“How can he swat an insect if he doesn’t have any arms or legs?” my father signed.
“Exactly. In order to swat something, you have to have at least one hand or one foot. You don’t understand it and I don’t understand it, but the man did kill the centipede. Maybe that’s why the story’s so beautiful. It’s about death. When death comes, nobody can escape it. The centipede’s time had come, so he had to die, his life was over, and if his life was over, even an armless and legless man could swat him to death. Do you have any other ideas?”
My father was silent. Then he laughed. “Clever,” he tapped the side of his head. “That was clever of the writer. Can you read me another story?”
“Another one?”
I don’t know why, but a well-known Persian story popped into my head. I thought it was one of Sa’di’s, yet I hunted through the book for a long time without finding it. Apparently this particular story had been written by someone else.
“What are you looking for?” my father asked.
“For a story about a tuti.”
“A tuti?”
“Yes, a beautiful, brightly coloured bird with a curved beak that can talk—a parrot.”
“A bird? That can talk?”
“Well, not really talk. It imitates what you say. But I can’t find the story in this book. It doesn’t matter, I learned it at school, I know it by heart.
“A long, long time ago there was a Persian spice merchant who had a parrot in a cage. It came from India, a land that’s far, far away. The bird longed for home. He was forever weeping and chirping: ‘Home, home, home.’
“One day, when the merchant was about to leave for India on business, he went to his parrot and asked him if he had a message for the parrots in India. ‘No, not really,’ said the parrot. ‘Just give them my regards and tell them I miss them.’
“Deep in an Indian forest, the merchant saw a parrot sitting in a tree. ‘My parrot sends you his regards,’ the merchant said. ‘He misses his fellow parrots very much.’
“Suddenly the parrot fell out of the tree and died.”
“It died?” my father asked.
“Hold on. The merchant came back from his trip and the parrot asked him if he had a message from the parrots in India. ‘No, no message,’ the merchant said. ‘I did speak to a parrot, but when I gave him your regards and told him you missed your fellow parrots, he suddenly fell out of the tree and died.’ ‘It died?’ said the parrot, and he also dropped dead.”
“That one, too?” my father asked in surprise.
“Yes, the merchant’s parrot also dropped dead.”
“How did that happen?”
“Hold on. The man clutched his head. ‘Oh, my parrot, my poor parrot. I shouldn’t have told him.’ But there was nothing he could do, the parrot was dead. He took the lifeless body out of its cage and threw it on the rubbish heap. Suddenly the parrot began to move, and then it flew off. ‘Where are you going?’ the merchant cried. ‘Back home, back home, back home,’ the parrot replied.”
My father looked at me in surprise. At first he was silent, then he laughed out loud and signed, “Clever. The two parrots were very clever. A beautiful story. Beautiful.”
We stayed on the roof a bit longer. While I leafed through the books, he sat beside me, lost in thought.
“The looms,” he suddenly signed. “The looms in the factory are always going through my head, even in my sleep. I … I don’t know, but I wish I could … that I didn’t have to … the work gives me a headache, you know, and upsets my stomach.”
That was the first time he’d complained to me so clearly about his work. I could tell by his eyes that it wasn’t a foolish complaint but a cry for help.
“My throat hurts and is always swollen,” he continued. “Sometimes I can’t breathe, I suddenly have to gasp for air. I … I don’t want to go to the factory ever again, but I can’t quit, I’ve got four children to feed.”
I looked at his thin face and wondered what I could do to help him.
“The threads are always getting stuck in the machine,” he signed. “I try to watch. I look at them, but I don’t see them. Then the boss comes over and yells at me. Everybody stares and they all shake their heads and say that Akbar’s stupid. What do you think I should do?”
He’d asked me a clear question and I, Ishmael, needed to give him a clear answer. If I didn’t help him, who would? My duty was not to think of Tina and my sisters, but of Akbar. I’d been born to serve him, so I had to save him. Suddenly I knew what to do.
“You have to die,” I signed.
“What?”
“Die. Like the parrot. Fall down.”
He didn’t know what I meant.
“What do you mean? How? Fall down where?”
“Between the looms. Just keel over suddenly. Drop dead.”
The next day five factory workers carried my father home. They laid him on his deathbed and left.
He immediately opened his eyes, grabbed his cane and his carpet-mending gear and escaped into the mountains.
I wonder where he went.
Golden Bell
Soon we’ll run into Marianne.
We’ll also get to know Golden Bell.
And we’ll knock on the door of Dr Pur Bahlul.
I’m going to save for a later chapter the subject of where my father went, what he did in the mountains and who he slept with during the months of his absence, because I don’t want to let my imagination run wild. That’s the reason I try to limit myself to actual events, to something that I myself have seen or heard or read in his notes. Consequently, I won’t be chasing through the mountains after my father in this chapter. Instead, I’m going to let him wander off and do whatever he pleases, sleep with whoever he wants and build up his strength again, because difficult times lie ahead. In other words, I’m going to leave him to his own devices for a while and tell another story until he gets back.
