My Father's Notebook

by Kader Abdolah

  The document turned out to be worthless. After the nobleman died, his heirs bribed the local imam and had Aga Akbar’s name removed from the will. Since Hajar hadn’t been expecting her child to inherit anything, it hardly mattered. She was satisfied with the name alone. Aga Akbar’s parentage was known. His father had roots that could be traced back to the palace on Lalehzar Mountain.

  Akbar grew up, married and had children. And even though he was a simple carpet-weaver, he remained proud of his lineage. He kept with him at all times the document with his long name.

  Akbar often talked about his father. He especially wanted his son Ishmael to know that his grandfather had been an important man, a nobleman on a horse with a rifle slung over his shoulder.

  The nobleman was killed by a Russian. Just who the murderer was, nobody knew. A soldier? A gendarme? A Russian thief who sneaked over the border?

  • • •

  The mountain range where Aga Akbar lived and where his forefathers had lived before him bordered on Russia, known in those days as the Soviet Union. The southern part of the range belonged to Iran; the northern part, with its permanent layer of snow, to Russia.

  No one knew, however, what that Russian soldier, or the Russian army, had been looking for in the mountains.

  All that was left of the murder was a story that lived on in Aga Akbar’s memory.

  When they were home by themselves, Akbar told the story to Ishmael, who was assigned the role of the nobleman on horseback. Akbar was the Russian soldier, wearing an army coat and a cap with a bold red insignia.

  Ishmael, his wooden rifle slung over his shoulder, mounted a pillow. Aga Akbar put on his coat and cap and hid behind the cupboard, which served as a makeshift boulder.

  Ishmael rode his horse—not too fast, not too slow, but sedately, as a nobleman should—past the cupboard. A head peeked out. The horseman went on riding for another few yards, then the soldier suddenly leapt out with a knife in his hand, took two or three giant steps and planted his knife in the horseman, who fell off his horse and died.

  No doubt this story was largely a fantasy, but the death of Aga Akbar’s mother was very real.

  “How old were you when Hajar died?” Ishmael signed.

  Aga Akbar had no concept of time.

  “She died when a group of unknown black birds perched in our almond tree,” he signed back.

  “Unknown?”

  “I’d never seen them before.”

  “How old were you when the black birds perched in the tree?” Ishmael signed.

  “My hands were cold, the tree had no leaves and Hajar no longer spoke to me.”

  “No, I mean how old? How old were you when your mother died?”

  “Me, Akbar. My head came up to Hajar’s chest.”

  He had been about nine, Kazem Khan explained later. Hajar had been feeling ill, so she had gone to bed. Akbar had slipped in under the blankets and held his mother in his arms.

  “Your mother died in your arms?” Ishmael signed.

  “Yes, but how did you know?”

  “Uncle Kazem Khan told me.”

  “I crawled under the blankets. When she was sick, she used to talk to me and hold my hand. But this time she stopped talking, and her hand no longer moved. I was scared, really scared, so I stayed under the blankets, not daring to come out. Then a hand reached under the blankets, grabbed me and tried to pull me out. I held on to Hajar’s body, but Kazem Khan finally dragged me away. I cried.”

  The next day the oldest woman in the family wrapped Hajar in a white shroud. Then several men came with a coffin and carried her to the cemetery.

  After the funeral Kazem Khan took little Akbar with him.

  “I wanted him to understand what death was,” he later told his nephew Ishmael. “So I rode over the mountains with him, in search of something that would show him that dying was part of life.

  “I looked around in the snow, hoping to find a dead bird or a dead fox or maybe even a dead wolf. But on that cold winter day the birds flew more energetically than ever and the wolves bounded across the rocks. I stopped, sat him down on a boulder and pointed at the plants buried be neath the snow. ‘Look! Those plants are dead, too.’ But that wasn’t a good example. I saw an old mountain goat who could barely leap from one rock to another. ‘You see that goat? He’s going to die soon.’ No, that wasn’t a good example either.

