21 Nieuwgracht. And I don’t live in Amsterdam, but in the Flevopolder—the reclaimed ground that the Dutch have wrested from the sea.

  I’m sitting at my desk in the attic, staring out of the window. Everything in the Flevopolder is new: the soil still smells of fish, the trees are young and the birds build their nests with fresh twigs. There are no ancient words, no ancient love stories, no ancient feuds.

  Everything in my father’s notebook is old: the mountains, the well, the cave, the cuneiform relief, even the railway. That’s why I don’t dare put pen to paper. I can’t imagine writing a novel on this new ground.

  I look at the dyke and see the sea. At least the sea is old, though, to be honest, it isn’t actually the sea anymore, but just a small part of it that’s been dyked-in by the Dutch. Much as I, a little patch of ancient Persian culture, have been surrounded by a Dutch dyke.

  Maybe this ex-sea can help me.

  The city in which I live is new, but the remains of ancient habitation are all around me. That’s exactly what I need.

  Just as Holland invented this ground, this landscape, I can use my father’s cuneiform writings to invent something new.

  There are poets in this polder and I know a number of them. We meet once a month in a new café and read our work to each other.

  Here are a few poems from a collection titled Flevoland. Annemarie wrote:

  Above this landscape

&nbs
p; the wind breathes like a father

  caresses the waves from time to time

  and buttresses the voices in the land.

  Tineke penned these lines:

  Man and his machines have come.

  There where wind and waves

  played their powerful games

  the tide was turned.

  The sea bed has been laid bare.

  And Margryt wrote this poem:

  No language. No ancient tale that you can

  fall back on. Land stretching into infinity.

  A map, plotting a railway track, and bridges

  connecting one blank space to another. Not a word

  to assure us that this will be a safe place to live.

  I’m writing my story in Dutch—the language of the Dutch classics and thus of the following long-dead writers and poets: the anonymous author of the miracle play Mariken van Nieumeghen, Carel van Mander, Alfred Hegenscheidt, Willem van Hildegaersberch, Agathan Marius Courier, Dubekart, Antonie van der Woordt, Dirck Raphaëlsz Camp huysen, Caspar van Baerle, also known as Barlaeus, and, in more recent centuries, Louis Couperus and Eduard Douwes Dekker, also known as Multatuli.

  I write in my new language because that’s what refugees do.

  I begin:

  Every one of the blind men in the village had a son. A coincidence? I don’t know, but I suspect it’s nature’s way of making up the balance.

  The sons became their fathers’ eyes. The moment the baby started to crawl, the blind father placed the palm of his left hand on the baby’s shoulder and showed him how to be his guide. The child soon realised that he was an extension of his father.

  The sons of the deaf-mutes had an even more difficult task, since they had to serve as the mouths, minds and memories of their fathers. The families and the other villagers did their best to teach these boys the language of adults. The imams even taught them how to read the Holy Book at a very young age. They had little contact with other children, since they were always with the men. They were expected to fulfil family obligations and to be present at both feasts and funerals.

  In the deepest darkness of my memory, a baby crawls over the floor. A hand appears, takes hold of its head from behind and gently turns it upwards and to the right. This is followed by the words “Negah kon. Negah kon. An-ja negah kon”—“Look, look up here.”

  The baby looks up at a mouth, at a man, at the father who smiles.

  Another scene hangs like a black-and-white photograph in the strong-room of my memory. I’m sitting on my knees on a carpet beneath an old almond tree, with my head bent over a book. An aged hand appears and points to a verse in the book. I can’t see which poem it is, but the smell of opium suddenly fills my nostrils, and I recall the love poem of the medieval Persian poet Hafez:

  Gar che sad rud ast az chesh-e man rawan.

  Yad-e rud zendeh-kar an yad bad.

  Tears of longing roll down my cheeks like a hundred rivers,

  And remind me of the river flowing through my home town.

  Otherwise I remember very little. But in the next chapter our belongings are being loaded into a covered wagon. We’re moving. I was only seven or eight years old, and yet the scene stands out clearly in my memory. I see my mother running to the house of Kazem Khan. I hear her call: “Uncle! Help! Akbar’s gone mad!”

  Then I hear the clatter of hooves as Kazem Khan’s horse gallops into our courtyard.

  “Where’s Akbar?”

  Moving

  Aga Akbar suddenly decides to move.

  Why? No one knows.

  Life in Saffron Village went on as usual. My mother, Tina, had three other children—three girls. Aga Akbar was, therefore, the father of four healthy children, who not only could hear well but could also express themselves extremely well in both Farsi and sign language.

  Akbar worked as hard as he always had and gave all of his earnings to Tina, leaving household matters and the raising of the children to her. He still travelled a lot. Sometimes he was gone for a week or even longer.

  “Where’s Akbar?”

