My Father's Notebook

by Kader Abdolah

  The wind was blowing sand in our eyes and mouths. We needed to find a place where we could warm ourselves inside and out, so we went to a nearby teahouse.

  “How are you, Ishmael?” the owner asked as he wiped the table. “What are father and son doing in my teahouse? Important business?”

  “The autumn wind brought us here.”

  “Welcome. You’re the finest boy in the area. If I had a daughter, you’d be the perfect son-in-law. You take good care of your father and your sisters. Boys these days have no respect for their parents. You’re a good boy. This first round is on the house. And here’s a bowl of fresh dates to go with it.”

  “Fresh dates in the cold autumn?”

  “Oh, I just said the first thing that popped into my head. You see, you’re different. You listen. Boys don’t listen anymore. Here, scoot over towards the heater, where it’s nice and warm. Praise be to Allah! You respect your parents.”

  It was the first time I’d taken my father to that teahouse. Maybe that’s why he realised that I had something important to tell him.

  “I’ve finished high school,” I began. “I’ve stopped going to—”

  “You’ve stopped going to school?”

  “I’ve graduated. I don’t have to go anymore. But I’m going to study somewhere else. What I mean to say is, I’m leaving home.”

  He sat bolt upright.

  “Leaving home? Why? Where?”

  “I have to read other kinds of books.”

  “Can’t you get the books here?”

  “It’s not just the books. I have to go to another school, to a university, a big school in the capital, where the shah lives.”

  “OK, I understand that you’re going to a big school in the city of the shah, but not what kind of books you’re going to read.”

  “Books about light, for example.”

  “Light?”

  “About darkness and light, about air, about aeroplanes, about—”

  “Air? Aeroplanes?”

  “Yes, air is very important. Aeroplanes can’t fly without air.”

  My father thought it over. He had no concept of a university, didn’t understand how a person could die without air, had no idea where Tehran was located and was puzzled by my field of study, but he did realise that something important was about to happen. He slumped back against the chair, exhausted.

  “What’s the matter? I’m not dying, I’ll be back. The studying will be good for me, good for you and good for Tina.”

  “How long will you be gone?”

  “Five or six years, I’m not sure, but I’ll come home from time to time.”

  The owner put two fresh glasses of tea down in front of us.

  “He’s leaving,” gestured my father.

  “Leaving? Where’re you going?” asked the owner.

  “I’ve been accepted at the University of Tehran.”

  “The University of Tehran!” he exclaimed.

  “Yes, but it’s hard to leave my family behind.”

  “What’s that you’re saying? Hard? Leave them. Of course you should go!”

  “He’s going to learn about the sun,” my father gestured. “He’s going to read books about air, because air is important. If there’s no air, you die, he says.”

  “What’s your father saying?”

  “Oh, nothing special, he … he’s talking about what I’m going to study.”

  My father went on. “Did you know that at first there was nothing and then suddenly there was a big bang and then the stars began to glow? You didn’t know that? I didn’t, either, but Ishmael knows everything. He’s very important, he’s going to the city of the shah to study.”

  “What’s he talking about?” the owner asked.

  I laughed. “Oh, nothing special, he said that I’m going to study physics.”

  We drank our tea and sat for a while. I had another surprise in store for my father.

  “I have to ask you to stop going away.”

  “What?”

  “To stop going to the mountains, to stop leaving home.”

  “Why?”

  “Because there has to be a man around the house when I’m gone.”

  “But I … I have to. I can’t stop.”

  “I’m going to open a shop for you.”

  “A shop? For me?”

  “Yes, a shop, a workshop, so you won’t have to go from place to place. You can stay in your shop, and when people need something, they’ll come to you.”

  This idea was more shocking to him than the fact that the earth revolves around the sun.

  “What kind of a shop? I can’t run it without you.”

  “Don’t worry. Golden Bell will come and help you.”

  “Golden Bell?”

  “Yes, I’ve already talked to her about it. S he’ll come to the shop every day after school.”

  The arrangements had already been made. The editor of the newspaper for which I was still working had helped me get a loan, and through friends of his, who worked for the municipal government, I was granted official permission to look for a shop in our neighbourhood.

  My father had no choice. He couldn’t believe the preparations were at such an advanced stage. On the one hand, he was delirious with joy. On the other hand, he had a secret. He insisted that he had to go away sometimes.

  “OK, but only for a few days.”

  A month later my father, my mother, my sisters and I opened the shop. Golden Bell promptly sat down at “her” table. She had bought a mirror for my father with her own money. We all had on new clothes. I was wearing the suit that Tina and I had bought for me to wear to the university.

  The shop was open. A dream had come true. Aga Akbar was standing in his own shop.

  *Tina worked at home, mending textiles for the mill. Her job helped her to rid herself of the wolf.

  Giant Shadows

  Soon after he moves to Tehran, Ishmael joins an underground

  movement. All contact with his father has to be

  broken. Akbar is forced to stand on his own two feet. Or

  perhaps Ishmael is the one who has to learn how to

  stand on his own.

