My Father's Notebook

by Kader Abdolah

  “Kazem Khan is leaving,” I said to Tina.

  She pushed aside the curtain. She looked miserable.

  Kazem Khan paused by the gate. His head was bowed. Then he turned and called, “Ishmael!”

  I ran out to him.

  “Here,” he said, handing me the reins. “Take the horse to its stall. I’m old. Your father will no longer listen to me. I’ve lost whatever hold I had on him.”

  I took the horse to its stall and raced back outside.

  “Listen, your father wants to move to the city and I can’t stop him. I’m going into the house to talk to your mother. Keep an eye on your father.”

  “Tina,” Kazem Khan called, “how about a cup of tea?” And he went in.

  “Akbar’s determined to move to the city,” I heard him say. “You mustn’t be so weak. There’s no need to cry and scream and beat yourself over the head every time something happens. Give me a cup of tea, my throat’s dry. Ishmael, go and get your father!”

  Kazem Khan sat down. Tina set a cup of tea in front of him. I brought my father into the house and stood beside him.

  “Ask him why he wants to live in the city,” Kazem Khan said to me.

  “Why the city?” I signed. “Why do you want to go there?”

  “Me, Akbar,” he signed, “I want to go where there are cars and—”

  “Cars!” Kazem Khan exclaimed. “He’s been bewitched by cars!”

  “And schools,” my father signed. “A school for Ishmael. And for the girls. The girls need to go to school.”

  “Schools?” Kazem Khan said in surprise. That wasn’t the answer he’d expected. “Cars. Schools. You want them to go to school? To move to the city? A deaf man with four children in the middle of a strange city with all those cars?”

  “I’m deaf,” my father signed, “but Ishmael isn’t deaf. The girls aren’t deaf. And Tina isn’t deaf either.”

  Kazem Khan was silent.

  “Did you see that?” he said to Tina. “You shouldn’t come running to me before you find out what’s going on. Your husband wants to send your children to school. Don’t look so unhappy. Stand up straight! Support your husband! He may be deaf, but he’s not stupid. At least he thinks about things. Give me another cup of tea. This one is cold.”

  Then he turned back to me. “Ask him if he’s arranged for a house to live in.”

  “Not a house, but a room,” my father replied.

  “Ask him what he plans to do in the city. Tell him that everything’s different there, that nobody knows Akbar, that he’s not automatically welcome everywhere. Here in the mountains he’s Aga Akbar the magician, but there in the city he’s a nobody, a deaf-and-dumb carpet-weaver. He needs to know that. Make sure he understands!”

  I told him. I made sure he understood.

  “We’ll see,” my father said.

  “OK. I have nothing more to say to him. Have a safe trip. You can tell him that from me,” Kazem Khan said, and he stood up. “Forget the tea, Tina. I’m going.”

  He went into the courtyard. “Ishmael!” he called. “Would you come here for a moment?”

  I followed him as he walked past the cedar trees. He didn’t look at me as he talked. I’ve forgotten his exact words, though I have a vivid memory of the scene: I was walking behind Kazem Khan, not looking at his face but at his hands, clasped behind his back. In his hands he held a riding crop. The sun shone down through the trees and struck his shoulders. He walked, I followed. He talked, I listened. At some point, he turned, held out his hand and said, “Have a safe trip, my boy.”

  Then the scene suddenly shifted again: the covered wagon creaked down the road. I was sitting beside my father. A stricken Tina sat in the back and stared vacantly into space with my youngest sister on her lap. My other two sisters were delighted at the unexpected journey. They giggled as the wagon bounced and swayed down the treacherous mountain road.

  I was worried about Tina, afraid she’d go into hysterics again. Despite my age, I was now the man of the house. That’s what Kazem Khan had wanted to tell me before we left. My job, he said, would be to look after Tina and the girls.

