My Father's Notebook

by Kader Abdolah

  She picked up the cans one by one and put them in the bag. “Golden Bell,” she moaned, “you’ve not only ruined your life, but also mine.”

  Then she turned to Akbar. “Hurry up! Where’s my chador? I’ll take the papers, you take the typewriter. Hide it under your coat. Or wrap it in a rag. No, a carpet. Hurry! I’ll carry those dangerous-looking cans. Now go! Follow me down to the river!”

  It was light outside, though the sun hadn’t come up yet.

  By the bakery they ran into some men hurrying home with fresh bread.

  “Salaam aleikum!”

  “Salaam aleikum!”

  Tina turned down a side street, towards a grape arbor, and Akbar trailed along behind her. Fifteen minutes later they came to the river.

  Tina hunted around and found a heavy rock, which she put in the box of flyers. She took off her headscarf, tied it around the box and lowered it into the water. Then she gingerly picked up the bag of spray cans. She filled the bag with water, tied it shut and pushed it gently away from the shore. It floated briefly along with the current, then sank.

  “Don’t just stand there!” she snapped at Akbar. “Throw the typewriter in, too!”

  But Akbar couldn’t bring himself to do it. He hesitated.

  So Tina picked up the typewriter, walked down to the river’s edge and threw it as far as she could. It splashed noisily into the water, but Tina fell to her knees. “Ow, my back!” she cried. “Come here, Akbar! Hold my hand! I can’t breathe. No, don’t touch me, don’t come near me. Golden Bell, look what you’ve done to me!”

  She began to cry. After several minutes, she was finally able to stand up again, with Akbar’s help. She held his arm and they slowly made their way home.

  At eleven o’clock that same morning, two agents of the secret police walked into Akbar’s shop. Akbar hadn’t felt up to going that morning, but Tina had insisted: “Go to the shop as usual and do your work. We mustn’t do anything out of the ordinary, or people will realise that Golden Bell didn’t come home last night.”

  Akbar was sitting at his workbench when the shadows of the two men fell across the carpet he was mending. Startled, he raised his head and began to stand.

  “Don’t get up,” one of them gestured.

  Akbar sensed that these were the men Tina had been talking about. The other agent went around the shop, inspecting things. He moved aside the carpets on the workbench and peered into a box on the shelf.

  “Your daughter, the girl who helps you in the shop, where is she?” the agent asked, in rudimentary sign language.

  Despite the man’s clumsy signs, Akbar knew what he meant.

  “What did she do in your shop?” the agent continued.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Akbar signed.

  “Your daughter,” the agent gestured more emphatically. “Daughter, earrings. Green earrings. Long hair. Breasts. You understand? What did she do here? Who else came to your shop?”

  Akbar knew he wasn’t supposed to say anything, but he was upset by the man’s crude gestures. It was Golden Bell’s long hair and green earrings he was describing. He must have seen her without her chador. Surely that was impossible?

  Though Akbar was inwardly seething, he managed to sit calmly in his chair.

  “He doesn’t understand what you’re talking about,” the other agent said.

  “He understands all right. Show him the photographs.”

  The other agent went into the lean-to.

  The first agent took a couple of pictures out of his coat pocket. He thrust the picture of a man in front of Akbar’s face. “Do you know this man?”

  “I don’t understand. Let me get my wife.”

  “Sit down. Look at this picture. Have you ever seen this man in your shop? Did he have any contact with your daughter? Did he—”

  “I don’t understand. You have to send for my wife,” Akbar gestured for the second time.

  “I bet you’ll understand now. Here’s another picture. I’m sure you’ll recognise her,” he said with a smirk. And he showed him a picture of Golden Bell with her hair in a tangle and her face covered with cuts and bruises.

  That did it. The man had violated the inviolable. Akbar snatched the picture out of his hand, leapt to his feet and pushed the man aside.

  The agent backed up a few steps, pulled out a gun and yelled, “Sit down!” But that only made things worse. Akbar grabbed a stick and started hitting him, shrieking all the while, “GEEEEE OUOUOU!”

