My Father's Notebook

by Kader Abdolah

  “He must have taken this path,” said Bolfazl.

  “With a cane?” said Atri.

  Bolfazl knelt in the snow and inspected the tracks by the light of his lantern.

  “The mountain goats come here in search of food,” he said. “Most of them don’t dare go any further. It’s impossible to make out a human footprint among all these tracks. I think we’d better turn back.”

  They arrived home with their darkened lanterns in the middle of the night. The women received them in silence. No one dared cry, no one dared speak. The night had swallowed up Akbar and Golden Bell.

  Daylight broke through the window. The sun rose slowly, but brought no news. The days came and went, and so did the nights, and still there was no news.

  Then, on one of the first days of spring, when a shepherd was out looking for grass for his flock, his dog began to bark. The shepherd hurried over to investigate. There, between the rocks, he found the body of an old man, his grey hair glinting like polished silver in the freshly fallen snow.

  The Cuneiform Notebook

  AGA AKBAR’S NOTES

  This is the end of Aga Akbar’s story, though not the end of his cuneiform notebook. Unfortunately, the last few pages are indecipherable.

  It’s hard to know where he wrote those last few pages.

  At home?

  No, probably not.

  They’re completely illegible. Perhaps he wrote them in the mountains, by a craggy cliff, which he’d helped Golden Bell to climb.

  Which he’d helped Golden Bell to climb?

  No, that’s impossible.

  Anyway, you can see that he wrote the last few pages in difficult conditions.

  He no doubt wrote them in the snow, in the freezing cold.

  Nothing more was ever heard of the escaped prisoners. To this day their fate is unknown. Perhaps Akbar did find them in the mountains. Perhaps he told them not to follow the railway tracks and showed them the path that would lead them to Saffron Mountain.

  Perhaps he said to Golden Bell, “Once you reach the cave, go into it as far as you can. Go all the way to the back until you can no longer stand. On your right you’ll see a ledge and on that ledge there will be bags of raisins and dates and dried fruits. Take those, along with the warm clothes and flashlights for mountain climbers in need, and go even farther into the cave. Go all the way back until you can crawl no longer. There you’ll be safe. Stay there for several days until the guards have stopped searching the mountains.”

  In all likelihood these were the last few sentences in Akbar’s notebook.

  He must have kissed Golden Bell goodbye. “Now go. You don’t have to worry about me. I’ll dig a hole in the snow and wait here until tomorrow. Then I’ll make my way back. It’s a good thing I’m here, because if the guards come, I’ll shout as loud as I can and you’ll know what’s going on. Have a safe journey, my child.”

  Did Golden Bell and the other escaped prisoners ever reach the cave?

  It’s entirely possible. Just as it’s possible that they slept in the cave’s recesses and never woke up again.

  A hundred years from now, or maybe three hundred years from now, they will awaken, like the men of Kahaf, whose story is told in the Holy Book:

  And so it went until the men of Kahaf finally sought refuge in the cave. “Grant us Thy mercy,” they said.

  In that cave We covered their ears and their eyes for years.

  And when the sun came up, the men saw it rise to the right of the cave. And when the sun went down, the men saw it set to the left, while they were in the space in between.

  They thought they were awake, but they were asleep.

  And We turned them to the right and to the left.

  Some said, “There were three of them, and a fourth watched over them.”

  Others, hazarding a guess, said, “There were five of them, and a sixth watched over them.”

  And there were those who said, “There were seven of them.” No one knew.

  We woke them, so that they might question one another.

  One of them spoke: “We have been here for a day or part of a day.” Another said: “Allah alone knows how long we have been here. It would be best to send one of us to the city with this silver coin. We must be careful. If they find out who we are, they will stone us.”

  Jemiliga then left the cave with the silver coin in the palm of his hand.

  When he reached the city, he saw that everything had changed and that he did not understand the language.

  They had slept in the cave for three hundred years and did not even know it. And some say there were nine more.

  One day Golden Bell will wake up.

  She will leave the cave with a silver coin in the palm of her hand.

  And when she reaches the city, she will notice that everything has changed.

  Glossary

  Allahu akbar. La ilaha illa Allah: God is great. There is no God but Allah.

  ankahtu wa zawagtu: the words recited during the wedding ceremony that officially declare the couple to be man and wife.

  Baba Taher: a mystic poet of the first half of the eleventh century. Every Persian can recite a few of his quatrains about love and death.

  Eqra be-asme rabbeka alazi khalaqa … el-qalam: “Read! In the name of thy Lord and Cherisher, Who created, created man out of a mere clot of congealed blood…. He who taught the use of the pen.” This is the first sura of the Koran to be revealed to Muhammad. Gabriel brought it down to him from Heaven, and even though Muhammad was illiterate, Gabriel asked him to read the text. Once he had read it, Muhammad’s mission had officially begun.

  Hafez: medieval Persian poet (1326–90), whose poetry is cited as a sacred text and learned by heart. No Persian household is complete without a volume of his poetry.

  hekaya: ancient Persian stories.

  ibn: son of.

  jawid shah: long live the shah.

  Jomah Mosque: The so-called Friday Mosque, one of the oldest mosques in Iran.

  Kahaf: a well-known story in the Koran. A number of men who are being persecuted for their beliefs seek shelter in the kahf, or cave. Exhausted, they fall asleep. When they awake, they see that their hair and beards have aged. It seems they’ve slept for three hundred years.

  Kazem Khan: Kazem is the name of one of Muhammad’s successors; a khan is a nobleman.