• • •
The summer is over, but a few days ago the weather suddenly turned hot again. There’s a lake about six miles from my house. I got out my bicycle and biked over to it, so I could swim and write in peace.
I went to the lake a lot this summer. I’d swim a lap, then roll out my mat and write.
The first time I went there was with Marianne, a woman I’d met two years ago in a literary café. She lived in Amsterdam, but was house-sitting for a friend. I’d noticed her before during the poetry nights at the café, without realising that she came to the polder especially for the poetry nights. She invariably read aloud the poems of famous dead poets. Thanks to her readings, I became acquainted with the masters of Dutch poetry, particularly J. C. Bloem. She’s the one who introduced me to the following poem:
In Memoriam
The weather changes, autumn is returning.
Leaves gild the water as they have before,
And fall to earth, down to the shadowy yearning
Of living hearts. He’ll see it nevermore.
How much he would have loved these dusky streets,
This atmosphere, befogged and sanctified,
Pavement, abandoned as the day retreats,
Turned damp and unfamiliar and wide.
But he was destined for the silent things
With which we live—not all of us so long—
The truths each heart expresses when it sings,
Until we sink, and with us sinks the song.
That season too was fall; the leaves return,
Though lives do not, once their brief day has fled.
We learned how cruelly human hearts can burn,
Standing in his still chamber, by the bed.
For me, this memory will not fade away:
So unlike sleep, death’s utter lack of sound.
Life is a miracle renewed each day,
And each awakening a new life found.
And now I find myself back in this blessed
Season of fallen leaves on water, gleaming
Like
the pale sun of dead days laid to rest.
But how much longer shall I go on dreaming?
This weary life of toil leaves us breathless.
And what remains? What’s left worth longing for?
For him and me, an autumn that is deathless:
Sun, mist, and silence, and forever more.
I’ve included this poem in my book because of my father’s unexpressed longings. Marianne explained to me that J. C. Bloem was the poet of longing and that he’d once described himself as “divinely unfulfilled”.
Marianne also writes poems. I didn’t know that until one evening when I happened to stop by the café on a non-poetry night. She was sitting at a table, having a drink. She was my age and this was the first time I’d ever spoken to her without other people around.
“Look who’s here!” she said in a friendly voice. We began to talk and we’ve been friends ever since. I don’t know if “friends” is the right word to describe our relationship. Anyway, one day she said she was going to the lake and asked if I wanted to come along, too.
I didn’t know how to swim, but Marianne assured me I could learn.
“You have to learn!” she exclaimed. I went with her. The lake was in a quiet spot, and she and I were the only people there.
For one entire week we biked to the lake every day and Marianne taught me how to swim. On the last day she stood in the middle of the lake, spread her arms out wide and called, “Come!”
I swam and battled my way through the water until I reached her.
Then I clung to her and she clung to me.
Once more I laid my mat under the trees at the edge of the lake, in hope of getting some writing done. It was hot and muggy, so I thought, Why not go for a swim first? I waded into the water. It wasn’t the first time I’d gone swimming by myself. Once I’d even swum five laps. I swam calmly away from the shore, but before I’d gone even a hundred yards, I had a sudden panic attack. I turned and headed back to the shore, yet no matter how hard I swam, I didn’t seem to be going anywhere. I was seized with fear. I looked around, but there wasn’t a soul in sight. All my swimming skills were instantly forgotten. I shouted for help, then shouted again, sure that I was going to drown. As I sank, I thrashed around in the water. All of a sudden my foot touched bottom. One hard stroke, then another, and I could stand up.
I knelt on the mat, lay my head on the ground, and wept. I had no idea why, or who the tears were for.
I gathered up my belongings, including the notebook, and biked home.
I’m usually strong and not easily frightened, but now, for the first time, fear has burrowed into the innermost recesses of my soul. Is it because I’ve been working on the notebook, writing a book in Dutch and going to classes, all at the same time? A heavy load. I’ve been working hard the last few months—not taking any breaks, spending day and night trying to whip this book into shape. That must be the reason. Fear has found my weak spot. I’ll never go in the water again, or at any rate I’ll keep my feet firmly on the ground until this book is finished.
The day I swam out to Marianne and clung to her in the middle of the lake, she gave me a book. Not then, but later, after we’d changed out of our wet bathing suits. It was a volume of poetry by the Dutch poet Jan Slauerhoff.
“Here,” she said, “think of it as your swim certificate.”
The title of one of the poems was “My Daughter Golden Bell”:
At not quite forty, I had a daughter,
And quickly dubbed her Golden Bell.
In the year since she was born,
She’s learned to sit, but not yet talk.
The poem goes on, though I’ve quoted only these four lines.
Maybe it’s a coincidence, maybe not, but my youngest sister’s nickname was Zanguli, which can be translated as Golden Bell.