  “I was hoping that a bird would stop flying in mid-air and suddenly drop dead at our feet. But no birds dropped dead that day.

  “I put Akbar back on the horse and we rode on.

  “After a while, I saw the nobleman’s palace in the distance. It had been empty since his death. I rode over to it.”

  “Why?”

  “I had no idea. I just thought, Let’s have a look. I led the horse around to the back. Aga Akbar didn’t know what I was trying to do. ‘Stand on the horse’s back,’ I gestured to him, ‘and climb up onto the stone wall!’”

  “‘Why?’ he signed.

  “He didn’t want to. So I went first. I climbed up onto the wall and lay there. ‘Come on!’ I said. ‘Give me your hand.’

  “I grabbed him, pulled him up and then helped him climb up onto the roof. We inched our way to the courtyard stairs.

  “‘Don’t look so surprised,’ I said when we reached them. He didn’t want to go down the stairs.

  “‘What are we going to do?’ he signed.

  “‘Nothing, just look around. Come on, this palace belongs to you, too.’

  “We walked gingerly down the stairs. He briefly forgot his mother. I even noticed a smile on his face.

  “We went into the courtyard. I’d never been inside the palace before. I thought the doors would be locked, but they were open. I thought the rooms would be empty, but no, the furniture was all in place. The courtyard door had been blown open by the wind and the snow had drifted halfway down the hall. We went in.

  “There was dust everywhere. Even the expensive Persian carpets were covered in a fine layer of sand. We left footprints. You could see that a man and a little boy had walked through the rooms. ‘Give me your hand,’ I said to Akbar. ‘Do you see that? That’s what death is.’

  “I looked for the nobleman’s study, for his library. Akbar stared in amazement at everything—the chandeliers, the mirrors, the paintings. ‘Go on, take a look,’ I said. ‘You see those portraits? Those are your ancestors. Take a good look at them. Oh, Allah, Allah, what a lot of books!’

  “I had no idea there were so many books on Lalehzar Mountain. ‘Hey, Akbar, come here. You see this book? It’s been written by hand. Let me read it:

  Khoda-ya, rast guyand fetna az to-ast

  wali az tars na-tavanam chegidan

  lab-o dandan-e torkan-e Khata-ra

  beh een khubi na bayad afaridan.

  “I took out a sheet of parchment on which a family tree had been drawn. ‘Do you see those names? Each one of those men has written a book. You can also write one. A book of your very own.’

  “‘Write?’ signed Akbar.

  “‘I’ll teach you.’ I rummaged around in the drawer in search of an empty notebook and found one. ‘Here, take it. Put it in your pocket. Now hurry up, let’s go.’”

  They left the palace and rode home. Kazem Khan needed to smoke his opium pipe and drink a few cups of strong tea. “Where are you, Akbar? Come here, I’ve got a lump of sugar for you. Russia’s finest sugar. Mmm, delicious. Have a sip of tea, Akbar. Now where’s your book? Come sit by me. Opium is bad. You must never smoke opium. If I don’t smoke my pipe in time, I get the shakes. When I do smoke it, though, I think up fantastic poems. Go and get your book and write something in it.”

  “I can’t write. I can’t even read,” Akbar signed.

  “You don’t have to read, but you do have to write. Just scribble something in your notebook. One page every day. Or maybe just a couple of sentences. Anyway, try it. Go upstairs, write something in your book, then come and show it to me.”

  When Kaz
em Khan had finished his pipe, he went upstairs.

  “Where are you, Akbar? Haven’t you written anything yet? It doesn’t matter. I’ll teach you. You see that bed? From now on, it’s your bed. Open the window and look out at the mountains. That beautiful view is all yours. Open the cupboard. That’s yours, too. You can keep your things in it. Here, this is the key to your room.”

  It was impossible to concentrate on reading or writing when you were sitting by the window in that room, Kazem Khan complained, because you would be mesmerised by the view, by nature. You had no choice but to lay down your book, put away your pen, go and get your pipe, chop up some opium, put a piece of it in your pipe, pick up a glowing coal with a pair of pincers, light the pipe, then puff, puff, puff on it, blow the smoke out of the window and stare at the view.