  Khata: The Persian name for Northern China, the region from which Iran’s Mongol conquerors came. “Moon-faced,” or Mongolian, beauty became an archetype in Persian poetry. But the women of khata’ (with an almost identical pronunciation) are women of sin.

  Khatun: Mrs.

  Khayyam: Omar Khayyam (1048–1122) is known in the West mainly as the author of the Rubaiyat and numerous quatrains.

  Lalehzar Mountain: named after the wild red tulips that grow on the mountain slopes.

  Mahdi: the promised one.

  Naqsh-e-Jahan Square: the oldest square in Iran.

  Sa’di: medieval writer and poet (1213–93) whose hekayas represent the apogee of Persian language and literature. His book The Rose Garden can be found, like that of Hafez, in every Persian household.

  Saffron Mountain: named after the red and yellow flowers that cover the mountainside in the autumn.

  Sayyid: Sire, Mr (a term of address accorded to descendants of Muhammad).

  Sheikh Lotfallah Mosque: one of the most beautiful mosques in Isfahan.

  sigeh: under Shiite law, a man may have a maximum of four wives. In addition, he’s allowed an unlimited number of temporary wives, who make a marriage contract for a period ranging anywhere from one hour to 99 years. These sigeh have no inheritance rights.

  Acknowledgments

  The poems by J. C. Bloem and P. N. van Eyck have been translated for this edition by David McKay. The poet Jan Slauerhoff based his poem on the classic Chinese poem “Golden Bells” by Po Chu I. The Multatuli passage has been taken from Multatuli, Max Havelaar, translated by Roy Edwards, London: Penguin Boo
ks, 1987. The poem by Rutger Kopland, part of a series entitled “Suppose”, has been taken from Rutger Kopland, A World Beyond Myself, translated by James Brockway, London: Enitharmon Press: 1991.

  TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: The passages from the Koran and Shiite prayer books are not reproductions of the actual Arabic texts but have been adapted by the author. They should, therefore, be regarded as retellings, or as snatches of texts remembered by the characters, rather than as direct quotations.

  I wish to thank Diane Webb for her editorial advice and R. M. McGlinn for his assistance with the translation and transliteration of Farsi into English.

  “Kader Abdolah spices his narrative with poetry, myths

  and tales of Sufi wisdom from Persian classics, while

  skilfully conveying the condition of exile … This

  original novel shares the experience with the reader and

  Susan Massotty’s fluent translation conveys the

  simplicity and exotic diction of the original Dutch.”

  Shusha Guppy, The Times

  “My Father’s Notebook is engaging both as a work of

  fiction and snapshot in time. Not only is it a portrait of

  a man struggling with the constraints of his disability

  … but we see the development of an endearing,

  sometimes boyish, sometimes adult, relationship

  with his worldly son … The strong feeling of

  foreboding is underplayed by the ultimate climax,

  but it is nonetheless a compelling read.”

  Catherine Neilan, Financial Times

  “Shows the personal side of the incredible uncertainty

  and massive change that has taken place over the last

  century in Iran, and may give some insight into its

  turbulent present.” Sunday Business Post

  “It may sound worthy and didactic, grim and Good For

  You, but the reality is very different … His world, the

  communities in which he lives and works during a long

  life, are beautifully evoked in often touching and amusing

  detail … My Father’s Notebook is an intriguing, complex

  and often playful novel that deserves attention.”

  David McVey, Scotland on Sunday

  MY FATHER’ S NOTEBOOK

  Kader Abdolah, (a pen name created in memoriam

  to friends who died under the persecution of the

  current Iranian regime) was born in Iran in 1954. While

  a student of physics in Tehran, he joined a secret leftist

  party that fought against the dictatorship of the shah

  and the subsequent dictatorship of the ayatollahs.

  Abdolah wrote for an illegal journal and clandestinely

  published two books in Iran. In 1988, at the invitation

  of the United Nations, he arrived in the Netherlands as

  a political refugee. He now writes in Dutch and is the

  author of three novels and two collections of

  short stories, as well as works of non-fiction.

  Susan Massotty is a highly respected translator who

  has also worked on The Diary of Anne Frank, The

  Kreutzer Sonata (Margriet de Moor), All Souls Day

  (Cees Nooteboom) and Summer Sonata (Chaja Polak),

  among many others.

  Copyright

  First published in Great Britain in 2004 by

  Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street,

  Edinburgh EH1 1TE

  Published in association with HarperCollins US

  This digital edition first published in 2009

  by Canongate Books

  Originally published in Dutch

  as Spijkerschrift by Uitgverij De Geus bv,

  Postbus 1878, 4801 BW Breda, Nederland

  Copyright © Kader Abdolah, 2000

  English translation copyright © Susan Massotty, 2006

  The right of Kader Abdolah and Susan Massotty

  to be identified as respectively the author and translator

  of the work has been asserted in accordance with the

  Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This translation has been published with the support of the

  Foundation for the Production and Translation of Dutch Literature

  Rutger Kopland, ‘Suppose’, translated by James Brockway, in A World Beyond Myself

  London: Enitharmon Press, 1991. Originally published as ‘Stel’, Dit Uitzicht

  Amsterdam: G. A. Van Oorschot, 1982

  Excerpt from Max Havelaar, by Multatuli, reprinted with permission

  Translated by Roy Edwards and edited by E. M. Beekman

  Copyright © 1967 by Roy Edwards and published by the University of

  Massachusetts Press, 1982

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library.

  ISBN 978 1 84767 633 7

  www.meetatthegate.com