  This was the first time my father had assumed responsibility for his family and we were now on our own. I could feel the weight of this enormous responsibility on my shoulders, too. My throat was so tight I could barely swallow. I was scared, but I was also determined not to let anyone see the fear in my eyes.

  After about three hours, we had left behind the mountains, the mountain goats, the foxes and the wild red tulips, and descended into a plain. We travelled the same roads as the cars and buses.

  We hadn’t eaten breakfast and apparently we weren’t going to get any lunch, either.

  “Stop,” I signed. “We’ve got to eat.”

  In all those hours I hadn’t said a word to my father, or even looked at him. Was I angry? I don’t remember. No, probably not, because I didn’t think of myself as a separate individual. How can I explain it? I was him, or he was me; in any case, we were one. I couldn’t be angry with him. And even if I were, my anger would have been directed not so much at him as at myself, because I—or, rather, my father and I—had embarked on the same great adventure. We didn’t know if we could survive in the city, but we wanted to try. The city called to us and we couldn’t refuse.

  He stopped the wagon and we got out to rest.

  “Don’t look so gloomy,” I signed. “Talk to Tina, so she doesn’t start acting crazy again.”

  Only then did he seem to realise what was going on. He took some bread and cheese out of a cotton bag and gave it to Tina. Then he patted my sister, the one sitting on Tina’s lap. I saw his hand graze Tina’s breast.

  We rode on. After an hour we came to the outskirts of the city. To my surprise, there were no cars and no schools. Off in the distance we saw three tall blocks of flats. My father headed the horse in that direction and soon we pulled up in front of the ugliest one. Apparently our rented room wasn’t in the city itself, but in an outlying industrial area.

  We were excited anyway, because we’d never seen a building that was four storeys high.

  We carried our things up to a flat on the top floor: one large room plus a dark storeroom. If you looked out of the window you could see the mountains, including the peak of Saffron Mountain, which rose up above the entire range. The city was off to the right, though you couldn’t see it from our apartment.

  Tina unrolled the carpets and put the kitchen things in the storeroom. She started to make soup, the traditional meal of Saffron Village, and as she cooked, she pondered her new situation.

  “We’ll see,” she said and placed a bowl of soup before me. She hadn’t said a word all day.

  And with those two short words, our life in the city began.

  Early in the morning, my father went off to work. A carpet-weaver he met in the bazaar had promised him a job.

  “What kind of a job?” I asked. (Tina was actually the one who wanted to know.)

  “I’m not sure. It’s in a big building. The boss is rich. He’s the one who lent me the covered wagon. I’m not sure … I think I’ll be sewing numbers on carpets.”

  “Sewing numbers,” Tina sighed.

  “Why sewing numbers?” I gestured.

  “I don’t know. A lot of people in the shop sew numbers on carpets. Then they load the carpets into a truck and take them to the train. And the train brings them to … I don’t know … far, far away.”

  “May Allah protect us,” Tina said. “Aga Akbar, the magician, has become a seamstress!” She went into the storeroom and locked the door.

  A week later I started school. The arrangements had been made by one of the men my father worked with. The school was on the other side of town, about three or four miles away. Because no buses went that way, I had to walk, like all the other children.

  As soon as school was finished, I went straight home. I was worried about Tina. Kazem Khan had told me to keep an eye on her, because there was a wild animal inside her�
�a wolf.

  One afternoon I came home to find my sisters playing quietly. Tina was nowhere to be seen. I don’t know why, but suddenly I sensed the presence of the wolf.

  “Where’s Tina?” I asked.

  They didn’t know. I opened the door to the storeroom and peered into the darkness. There was no sign of Tina. I ran over to the neighbours.

  “Hello, is Tina here?”

  No, she wasn’t. So far, she’d had little contact with the neighbours. I raced home and went back to the storeroom. I stood in the dark for a while, but I still couldn’t see her. Then I listened intently and heard a sound. It was Tina. Or not really Tina. The gleaming eyes of the wolf stared back at me from the darkest corner of the storeroom. God help me, I didn’t know what to do. If we’d been in the village, I would have jumped on the horse, ridden straight to Kazem Khan’s and cried, “Come quick! The wolf is back!”