  “Working.”

  “Where?”

  “On the other side of the mountain.”

  “He has enough customers here. What’s he doing on the other side of the mountain?”

  No one knew exactly where he went. Or who he slept with. (There’s no reference to this in his notebook.)

  I don’t really know what Tina was doing in those days or how she dealt with Akbar. Nor do I know what the first few months of her marriage were like. She never discussed it.

  “Mother, how did you learn sign language?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. It was so long ago, I’ve forgotten.”

  “Wasn’t it hard, suddenly having to live with a man you couldn’t talk to?”

  “I don’t know, it was all so long ago.”

  She never mentioned her own mother and father. It was as though she didn’t have any family, as though she were an orphan, nobody’s daughter. Everything I knew about her I had learned from Kazem Khan.

  “Was your father a hunter?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about your mother? I don’t know anything about her.”

  “I don’t, either. She died when I was very young.”

  In fact, her childhood, youth and first years of marriage had been neatly tied into a bundle and tucked away. “I don’t know” was her standard reply.

  I stopped asking questions. But now that I live in the polder and take walks along the dyke, these questions occur more often.

  I don’t want to get bogged down in the past, but until you’ve come to terms with it, you can’t really settle into a new culture.

  That’s why I’ve become so engrossed in my father’s notebook. After all, his story is also my story. If I can transform his writing into Dutch, I’ll be able to adjust to my new culture more easily.

  During yesterday’s walk, I thought back to that first meeting between Tina and Kazem Khan. To the scene in which Kazem Khan rides around in search of the hunter so he can smoke opium and Tina clears snow from the roof.

  I now wonder how much of that story is true. Perhaps Kazem Khan made it up, since the Tina in the story bears little resemblance to my mother.

  Perhaps he exaggerated a bit and turned Tina into his dream woman.

  Tina was a good mother and she had a strong personality, but she was definitely not the Tina on the roof.

  She got fed up with Akbar sometimes and buckled under the weight on her shoulders. One incident stands out clearly in my mind:

  Kazem Khan came into our house. Tina screamed, “I can’t stand it! I can’t live with that man one day longer!” Then she began to beat herself over the head and kept it up until she fainted.

  Kazem Khan grabbed her by the shoulders and dragged her to bed.

  “The Holy Book,” Kazem Khan murmured.

  I took the Koran down from the mantel and handed it to him. He knelt in front of Tina’s bed and read from it softly: “Eqra: be-asme rabbeka alazi khalaqa. Khalaqa al-ensana min allaqin. Eqra: wa rabbok al-akram, alazi allama be el-qalam.”

  As I walked along the dyke, I recalled another scene from that same period:

  A covered wagon creaked into view. My father was at the reins. He drove through the gate of our house, said nothing to Tina, but signed to me, “Come! I need your help!”

  He unhitched the horse and led it to the stall. Then he pushed the covered wagon into the barn, where he spent the entire evening. Tina was restless. She knew that something was about to happen, but she also knew she was powerless to prevent it.

  “What’s your father doing?” Tina called.

  “I don’t know. The door’s locked from the inside.”

  He stayed in the barn until late that night.

  Early the next morning I woke to the sound of an angry voice in the courtyard.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Tina screamed at Akbar.

  I leapt out of bed a
nd looked out of the window. My father had crammed all of our carpets, blankets, buckets and pots and pans into the covered wagon and was now going inside to get my sisters, who were still in bed.

  “Help, Ishmael! Go and get—” Tina called.

  I raced downstairs and ran all the way to Kazem Khan’s house in my bare feet. “Come quickly, Uncle,” I shouted. “My father’s gone mad.”

  Here in the polder I hear the hoofbeats of Kazem Khan’s horse as it galloped into our courtyard.

  “Where’s Akbar?” called Kazem Khan.

  My father had laid my still-sleepy sisters in the wagon and covered them with a blanket. Kazem Khan swiftly dismounted and gestured to my father with his crop, “Come here!”

  My father didn’t budge.

  “What on earth are you doing?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “What’s going on in that head of yours?”

  “We’re moving to the city,” my father signed.

  “Have you discussed this with Tina?”

  No response.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  No response.

  Kazem Khan pointed to the wagon. “Unload it! Take everything out!”

  Tina took me inside so I wouldn’t have to watch.

  “You’ve got four children now,” I heard Kazem Khan say angrily. “But you still do stupid things! Unload this wagon!”

  I thought my father would start lugging carpets and blankets back inside, but he didn’t.

  “Unload it, I said!”

  I peeked out from behind the curtain.

  Akbar signed to Kazem Khan that he was going to move to the city no matter what and that he had no intention of unloading our things.

  Kazem Khan stood helplessly beside the wagon. Then he stuck his crop under his arm and strode over to his horse. He grabbed the reins and led the horse to the gate.