  The first thing you saw were the walnut trees, then the pomegranate trees and, beyond that, a strip of yellow wildflowers and a field dotted with opium-coloured bushes. The yellow flowers and the brownish-yellow bushes merged at the foot of Saffron Mountain, which rose majestically into the sky.

  If you could climb to the top of Saffron Mountain, stand on its craggy peak and peer through a pair of binoculars, and if there happened to be no fog that day, you would be able to make out the contours of a customs shed and a handful of soldiers, because that’s where the border is. Back when Aga Akbar and Kazem Khan were standing by the window, however, no villager could have reached that mountain peak.

  Saffron Mountain is famous in Iran, not so much because of its nearly inaccessible peak, but because of its historically important cave. Saffron Mountain is a familiar name in the world of archaeology. The cave, located halfway up the mountain, is extremely difficult to reach. Back in those days, wolves slept in it during the winter and gave birth to their cubs in it during the spring.

  If you scaled the wall with ropes and spikes, like a mountain climber, you’d find bits of fur everywhere, along with the bones of mountain goats devoured by the wolves.

  If you came in the spring, you might see the cubs at the mouth of the cave, calling to their mothers.

  Deep inside the cave, on a dark southerly wall, is an ancient stone relief. More than 3,000 years ago, the first king of Persia ordered that a cuneiform inscription be chiselled into the rock, beyond the reach of sun, wind, rain and time. It has never been deciphered.

  Sometimes when you looked out of Kazem Khan’s window, you saw a cuneiform expert—an Englishman or a Frenchman or an American—riding into the cave on a mule, which meant that another attempt was being made to decipher the cuneiform.

  “Come! Get the mules ready,” Kazem Khan gestured to Akbar.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To the cave.”

  “Why?”

  “To learn how to read. I’m going to teach you to read,” signed Kazem Khan.

  They put on warm clothes, mounted two strong mules and headed up Saffron Mountain. There was no path going up to the cave. The mules simply sniffed the ground, followed the tracks of the mountain goats and slowly climbed higher and higher. After three or four hours, they reached the entrance to the cave.

  “Wait!” Kazem Khan signed. “First we have to scare off the wolves.”

  He took out his rifle and fired three shots into the air. The wolves fled.

  They got down from their mules and entered the cave. Once inside, Kazem Khan lit an oil lamp. They walked deeper and deeper into the cave, with the mules trotting along behind.

  “Come on, Akbar, follow me.”

  “Why are you going into the darkness?” Akbar signed.

  “Be patient a bit longer. Come with me. Look! Up there!” Kazem Khan said, and he held up the lamp. “Can you see it?”

  “See what?” Akbar signed. “I don’t see anything.”

  “Wait, I’ll go and look for a stick.”

  He hunted around in the cave for a stick, but didn’t find one.

  “Here, hold the reins.”

  Kazem Khan sat on top of the mule and held up the lamp again.

  “Can you see it now? That thing on the wall, in the wall. Go and stand over there, so you can see it better. Wait, let me get down from the mule. Look carefully, Akbar. Do you know what that is? It’s a letter. A letter written by a king. A great king.

  “Back in the old days, people couldn’t read or write. Paper hadn’t been invented yet. So the king ordered that his words be chiselled into the wall of the cave. All those foreigners who come up here on mules actually want to read the king’s letter, the king’s story. Now get out your pen and notebook. I’m going to hold the mule against the wall and I want you to stand on its back. Yes, on the mule’s back. Good. Are you comfortable? Look, there’s a place for you to hang up the lamp, so you can see better. Now I want you to write down the text. Look carefully at all the symbols, at all those cuneiform words, and write them down on the paper, one by one. Go ahead! Don’t be afraid. I’ll hold the mule. Just write!”

  Aga Akbar may or may not have understood what his uncle had in mind, but in any case he started copying the text. He stared at the cuneiform script and did his best to draw each character, one by one, in his notebook. Three whole pages.