  But we weren’t in the village and Kazem Khan wasn’t here.

  So I took a step backwards, as I had seen Kazem Khan do, and called softly to my sister, “Go and get the Holy Book!” She snatched the book off the mantel and handed it to me.

  I knelt by the storeroom door, turned to the wild beast, kissed the cover, closed my eyes, opened the book to a page and began to chant:

  Wa az-zoha, wa az-zoha.

  Wa al-layl eza saja.

  Wa al-layl: ma waddaka, waddaka,

  ma waddaka rabboka, rabboka

  Wa az-zoha wa al-layl,

  Wa al-akhiratu khayrun lakka

  Rabboka Allah, rabboka zaha rabboka.

  I swear by the dawning light

  And the night when all is still.

  I swear by the darkest night

  That God has not forsaken you.

  I swear by both morning and night

  That your life will soon be better.

  As I recited the sura, I quietly took one step forward, then another. Reciting all the while, I held out my hand to her and saw the light go out in the wolf’s eyes. I went on until I felt Tina’s hand seek mine in the darkness. “Come, Tina, come!” I whispered. “Let’s go eat.” She struggled to her feet and then walked into the living room.

  I look out my window and I see the wolf running through the Dutch polder.

  Let it run, let it go, let the wolf lose its way on this new ground, so it will never be able to find its way back to Tina.

  A Woman in a Hat

  It’s not the schools and buses

  that have cast their spell on Akbar,

  but something else.

  I’m sitting in my attic again, but it’s hot, almost too hot to work. I read … no, that’s not really the right word … I run my pencil along the words, the phrases, in my father’s notebook, then feed them—or, rather, whatever fragments of text I can understand—into my computer. It’s not an easy job. I’m forced to base my story on the frequently indecipherable and incomprehensible thoughts of another person. Usually I keep working until a headache forces me to stop.

  The attic is my office. I sit up here nearly all day. My daughter goes to school and my wife works part-time in Lelystad. On her off days I go to my classes in Dutch literature at the University of Utrecht.

  I get headaches because I don’t know how to proceed with the story. A couple of times I’ve thought about quitting, but in the end I always go on.

  I hear children playing in the schoolyard. They’re giggling and shouting, “Stop, stop!” I go over to the window and see the teacher spraying the kids with a hose. They grab the hose and turn it on her, until she’s soaking wet. She runs, laughs and takes off her shoes. The kids chase after her. She runs, laughs and takes off her wet blouse.

  It’s hot. Everyone’s sitting in the shade of an umbrella or under a tree. Trailers are parked up and down the street, since everyone has just got back from their holidays.

  I didn’t go on holiday this year, though my wife and daughter spent a few weeks in Germany with friends. I chose to spend my time working on the book. I need to find the right form for the story before the autumn semester begins.

  I go outside and do something no one else is doing in this heat: I run a few laps. To hell with the computer and Aga Akbar’s notebook.

  I run to get away from the story, but, as it turns out, I meet it head-on. I run down a path that used to be the bottom of the sea, then climb to the top of the dyke. Off in the distance are becalmed sailboats. I run to the end of the dyke, with beads of sweat dripping from my forehead. My headache has finally disappeared. I know how the story should continue.

  I sit on the couch and watch the news. Prince Claus, the husband of the Dutch queen, was giving a speech at an award ceremony, when he suddenly took off his tie, urged men to liberate themselves from “the snake around their necks” and tossed it into the air. The camera shows the tie in slow motion, sailing up in a high arc, then fluttering gently to the floor.

  Prince Claus is right—ties are a thing of the past. You can see it in clothing stores. Men’s ties are always on sale—first 50 per cent off, then 75 per cent off, and finally marked down so much that you can buy a good green silk tie for only a guilder.