Zanguli is not a pretty name for a Persian girl. Her real name is Mahbubi.
My father was afraid that his children would be deafmutes. So great was his fear that he wasn’t even present at the birth of his first two daughters.
I remember when my youngest sister was born. I was standing at my father’s side when the midwife laid the baby in his arms. He held her to his chest with one hand and pulled a tiny golden bell out of his pocket with the other. He rang it softly next to her ear. The baby opened her eyes and looked up at him.
“Did you see that?” he signed, glowing with happiness. “Did you see that? She’s not deaf! She can hear!”
Then he handed me the bell and said, “You try it!” I rang it softly and my sister opened her eyes for a second time and looked at me.
“Did you see that?” my father said again and he laughed out loud, so loud that she started to cry.
So that’s how she came to be our baby, to belong to my father and me. And also how her name came to be Golden Bell in my father’s sign language.
He had different names for all of us, and he changed them whenever there was a major change in our lives. For example, in the beginning I was called Mine.
When he put his right hand to the left side of his chest, everyone knew he was referring to Ishmael. Later he changed my name to The Boy Who Crawls Under the Blankets and Reads. When I went to the university, he called me The Man Who Wears Glasses. Two years later I became The Man Who Is Never Here. And after that I was no doubt known as The Man Who Went Away. But he never changed Golden Bell’s name. She was always Golden Bell.
She was different from the start. Golden Bell immediately became my father’s favourite daughter. She, too, had been born to ease my father’s suffering. That’s how nature—or the god of deaf-mutes—works.
As a baby, she used to crawl happily to the door the moment she heard his footsteps. She was a divine gift.
Later, when he came home exhausted from his work in the factory, she massaged his shoulders. When he was sick, she made him soup. Years later, when I was a student in Tehran, she brought him there for his very first visit and showed him around. (I’d promised to show him Tehran, but hadn’t kept my promise.) She had a camera and she took pictures of him in various places. There was a good one of him standing by the statue of Reza Shah. She had put her arm around his waist and asked a passer-by to photograph them together. Then she’d taken him to the airport so he could see how planes fly. Every evening they’d gone to a movie theatre where a series of Charlie Chaplin movies was being shown.
Golden Bell was our great joy as well as our great sorrow.
A natural division had taken place in our family: Golden Bell and I were on my father’s side, while my sisters Marzi and Enzi were usually on my mother’s side. They seemed to get along better with Tina. Golden Bell didn’t. Why not? I don’t really know, but maybe we’ll find out as the story unfolds. Still, one thing can’t be denied: Golden Bell was my father’s favourite daughter.
Now that we know who Golden Bell is, I’m going to go back in time so we can see what’s happened to my father.
When he first came down from the mountains, I barely recognised him. He wasn’t at all like the man I’ve written about in the previous chapters. He was older and smaller.
Late one evening there was a knock at the door. I switched on the hall light, opened the door and got a shock. He looked ill and he didn’t seem to have a tooth left in his mouth. He stared at me—another cry for help. I took his arm and led him into the light.
“Open your mouth,” I said.
He opened his mouth. His teeth were rotten: all black and broken. (How could I not have noticed that before?)
“It hurts,” he signed. “It hurts all the time.”
His eyes filled with tears. At last someone had noticed, at last someone had realised that he was in pain. It took me a few moments to remember who I was and what my function was in this household. I smoothed back his grey hair. “I’ll take care of it,” I signed. “Everything will be all right. I’ll make the pain go away.”
He bowed his head. Good God, he bowed his head to me in thanks.
• �
� •
We didn’t have enough money to get his teeth fixed, but that was beside the point. What mattered was that I do something about the pain.
We had a few dentists in our city. We also had a clinic, but rich people, or anyone who could afford private care, avoided going there, because you had to wait so long to see a doctor or a dentist. Queues formed early in the morning. Some people even brought blankets and slept there overnight.
The queue for the dentist was the longest. Sometimes you had to sleep there three nights in a row just to reach the door. Once you got inside, the dentist simply pulled out your aching tooth and sent you home with a couple of painkillers. You had no right to any other treatment. I’ve seen old men reduced to tears by toothaches.
With such an inhumane system, how would I be able to help my father?
One morning, hours before school started, I went into town to find a dentist. There were three of them. As it turned out, they were all closed until ten o’clock. In the window of the first was a note stating that no new appointments could be made for the next two months. The second dentist had a fancy office with a big sign above the door: THE LATEST IN TECHNOLOGY FOR ALL YOUR DENTAL NEEDS.
You were supposed to call for an appointment, but there was only one public phone booth in the entire city. Besides, I’d never even touched a telephone.
After seeing their offices, I knew those two dentists would never let my father and his broken teeth through the door. So I set off for the last dentist. His office was in his home, just outside the city centre. It was an old, large house with a classical gateway. A simple sign said: PUR BAHLUL, D.D.S. MONDAY TO THURSDAY, 3:00–7:00 P.M.
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