  The other agent rushed out of the lean-to and was about to grab Akbar from behind, when Akbar wheeled around and whacked him on the shoulder with his stick. The agent doubled over in pain.

  Akbar hurried outside and began shouting: “MYYYY GOOLGOOL EAEAEAR RRRGGG!”

  Shopkeepers raced outside and passers-by rushed to his aid. “What’s wrong?”

  “In there. Those men. A picture. Golden Bell. Her hair. Her earrings,” he gestured.

  No one knew what he was talking about.

  The situation had got completely out of hand. The hated agents of the secret police slinked off to their car and disappeared.

  The shopkeepers took Akbar back to his shop.

  “What did they want?”

  “That man had a picture in his pocket. Golden Bell’s long hair. Her green earrings. And her … How could he have seen her green earrings? Do you understand?”

  “No,” said the grocer.

  “Golden Bell didn’t come home, I mean, she got home late last night, but my wife can tell you more. And that man pulled out a gun. He had the picture in his pocket. Suddenly I got angry, I picked up a stick and hit him. The other agent was about to grab me from behind. I hit him hard on his … the picture, where’s the picture?”

  “I think we’d better get his wife,” the baker said. “He’s upset about something.”

  • • •

  Ishmael phoned a few more times, but Tina couldn’t bring herself to tell him that Golden Bell was in prison. Instead, every time he called, she told him that Golden Bell just happened to be away at that moment.

  “Tina, it’s hard for me to phone. I can’t do it often. I’ll try again tomorrow evening at around seven,” he finally said. “Tell Golden Bell, because I want to talk to her. And can you ask Father to come home earlier tomorrow night? I want to hear his voice. He’s all right, isn’t he?”

  “We’re old. Some days are better than others. But he’s doing fine. He’s working the same long hours he always has.”

  That was a lie, because at that very moment Akbar was lying ill in bed. Tina had deliberately stood with her back to Akbar so he wouldn’t notice that she was talking to Ishmael, but he sensed that she was hiding something. He struggled to his feet, walked over to Tina and signed, “Who’re you talking to?”

  “Our next-door neighbour,” she replied.

  Akbar could tell that she was lying.

  “Is it Ishmael?” he signed, and he began to say out loud, “Ismaa Ismaa Ismaa Agggaaa Aga Akkekebaaraa.”

  “Tina!” Ishmael yelled into the receiver. “Is that Father?”

  Akbar grabbed the phone and started telling him Golden Bell’s story in a trembling voice: “I I I crrrr sh sh sh is gogogo I I I Akka am iiin bedbedddd ohohoh shop shop is clo sh sh sh is gogogo oh nonono.” Then he handed the phone back to Tina, wiped away his tears and went back to bed.

  Sobbing, Tina told Ishmael the truth. She told him that Golden Bell was in prison, that after six months they’d finally been given permission to visit her once a month, that Akbar had collapsed by the cedar trees and the neighbours had carried him home on their shoulders.

  • • •

  Akbar went back to his shop, but he had trouble working.

  “My head doesn’t feel right,” he told Tina. “I keep weaving the wrong flowers into the carpets I’m mending.”

  “You just need to concentrate. If you make mistakes, we won’t earn any money. Go to the shop and work calmly and quietly. It’ll all come
back to you.”

  A month later, when he didn’t come home from work one day, Tina went looking for him. She found him lying on the carpet with his cuneiform notebook beside him. He had fainted. Tina ran to the bakery. The baker immediately called an ambulance and Akbar was taken to the hospital. “Your husband needs to rest,” the doctor told Tina. “Work will kill him.”

  After a week, Akbar was released from the hospital. He now walked with a cane.

  He hated sitting around the house, so one morning he shuffled to the shop with his cane, unlocked the door, moved his chair over to the window, sat down and tried to do a bit of work. In the afternoon he walked to the cemetery and sat by the grave of his nephew Jawad. From there he looked up at Saffron Mountain. When evening came, he went back home. “Where have you been?” Tina burst out. “What will I do if you fall?”