  A few months before the student association’s party at the university, I bought myself a tie. On the big night, I put it on and went to the party. One second after I entered the room, I put my hand over the knot and headed for the gents’. Everyone was dressed in jeans and T-shirts. I was the only one in a suit and tie.

  It was my first time to wear a tie as an adult, but the second time in my life to furtively take one off and stuff it in my pocket. The earlier occasion had been in my childhood, soon after we moved to the city.

  One evening my father came home with two ties: a grassy green one for me and a bright red one for himself.

  First he knotted mine, then he went over to the mirror to tie his own.

  “Why do we have to wear these ties?” I signed.

  “I want to take you into town.”

  “Why with a tie?”

  “All the men in town wear a tie,” he signed back.

  Tina wasn’t home. She and my sisters were visiting a woman who’d recently moved to the city. Clearly, my father didn’t want Tina to know about the ties. That wouldn’t be a problem—from the day I was born, my father had been teaching me not to divulge his secrets.

  We walked to the heart of the city, to a street I’d never heard of. Men were strolling around a square, lit by multicoloured electric lights. There were a few women, too, though none wearing a chador. Everything was different—the people, the cars, the newspaper boys shouting, “The latest news! Read all about it!”

  A couple of men with a record player were selling records. The magical voice of a Persian singer rang out over the square.

  Whose voice did I hear that evening? What song were the record salesmen playing? I don’t remember the lyrics and there aren’t any Iranians in my area who might know. So I close my eyes and open my ears. No, I can’t hear the words, my memory has erased the lyrics, but I do hear an old melody: baradam, baradam, baradam, which seems to go with the following song:

  Be rahi didam barg-e khazan

  Oftadeh ze bidad-e zaman.

  Ay barg-e payizi,

  Az man to chera be gerizi?

  In my travels I saw a falling leaf,

  Tossed about on the winds of time.

  Tell me, autumn leaf,

  Why are you fleeing from me?

  There were men selling ice-cream cones and walnuts, and there were men wearing ties. Most of them walked around with a newspaper or stopped beneath a lamppost to read. My dear father, who couldn’t read a word, suddenly pulled a rumpled newspaper out from under his suit, tucked it under his right arm and started strolling around the square like all the other men. I followed him, curious as to what he would do next, but he didn’t do anything special. He walked around for a while, then stopped beside a lamppost, unfolded his newspaper, held it up to the light and pretended to read. I thought he’d gone mad aga
in. Kazem Khan was right: my father was crazy, my father was a fool.

  After a while he tucked the newspaper back under his arm and continued his stroll.

  How could I have known that my father was head over heels in love?

  If I’d been in his place, I think I’d have fallen for one of those women, too.

  The women in the square were not at all like the women we were used to. I’d never seen women do anything but work. Women wove carpets and cooked and prayed; women had children and cried and got sick and had a wolf inside. Now I saw women prancing around in high heels.

  At a certain moment a young woman wearing a hat walked into the square from a side street. My father’s eyes lit up. He walked over to her, gestured, then pointed at me with his newspaper: “My son. He can talk, he can hear, he can even read a newspaper.”

  “What a clever boy!” the young woman exclaimed and leaned closer. “What’s your name?”

  “Ishmael,” I said, instantly on my guard.

  Did my father actually know what love was? Was he aware that he was “in love”? I mean, was he capable of knowing that he’d entered the domain of love? Would he be able to explain his longing? His desire to be with her, to hold her hand, to smell her hair, to possess her?

  Unless you’ve read about it, heard about it, or talked about it, you have no way of knowing what’s happening to you.

  An old Persian classic describes the travels of a man named Hodjah Nasreddin. To understand the meaning of life, he travels through the world on foot. At the gate to Hamadan, he sees a crowd—men, women, children, camels, donkeys, horses, goats, chickens—all racing after a young man. The young man dances, weeps, mutters, flings himself to the ground, gets back up again, weeps some more, laughs, runs and pours a handful of dirt over his head.