Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant

by Daniel Tammet

  We flew into Salt Lake City, capital of the state of Utah and home to the Mormon religion, the following day. It was a short drive from the hotel to the city’s public library. The building was extraordinary: six-storey curving, transparent walls covering 240,000 square feet and containing more than half a million books, with shops and services at ground level, reading galleries above and a 300-seat auditorium. With my abiding love of books and memories of the years spent reading for hours in my small local libraries every day, this seemed like paradise to me.

  The huge space was infused with daylight and I felt the familiar tingle of tranquillity inside me. Libraries had always had the power to make me feel at peace. There were no crowds, only small pockets of individuals reading or moving from shelf to shelf or desk to desk. There was no sudden loud outburst of noise, just the gentle flicking of pages or the intimate chatter between friends and colleagues. I had never seen or been in any library quite like this before; it really seemed to me like the enchanted palace of a fairy tale.

  I was asked to sit on a bench on the ground floor and wait, so I counted the rows of books and the people as they walked quietly by. I could have sat there for hours. The director came and collected me and we rode the elevator to the second floor. Here there were rows upon rows of books for as far as the eye could see. An elderly man approached and shook my hand. He introduced himself as Fran Peek, father and full-time carer of his son, Kim.

  Kim Peek is a miracle. When he was born in 1951, doctors told his parents that he would never walk or learn and that they should put him in an institution. Kim was born with an enlarged head and a water blister inside his skull that damaged the left hemisphere, the side of the brain involved in such critical areas as speech and language. A 1988 scan by neuroscientists found that he had no corpus callosum, the membrane separating the brain’s two hemispheres. Yet he was able to read at sixteen months and completed the high school curriculum by age fourteen.

  Kim has memorised a vast amount of information from more than a dozen subjects over the years, ranging from history and dates to literature, sports, geography and music. He can read two pages of a book simultaneously, one with each eye, with near perfect retention. Kim has read more than 9,000 books altogether and can recall their entire content. He is also a gifted calendrical calculator.

  In 1984, Kim and his father met producer and screenwriter Barry Morrow at a conference meeting of the Association of Retarded Citizens in Arlington, Texas. The result was the movie Rain Man. Dustin Hoffman spent the day with Kim and was so awed by his abilities that he urged Fran to share his son with the world. Since that time, Kim and his father have criss-crossed the US and talked to more than a million people.

  This was to be a moment I had long waited for; it would be the first time in my life that I had met and spoken with another savant. Fran had told his son who I was and why we were coming to meet them. The choice of the city’s public library for our meeting was a no-brainer; for both Kim and myself libraries are a special place, full of quiet, light, space and order.

  After meeting Fran I was introduced to Kim. Standing close to his father, Kim was a heavy-set, middle-aged figure with a mop of greying hair and piercing, inquisitive eyes. He quickly held my arms and stood very close to me. ‘Give him your birth date,’ suggested Fran. ‘31 January 1979,’ I said. ‘You turn sixty-five on a Sunday,’ replied Kim. I nodded and asked for his birth date. ‘11 November 1951,’ he replied. I smiled broadly: ‘You were born on a Sunday!’ Kim’s face lit up and I knew that we had connected.

  Fran had a surprise for me: the Oscar won by Rain Man’s screenwriter Barry Morrow which Morrow generously gave the Peeks to take on their speaking tours. I held the statuette carefully in both hands; it was much heavier than it looked. I was asked to sit with Fran and talk about Kim’s childhood, so we walked over to a corner with comfortable leather chairs and sat while Kim was given a book to read. Fran spoke with passion about the reaction of the doctors to his young son’s problems: ‘We were told to put him in an institution and forget about him.’ A brain surgeon even offered to lobotomise Kim to make it easier to institutionalise him.

  I wanted to know more about Kim’s life today and asked Fran to describe a typical day’s routine. ‘Kim speaks to his mother on the phone every morning and he comes here every day and reads for several hours. In the evenings we go visit an elderly neighbour of ours. Kim reads to her.’