  He went in the house, picked up a pen and crossed off another day on the calendar. Then he counted the number of days left before they could visit Golden Bell.

  On visiting days he got up at the crack of dawn, grabbed his cane and walked the six miles to the prison on his own.

  Tina used to beg, “Don’t do it. It isn’t good for you. Why don’t you take the bus, like I do?”

  But Akbar never listened. “It makes me feel better. You don’t have to worry about me. I don’t walk fast. I stop and rest along the way.”

  When he got to the prison, he usually sat in the teahouse on the square until the bus arrived with its load of visitors. The moment he saw Tina, he stood up and went over to meet her.

  Akbar always took along a few skeins of yarn that he’d dyed himself, because Golden Bell was knitting socks, mittens and a warm robe. Since she was ruining her eyes in her dark cell, Tina took her fresh vegetables and lentils. On a previous visit, Golden Bell had asked them to bring her walnuts and dried figs.

  “What do you need those for?” Tina said. “You don’t get much exercise, so don’t eat too many figs.”

  “Don’t worry, Mother, I won’t.”

  And so, the months and the years went by. The Berlin Wall fell and Ishmael ended up in the Netherlands, in a house in the polder. He had a place to sit and a window through which he could look out over his past.

  These were difficult years, but he wasn’t sorry he’d escaped or made the political choices he had. He’d learned a lot, he’d had all kinds of experiences and he’d even enjoyed life. Golden Bell’s imprisonment, however, was a constant source of pain and worry. He also felt terribly guilty.

  It was winter. Early one morning Akbar grabbed his cane and set off for the prison.

  In the spring or summer he always ran into farmers walking out to their fields to work the land. “Salaam, Aga Akbar, how are you?”

  “Better.”

  “And your daughter?”

  “Fine. She knitted me a cap and some mittens for the winter. She’s even weaving a carpet. She says that when it’s done, she’s going to sit on her magic carpet and fly away from the prison,” Akbar signed. “Fly away,” he repeated with a laugh, and he waved his cane in the air.

  In the spring he usually sat down, drank a cup of tea with the farmers, rested for a while and then walked on.

  But in the winter it was difficult. He couldn’t stop to rest, because it was too cold. He didn’t mind, though. He spent the whole time talking to Golden Bell in his head and that kept him from feeling the cold in his feet.

  On his last visit he’d noticed that Golden Bell was getting old. Her face was lined and her shoulders were slightly stooped.

  Maybe he was mistaken and they weren’t really stooped, but he signed to Tina anyway, “I’ve noticed that Golden Bell has a stoop. Have you noticed it, too?”

  “No, but it must be from all that sitting. With four or five girls crammed into one tiny cell, there’s not much room for her to move around. S he’ll have to do a lot of walking when she gets out. That’ll straighten her back.”

  “When is she going to get out?”

  “I don’t know, Akbar. They don’t tell us things like that. Maybe soon, maybe not for a long time.”

  “How long is ‘a long time’?”

  “Oh, honestly, Akbar, how would I know? Maybe so long that I won’t be able to walk any more.”

  He felt saddened by her answer.

  As he walked towards the prison, Akbar pondered her words. Long, Tina had said, maybe so long that she wouldn’t be able to walk any more. By that time, Akbar thought, I’ll probably be dead.

  Golden Bell’s hair was turning prematurely grey. But she was clever and strong, so Akbar hoped she’d survive for years. When she was finally released, she’d still have a long life, she’d still be able to work and maybe even have children. Akbar felt sure Golden Bell would manage all right, since she’d read so many books.

  Tina didn’t want Akbar to feel so sad. She told him that everything would be OK. “If you suffer from too much sadness,” she said, “you’ll fall down again and die. And if you die, you won’t be able to visit Golden Bell any more and then Golden Bell will cry in her cell for ever.”

  Tina also said that if he died he’d never see Ishmael again, either. “Maybe we’ll all go and visit Ishmael when Golden Bell gets out of prison,” Tina said. “We’ll take a plane!”