  “It’s finished,” he signed.

  “Good. Now put it in your pocket and get down. Be careful.”

  That evening, when Kazem Khan was at home again, smoking his opium, he signed to Akbar, “Go and get your book and come sit here by the brazier. Now give me your pen and listen carefully. You copied the letter written by the king. Do you know what it says?”

  “No.”

  “That letter is something that used to be inside the king’s head. Nobody knows what it says, but it must say something. Now you, yes you, can also write a letter. Here, on the next page of your notebook. Some other time, you can write another letter on another page. You can write down what’s inside your head, just like the king did. Go ahead and try it!”

  Years later, when Ishmael, the son of Aga Akbar, was sixteen and living in the city, he went to visit his uncle in the mountains. “But Uncle Kazem Khan,” he asked him one evening at dinner, “why didn’t you teach my father the normal alphabet, so he could read and write like everyone else?”

  “What do you mean ‘like everyone else’? Nowadays you have to learn to read, but you didn’t have to back then. Especially not here in the mountains. Even the village imam could barely write his name. Who could have taught the alphabet to a deaf-mute child? I wasn’t the right man for the job. I simply didn’t have the patience. I’ve never liked sitting around the house. I’m always on the go, always riding off somewhere on my horse.

  “To teach a child like that, you need a capable father and a strong mother. I didn’t want to teach him how to write, but I felt—or, rather, observed—that Aga Akbar was forming sentences in his head, that he was thinking up stories. Do you understand?

  “Those sentences in his head, that storytelling talent, could have destroyed him. He had headaches all the time, and I was the only one who knew why. That’s the reason I taught him to write in cuneiform. To write for the sake of writing. I didn’t know if he’d be able to do it, or even if it would help. I was simply trying to solve a problem. Anyway, no one can read the king’s cuneiform inscription. Maybe the puzzle will never be solved. But the king did write down his thoughts.

  “Did I steer Akbar in the right direction or not? You’re entitled to your opinion, but I think my method worked. Your father still writes, to this day. And cuneiform is a beautiful and mysterious script. Your father has his own language, his own written language. Do you ever look in his notebook?”

  “No. I see him writing in it sometimes.”

  “Have you ever tried to read it?”

  “I can’t read a word of it.”

  “You could ask him to teach you how.”

  “What about you? Can you read it?”

  “No, but I know what he’s writing about. One time … God, how long ago was it? I went to his room and found him sitting at
his desk, writing. I think he was about as old as you are now. Except that he was stronger. Big shoulders, dark hair, clear eyes. Anyway, I saw that he was writing. ‘Show it to me,’ I said. ‘Tell me what you’ve written.’

  “In those days he had quite a bit of contact with the foreigners who went to the cave, the ones who were trying to decipher the text. I think he’d learned something from those experts—something about other reliefs, or maybe even a likely translation. ‘Explain to me what you’ve written,’ I said. At first he didn’t want to. He was embarrassed, but I kept pressuring him. I wanted to know if my method had worked.

  “So he read. I can still recite his words from memory. Listen, it’s beautiful: I, I, I am the son of the horseman, the horseman from the palace, the palace on the mountain, the mountain across from the cave. In that cave is a letter, a letter from a king, a letter carved in the rock, from the time when there were no pens, only hammers and chisels.”

  Later, when Aga Akbar was a young man, he became a guide. He led the cuneiform experts—the Americans, the British, the French and the Germans—up to the cave on mules. Then he stood on a mule and held up the oil lamp, so they could take pictures or copy the text for the umpteenth time.

  Anyone interested in cuneiform or in decoding old inscriptions is sure to own books on the subject. And those books are sure to have a couple of pictures of the cuneiform inscription in the cave on Saffron Mountain. And one of those pictures is bound to show a youthful Aga Akbar, standing on a mule and holding up an oil lamp to illuminate the cuneiform relief.

  The Train

  We can’t understand Aga Akbar’s notes

  without knowing about Shah Reza Khan.

  We look at the background to the story,

  at the details not given in the notebook.