  I asked about Kim’s speaking tours. ‘We always travel together and never ask for any money. We visit places like schools, colleges and hospitals. Kim can tell them almost anything they want to know: dates, names, statistics, zip codes, you name it. The audience asks him all sorts of questions and he always comes out with so much information, more than I ever knew he knew. He hardly ever gets stuck for an answer. His message is this: “You don’t have to be disabled to be different, because everybody’s different.” ’

  We finished the interview and I was able to walk with Kim alone around the different shelves of the library. Kim held my hand as we walked. ‘You’re a savant like me, Daniel,’ he said excitedly and he squeezed my hand. As we walked among the shelves I noticed that Kim would pause briefly and take a book from the shelf, flick through a few pages as if already familiar with its contents, and return it. He would sometimes murmur a name or date out loud as he read. Every book dealt with non-fiction topics; novels did not seem to interest him. It was something else that we had in common.

  ‘What do you like doing here most, Kim?’ I asked him and without saying a word he took me over to a section with rows of thick, red leather-clad books. They were phone directories for every town in Salt Lake City. Kim pulled one off the shelf and sat himself down at a nearby desk. He had a notebook and pen with him and proceeded to copy several names and numbers from the directory into his book. I watched and asked him if he liked numbers too; he nodded slowly, absorbed in his notes.

  I sat with Kim and remembered that Fran had told me Kim enjoyed being given questions related to historical dates and figures. History was one of Kim’s favourite topics. ‘What year did Victoria become Queen of England?’ I asked. ‘1837,’ replied Kim in an instant. ‘How old would Winston Churchill be if he were alive today?’ ‘130’. ‘And what day of the week would his birthday fall on this year?’ ‘It would be a Tuesday, the last day of November.’

  With Fran and the crew’s supervision we were then taken down to the library’s ground floor where Kim pointed to the different rows of shelves and explained which books they contained. We walked out into bright mid-afternoon sun and then stood, Kim once more clasping my hands in his. Standing close to me, he looked into my eyes and said: ‘One day you’ll be as great as I am.’ It was the best compliment I had ever received.

  I agreed to meet Kim and Fran later that evening for supper at a local restaurant. Kim recounted his memory of meeting Dustin Hoffman and Hoffman’s amazement at Kim’s abilities and warm character. Both father and son emphasised the importance of continuing to share Kim’s abilities and his message of respect for difference with as many people as possible.

  We left Kim and Fran in Salt Lake City with considerable reluctance. Each member of the crew said how much they had taken away from the experience of meeting Kim and his father. Their story of unconditional love and of dedication and perseverance in the face of adversity was extremely inspiring. For me, it had been a simply unforgettable experience. Kim reminded me of how fortunate I was, in spite of my own difficulties, to be able to live the sort of independent life that he cannot. It was equally a joy to find someone who loved books and facts and figures as much as I did.

  As we flew home, I was left with several thoughts. Kim and I had much in common, but most important of all was the sense of connection I think we both felt during our time together. Our lives had in many ways been very different and yet somehow we shared this special, rarefied bond. It had helped to bring us together and on that day we reminded one another of the extraordinary value of friendship. I
had been moved by the enthusiasm with which he and his father had welcomed me and with which they had openly and candidly shared their story. Kim’s special gift is not only his brain, but also his heart, his humanity, his ability to touch the lives of others in a truly unique way. Meeting Kim Peekwas one of the happiest moments of my life.

  12

  Reykjavík, New York, Home

  After my return to the UK, the programme makers had one last challenge for me: to learn a new language from scratch in one week in front of the cameras. They had spent several months researching various possibilities, before finally settling on Icelandic – an inflected language, largely unchanged since the thirteenth century and comparable to Old English, and spoken today by around 300,000 people. Here is a written example, to give an idea of what it looks like:

  Mörður hér maður er kallaður var gígja. Hann var sonur Sighvats hins rauða. Hann bjó á Velli á Rangárvöllum. Hann var ríkur höfðingi og málafylgjumaður mikill og svo mikill lögmaður að engir óóttu löglegir dómar dæmdir nema hann væri við. Hann átti dóttur eina er Unnur hét. Hùn var væn kona og kurteis og vel að sér og þótti sá bestur kostur á Rangárvoöllum.

