My Father's Notebook (9 page)

Life in Saffron Village went on as usual. My mother, Tina, had three other children—three girls. Aga Akbar was, therefore, the father of four healthy children, who not only could hear well but could also express themselves extremely well in both Farsi and sign language.

Akbar worked as hard as he always had and gave all of his earnings to Tina, leaving household matters and the raising of the children to her. He still travelled a lot. Sometimes he was gone for a week or even longer.

“Where’s Akbar?”

“Working.”

“Where?”

“On the other side of the mountain.”

“He has enough customers here. What’s he doing on the other side of the mountain?”

No one knew exactly where he went. Or who he slept with. (There’s no reference to this in his notebook.)

I don’t really know what Tina was doing in those days or how she dealt with Akbar. Nor do I know what the first few months of her marriage were like. She never discussed it.

“Mother, how did you learn sign language?”

“Oh, I don’t know. It was so long ago, I’ve forgotten.”

“Wasn’t it hard, suddenly having to live with a man you couldn’t talk to?”

“I don’t know, it was all so long ago.”

She never mentioned her own mother and father. It was as though she didn’t have any family, as though she were an orphan, nobody’s daughter. Everything I knew about her I had learned from Kazem Khan.

“Was your father a hunter?”

“Yes.”

“What about your mother? I don’t know anything about her.”

“I don’t, either. She died when I was very young.”

In fact, her childhood, youth and first years of marriage had been neatly tied into a bundle and tucked away. “I don’t know” was her standard reply.

I stopped asking questions. But now that I live in the polder and take walks along the dyke, these questions occur more often.

I don’t want to get bogged down in the past, but until you’ve come to terms with it, you can’t really settle into a new culture.

That’s why I’ve become so engrossed in my father’s notebook. After all, his story is also my story. If I can transform his writing into Dutch, I’ll be able to adjust to my new culture more easily.

During yesterday’s walk, I thought back to that first meeting between Tina and Kazem Khan. To the scene in which
Kazem Khan rides around in search of the hunter so he can smoke opium and Tina clears snow from the roof.

I now wonder how much of that story is true. Perhaps Kazem Khan made it up, since the Tina in the story bears little resemblance to my mother.

Perhaps he exaggerated a bit and turned Tina into his dream woman.

Tina was a good mother and she had a strong personality, but she was definitely not the Tina on the roof.

She got fed up with Akbar sometimes and buckled under the weight on her shoulders. One incident stands out clearly in my mind:

Kazem Khan came into our house. Tina screamed, “I can’t stand it! I can’t live with that man one day longer!” Then she began to beat herself over the head and kept it up until she fainted.

Kazem Khan grabbed her by the shoulders and dragged her to bed.

“The Holy Book,” Kazem Khan murmured.

I took the Koran down from the mantel and handed it to him. He knelt in front of Tina’s bed and read from it softly: “
Eqra: be-asme rabbeka alazi khalaqa. Khalaqa al-ensana min
allaqin. Eqra: wa rabbok al-akram, alazi allama be el-qalam
.”

As I walked along the dyke, I recalled another scene from that same period:

A covered wagon creaked into view. My father was at the reins. He drove through the gate of our house, said nothing to Tina, but signed to me, “Come! I need your help!”

He unhitched the horse and led it to the stall. Then he pushed the covered wagon into the barn, where he spent the entire evening. Tina was restless. She knew that something was about to happen, but she also knew she was powerless to prevent it.

“What’s your father doing?” Tina called.

“I don’t know. The door’s locked from the inside.”

He stayed in the barn until late that night.

Early the next morning I woke to the sound of an angry voice in the courtyard.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Tina screamed at Akbar.

I leapt out of bed and looked out of the window. My father had crammed all of our carpets, blankets, buckets and pots and pans into the covered wagon and was now going inside to get my sisters, who were still in bed.

“Help, Ishmael! Go and get—” Tina called.

I raced downstairs and ran all the way to Kazem Khan’s house in my bare feet. “Come quickly, Uncle,” I shouted. “My father’s gone mad.”

Here in the polder I hear the hoofbeats of Kazem Khan’s horse as it galloped into our courtyard.

“Where’s Akbar?” called Kazem Khan.

My father had laid my still-sleepy sisters in the wagon and covered them with a blanket. Kazem Khan swiftly dismounted and gestured to my father with his crop, “Come here!”

My father didn’t budge.

“What on earth are you doing?”

He didn’t answer.

“What’s going on in that head of yours?”

“We’re moving to the city,” my father signed.

“Have you discussed this with Tina?”

No response.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

No response.

Kazem Khan pointed to the wagon. “Unload it! Take everything out!”

Tina took me inside so I wouldn’t have to watch.

“You’ve got four children now,” I heard Kazem Khan say angrily. “But you still do stupid things! Unload this wagon!”

I thought my father would start lugging carpets and blankets back inside, but he didn’t.

“Unload it, I said!”

I peeked out from behind the curtain.

Akbar signed to Kazem Khan that he was going to move to the city no matter what and that he had no intention of unloading our things.

Kazem Khan stood helplessly beside the wagon. Then he stuck his crop under his arm and strode over to his horse. He grabbed the reins and led the horse to the gate.

“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.”