  To my surprise, even here in the polder, people or events can have a direct, or sometimes indirect, bearing on my father’s notebook.

  Prince Willem-Alexander, for example, came to my aid.

  The Dutch crown prince was interviewed on television. No fewer than 3.1 million viewers watched the interview, which was billed as the most important one of his life. The prince want ed everyone to realise that he’d become an adult, that he was now independent of his mother, the Queen. He wanted to show the Dutch public that he was ready to assume responsibility for weighty matters.

  His lower lip trembled. Independence was apparently not at all easy. Still, it was a valiant attempt, in the presence of three million viewers, to step out from under the shadow of his dominant mother.

  He emphasised the fact that he wasn’t a mummy’s boy, that he was a person in his own right.

  “Is your mother your most important adviser?” the interviewer asked.

  “Yes,” he replied, “because I’m being groomed for her position.”

  “Which of your mother’s characteristics would you like to adopt?”

  “I’m Willem-Alexander, I’m me. I don’t wish to adopt any of her characteristics. You can’t adopt other people’s characteristics.”

  The prince tried to keep the questions involving his mother to a minimum and to move on to the next subject, but the interviewer kept harking back to his mother.

  What I liked about the interview was not so much the discussion as the underlying psychology. In the course of that long conversation, he said very little about his father. He never once managed to say his father’s full name. It was as though the man didn’t belong to the royal household, as if he were a ghost, a mere shadow.

  I’ve seen the Queen on television several times and often listened to her on the radio. I even
know some of her speeches by heart. For example, here’s the end of one of her annual speeches to the Parliament:

  As we reach the end of this century, it is time to take stock. Much that is good has been achieved in the Netherlands. Many people have contributed to that success. In an awareness of our strengths, while never losing sight of our weaknesses, this gives us confidence for the future. In the new century, too, we shallall need to invest in the quality of our society and in international cooperation. The government will continue its unceasing efforts to achieve a strong economy and a vital society. In doing so, it will work with you, with other tiers of government, and with every member of society. I sincerely hope that you will discharge your responsible duties with dedication and commitment, in the confidence that many people join me in wishing you wisdom and praying that you will be blessed.

  I can’t remember even one speech given by her husband, Prince Claus. It’s all a blank.

  Of course I saw him on TV at the award ceremony when he took off his tie, but even though I was listening to his speech carefully, I didn’t hear the words. Or, rather, I did, but his words didn’t reach me, didn’t get through to me. It was as if he used gestures rather than words.

  I was accustomed to thinking of him as the father who didn’t talk, as a watcher, an observer. Now that he was actually saying something, it didn’t seem to fit my image of him.

  I like the man. Whenever the royal family appears on TV—on the Queen’s birthday, for example—I enjoy watching him, the father, walking circumspectly behind his sons with his hands clasped behind his back.

  I like the Queen, too, when she takes her husband’s arm and walks beside him with her head held high. If she ever angrily smacked him on the head and screamed, “You’re a millstone around my neck. I wish you were dead, dead, dead,” I’d despise her.

  Tina did that once to my father. I heard her screaming, so I raced inside and saw her hitting my father over the head with her hands and shouting, “I wish you were dead, dead, dead!”

  Suddenly she caught sight of me and her arms stopped in mid-air.

  Later I heard from Golden Bell that it wasn’t the first time Tina had hit him.

  “I saw it with my own eyes,” Golden Bell told me, weeping into the phone.

  To this day, I can’t forgive Tina for that. And yet she did a lot for my father, not the least of which was providing an element of stability in his life. She’s suffered greatly and shown time and again that she can be strong in the face of adversity.

  Although Prince Willem-Alexander didn’t come out and say it in the interview, I could see that he had trouble with his mother’s shadow. I have trouble with my father’s shadow. If the prince thinks he’s cast off that giant shadow, he’s mistaken. You can never shake off the shadows of such influential people, not even when they’re dead.

  It only gets worse when they’re dead. They come back into your life stronger than ever. They haunt you in your sleep.

  Even from his grave, my father casts a shadow over my computer. When I went away to the University of Tehran, I decided to distance myself, both physically and mentally, from my father, but I couldn’t. Somehow a new form of contact sprang up, more intense than ever.

  When I left home, I thought my father would have to learn to stand on his own two feet. Suddenly I discovered that I didn’t function well on my own. Not having to shoulder the burden of my father left me off-balance. I pretended to be strong when I actually wasn’t.

  My father was my strength as well as my weakness. Compared to other students, I was a man of experience, which is why I made rapid strides in the party. On the other hand, I was worried about my family, and that kept me from advancing any further.

  At the end of my third year, my contact person ordered me to sever all ties with my family. Until then I’d been going home occasionally, but now I wasn’t even allowed to phone. At his urging, I also dropped out of school. According to the party, a revolution was at hand and we needed to be prepared.

  I was overcome with guilt at having deserted my family and was so concerned for them that I suffered a loss of self-confidence. I realised that I couldn’t go on like this. It was time to discuss the matter with my contact person.