  There was a man named Mord whose surname was Fiddle; he was the son of Sigvat the Red, and he dwelt at the ‘Vale’ in the Rangrivervales. He was a mighty chief, and a great taker up of suits, and so great a lawyer that no judgments were thought lawful unless he had a hand in them. He had an only daughter, named Unna. She was a fair, courteous, and gifted woman, and that was thought the best match in all the Rangrivervales.

  Excerpted from Brennu-Njáls Saga (The Saga of Burnt Njál), Iceland’s most famous saga, dating from the thirteenth century.

  Icelandic is considered a very complex and difficult language to learn; for example, there are no less than twelve different words for each of the numbers from one to four, depending on the context of the sentence. Icelandic nouns have one of three genders: masculine, feminine and neuter. Adjectives change according to the gender of the noun they describe: Gunnar er svangur (‘Gunnar is strong’) but Helga er svöng (‘Helga is strong’) where Gunnar is male and Helga female. In addition, Icelanders do not borrow words from other languages as do the English, but create their own words for modern things: tölva for ‘computer’ and símí for ‘telephone’ (from an Old Icelandic word meaning ‘thread’).

  In September the programme makers’ choice of language was finally revealed to me in a package sent to my home. It contained a pocket dictionary, a children’s book, two grammar books and several newspapers. The production had decided for budgetary reasons to have only four days in Iceland, instead of the one week that had originally been planned, and for this reason the language learning material had been forwarded to my home several days ahead of the trip. However, there was a serious difficulty: the dictionary provided was very small, so it was almost impossible to begin decoding the texts provided by the production. I was also unhappy that there would be only four days instead of the seven originally planned in Iceland, since the culmination of the language challenge was going to be a live television interview in Reykjavík conducted entirely in Icelandic. To complete the challenge successfully, I needed as much exposure to the spoken language as possible.

  The situation being as it was, I did the best I could with the material I had. I learned common phrases and vocabulary from the grammar books and practised building my own sentences from the word patterns I was able to pick out from the various texts. One of the books came with a CD, so I tried to listen to it to get a sense of accent and pronunciation, but it was very difficult for me to concentrate because of the way my brain tunes in and out while listening. With another person I can listen very intently, making a special effort to sustain my level of concentration throughout, but I find this much harder to do when listening to a CD, maybe because there isn’t the requirement to make such a big effort to stay continuously engaged. As a result of these difficulties, I was beginning to feel very disheartened as the day of the flight arrived.

  It was time to say goodbye to Neil again, though at least it would only be for a few days. I was collected by taxi and driven to the airport where I met the film crew. Fortunately it was quiet and there were few people walking around. I had brought the books with me, but hoped to receive better learning materials once we arrived in Iceland. The flight was not long and I spent most of the time looking out of the window or reading through the stories in the Icelandic children’s book.

  Iceland is one of the smallest countries in the world, with a population of little over a quarter of a million. It is situated in the North Atlantic, just south of the Arctic Circle. Located on a geological hot spot on the mid-Atlantic ridge, the island is extremely geologically active. It has many volcanoes and geysers, and geothermal power heats many Icelanders’ homes. The nation’s literacy rate is 100% and poetry and literature are popular. More books, magazines and periodicals are published per capita in Iceland than anywhere else in the world.

  Upon arrival at Keflavík airport it was a bus ride to Iceland’s largest city, the capital, Reykjavík (with a population of just over 110,000 it has the nickname Stærsta smáborg í heimi – ‘the biggest small city in the world’).

  It was near the close of summer, though the weather was still calm: the air was chilly and fresh, but not bitterly cold. The bus had long, shiny windows running down each side and looking out as we rode we saw large swathes of silver-grey clouds hanging in the sky and underneath a stream of stark, metallic blue landscape in the distance. As we neared Reykjavík I could see the daylight begin to soften and scatter and I closed my eyes and counted to myself, in Icelandic: einn, tveir, þrír, fjórir …

  At the hotel I had my first meeting with my Icelandic tutor Sigriður, though she said to call her ‘Sirrý’ for short. Sirrý worked with foreign students as a tutor at the local university, but said she had never heard of anyone trying to learn Icelandic in so short a space of time and was doubtful that it could be done. In a hold all Sirrý carried lots of reading materials for us to study together. Whenever an opportunity arose, we opened up the books and I read the pages out loud so she could check my pronunciation and help with any words I did not understand.