  Who knows? Maybe one day they would.

  “Where does Ishmael live?” Akbar asked.

  “He lives in a country that doesn’t have any mountains,” Tina said. “It’s always cloudy there, the wind is always blowing and he lives at the bottom of a sea.”

  “At the bottom of a sea? A sea?”

  “Yes,” Tina said. “They pumped out all the water. Now there are trees growing on what used to be the bottom of the sea and cows grazing on the grass.”

  It didn’t make sense to Akbar, but that’s where Ishmael lived.

  As he plodded on, Akbar thought about the fact that Golden Bell was more patient than Ishmael. She explained things to him with endless patience.

  Ishmael always talked to him about big things—the sky, the stars, the earth, the moon—but Golden Bell always talked to him about little things.

  Once she picked up a stone. “There are tiny things moving around inside,” she said.

  “Inside a stone?” Akbar couldn’t believe it.

  “Yes. Little tiny things that revolve around each other,” Golden Bell explained, “the way the earth revolves around the sun.”

  He still couldn’t believe it. “That’s impossible,” he signed. “A stone is just a stone. If you smashed it with a hammer, you wouldn’t see a thing. No earth, no sun.”

  Golden Bell handed him a hammer. He smashed the stone. “You see, no sun.”

  “Make it even smaller,” she said.

  He did it. Smaller and smaller and smaller. He banged away at that stone until it was just a heap of sand and it couldn’t get any smaller.

  “The sun is inside the tiniest grain of sand,” Golden Bell said.

  Akbar laughed out loud.

  She’s smart, he thought as he neared the prison. She gets all of that from books. He remembered another of Golden Bell’s explanations. One time she laid her head on his chest and said, “Boom, boom, boom.”

  “What do you mean, ‘boom, boom, boom’?” he signed.

  “Here, just under your ribs, you’ve got a motor,” she replied.

  “A motor?”

  He laughed, but she opened a book and showed him a picture of the motor under his ribs that went boom, boom, boom.

  The prison was on a hill. By the time Akbar reached the square in front of the prison, the sun had come up. He was early, so he went to the teahouse to wait for Tina. The owner brought him a cup of tea and asked him if he wanted to eat anything.

  “Bread and cheese,” he gestured.

  He looked out of the window at the snow-covered mountains and at the tiny windows of the prison cells. Golden Bell is in one of those cells, he thought. She knows I’m waiting here in the teahouse. Soon I’ll be able to see her and s
he’ll ask, “How are you, Father? Did you walk here? You shouldn’t do that, your knee will start acting up again. Why don’t you take the bus?”

  “I don’t like the bus. I can’t think because of those smelly exhaust fumes. Walking gives me a chance to think.”

  He hates it when a guard stands next to Golden Bell and keeps his eye on her during the whole visit. Tina says he ought to ignore the man, simply pretend he’s not there. But he can’t.

  One time he motioned to the guard to move aside.

  Tina immediately tugged at his sleeve. “Don’t do that! They might not let us see her again.”

  Visiting hours are short, the time flies by. “Don’t complain,” Tina says, “it’s better than nothing.”

  Akbar saw the bus go past the teahouse and stop at the bus stop. He watched the visitors get out.

  He saw Tina, carrying the vegetables she’d bought for Golden Bell. She’s having trouble walking, Akbar thought. He hadn’t noticed it before. She’s getting old, he realised.

  Political prisoners were not allowed to have any visitors except their parents. When the gates opened, the parents poured into the visiting room and stood behind a wall of bars. The prisoners were lined up behind another set of bars, about five feet away. Since everyone talked at the same time, you had to shout to make yourself heard. You also had to be quick, because there wasn’t much time. Any unspoken words had to be left unsaid for another month.

  Sometimes a mother’s scream cut through the tumult. There was an immediate hush, because they all knew that when prisoners didn’t appear, it was because they’d been executed. Visiting hours were a torture to the parents. They died a thousand deaths before their sons and daughters appeared behind the bars. Will he be there today? Will she be there today?