  Before going on with the story, however, I’d like to say a few words about the resistance movement. Every Persian schoolchild dreamed of going to the University of Tehran. And yet we had a saying: “You can get in, but you may not get out again.”

  That’s because the underground leftist guerrilla movement against the shah had its roots in the university. The movement’s three main slogans were: “Down with the shah!”, “Bread for the masses!” and “Long live freedom!”

  The red banner on its underground newspaper read “Freedom or Death!” When I started at the university, there were dozens of shoot-outs on the streets of Tehran between the party’s armed faction and the shah’s secret police. Time after time, they uncovered the hiding place of the leaders, then moved in with helicopters and tanks. But the leaders never let themselves be taken alive. They fought until they had no more bullets left, then swallowed a suicide pill as the police burst in to arrest them. Every shoot-out was followed by an eruption of violence at the university.

  It was in those turbulent times that I went through my personal crisis.

  I made an appointment to meet my contact person at a teahouse in a remote area on the outskirts of Tehran. It was the first time I’d talked to him about my father. “I can’t break the ties with my family. I have to stay in touch with my father. It’s necessary for him as well as for me. Without that, I can’t function properly within the party.”

  Permission was denied. It was too risky. If the agents of the secret police arrested me at my parents’ home, I could endanger the party.

  An idea flashed into my mind. “My father’s shop, his disability, his contact with the villagers near the border could be … I mean, I could get him to … What I’m trying to say is that his shop and his knowledge of the mountains could be of use to the party.”

  The focus of the conversation had suddenly shifted. My contact person didn’t comment further, but told me I’d be notified of the party’s decision.

  A week later I was unexpectedly summoned to a confidential meeting with Homayun, one of the legendary leaders of the resistance. We talked for a long time about my father, his contacts in the border area and his knowledge of the mountain trails. I was then given permission to meet my father in secret a few times a year. It was also my job to prepare him “in case the party needed him”. What that meant, neither of us knew. In any event, the party leadership realised that it had a trustworthy deaf-mute in its service, who was prepared to do anything for his son.

  At last I was allowed to secretly visit my father, whom I hadn’t seen for a long time.

  He was doing well, mostly because of his shop. Setting him up in a small business had been an excellent decision. Golden Bell had bought a good secondhand stove and had it moved to the shop. All year long, my father went around collecting twigs and branches for the winter like some doddery old bird. It made Tina furious. Whenever I called, she moaned, “Son, I’m ashamed of your father. He does one stupid thing after another. No matter where I go, I see him with a bundle of twigs on his back. He even climbs trees to snap off the dead branches. When I run into him in town, I have to hide my head in shame.”

  I laughed at the thought of him climbing a tree to snap off a branch.

  “You can afford to laugh,” Tina said angrily. “You’re not here, you don’t have to see him. I’m the one who’s melting from shame like a candle. You’re gone and it doesn’t affect you in the slightest. I’m a mother, I’ve got three daughters at home and I have to—”

  “There’s no need to make such a fuss, Tina. You know how he is. We can’t change him.”

  “Why not? You just don’t want to. It’s all your fault, you’re the one who abandoned him. He listens to you, but you haven’t said a word. Why don’t you come and v
isit us, son? People need to see that my daughters have a learned brother and not just a stupid father. Listen to me! Come home! Your sisters’ futures depend on it!”

  Tina was right about one thing. My father did seem to be slipping. He was doing stupid things more often now. Well, not really stupid, but I don’t know what else to call them. How could I get him to stop climbing trees? I couldn’t be around to scold him all the time.

  We had to face facts and accept him the way he was. Tina was unable to do that.

  Despite his initial hesitation, my father was very proud of his shop. Wherever he went, he took the key out of his pocket and showed it to everyone, “Look, the key to my shop. Ishmael gave it to me. He’s a student in the city of the shah. He’s learning about airplanes. If someone pinches your nose and puts his hand over your mouth, you’ll die, because air is very important.”

  The shop had been his salvation. He no longer had to roam the streets in search of customers. Nor did he have to hang around the house during the winter when he was out of work. He simply went and sat in his shop. That’s why he gathered twigs and branches: they made him feel peaceful and secure.

  He stayed in his shop till late at night. Who knows, a customer might drop by, or maybe Ishmael would turn up out of the blue one day.

  On my way to the shop, I bought him a bag of firewood. The snow crunched beneath my feet. All was quiet in my old area—the lights in the windows had long been extinguished, the curtains drawn. Everything was in deep sleep, everything except my father’s chimney. It was still smoking.

  There was a soft yellow light in his window. I peeked inside. He was sitting on his carpet, next to the stove. His head was bent over a book, which was open on the low table in front of him.

  My God! I thought. What’s he reading?

  He looked like a scholar. No, like an imam reading a book in a mosque. No, not that, either, more like a craftsman, a carpet-weaver, who was going to repair the book rather than read it. A couple of his customers’ Persian rugs were rolled up on the table beside the book and on the wall was a large framed photograph of the shah in a military uniform.