  The large amount of reading helped me to develop an intuitive sense of the language’s grammar. One of the things I noticed was that a lot of the words seemed to grow in length the further along they appeared in a sentence. For example, the word bók (‘book’) is often longer when used at the start of a sentence: ‘Bókin er skrifuð á íslensku (‘the book is written in Icelandic’) and longer still at the end: Ég er nýbúinn að lesa bókina (‘I have just finished reading the book’). Another example is the word borð (‘table’): Borðið er stórt og þungt (‘the table is big and heavy’) and Orðabókin var á borðinu (‘the dictionary was on the table’). The spatial location of the word in the sentence helped me to know the grammatical form it would likely take.

  The time pressure proved the toughest part of the challenge. A lot of the little time I had to study was spent in a car being driven around several different locations for filming – a problem made even worse by the fact that sirrý was prone to carsickness. There was, of course, an upside to being taken to visit many different places; Iceland is a visually stunning place and it was an opportunity for me to absorb the atmosphere, something that would have been impossible to do in a class or hotel room.

  We spent a day at Gullfoss, meaning ‘the golden waterfall’. Situated in the glacial river Hvita, the enormous white cascade drops 32 metres into a narrow canyon, 70 metres deep and 2.5 kilometres long. Viewed from nearby, the fine drizzle continuously thrown up into the moisture-filled air resembled how I see the number eighty-nine in my head. This sensation was not unique. Standing out of the rain in a small, dingy wind-hewn cave close by, I felt as though I had climbed inside the dark hollowness of the number six. Even the undulating curves of faraway mountains reminded me of numerical sequences. It was then that I felt most a
t home in Iceland.

  A trip to thermal fields in the Haukadalur valley provided the opportunity to view Iceland’s famous erupting geysers up close. The word ‘geyser’ comes from the Icelandic verb gjósa meaning ‘to gush’. They are a rare phenomenon – only around 1,000 exist worldwide. Geyser activity is caused by surface water gradually seeping down through fissures and collecting in caverns. The trapped water is heated by surrounding volcanic rock at a temperature of around 200 degrees Centigrade, causing it to expand into steam and force its way up and out. Eventually the remaining water in the geyser cools back to below boiling point and the eruption ends; heated surface water begins seeping back into the reservoir and the whole cycle starts over again.

  Watching the geyser erupt was fascinating. At first the turquoise water begins to boil, then large bubbles form and burst, pulling the steaming water upwards. The eruption itself is sudden and violent, producing a thick, soaring column of glistening water ten or more metres in height. The air around the geyser is permeated with the smell of sulphur, like rotten eggs, which fortunately is carried away on the wind.

  Travelling for long periods at a time between filming was very tiring and food breaks were always welcome. While the crew tucked into hamburgers and fries, I sampled traditional Icelandic dishes such as kjötsúpa (lamb soup) and plokkfiskur (a kind of fish hash). As much as possible, I conversed entirely in Icelandic with sirrý, while making notes in a large, black notebook I carried around with me at all times.

  The culmination of the challenge came with a live television interview on the popular current affairs programme Kastljós (‘spotlight’). I was nervous but also confident before the interview, though I had no idea exactly what questions the interviewers would ask me. For nearly a quarter of an hour I talked with the two presenters entirely in Icelandic, in front of an audience of hundreds of thousands. It was an eerie experience to sit in front of cameras and converse in a language I had only been acquainted with for the past week. Even stranger was that I was understood completely. As the week had passed, watching and listening to various Icelanders conversing in their native tongue, it had seemed so easy and so natural to them, as though they were breathing Icelandic. In contrast, my speech was slower and more laboured. I explained to the interviewers: ‘Ég er með islensku asma’ (‘I have Icelandic asthma’).