My Father's Notebook Read online

  I didn’t have any money, but I was the son of a rather unusual patient, so I ignored the sign and the office hours. The dentist was probably still in bed, or reading his newspaper at the breakfast table. I banged the door knocker twice. No answer. I tried again. An old man, a gardener with a watering can in his hand, opened the door.

  “What’s wrong? Why did you knock so hard?”

  “Good morning. I’d like to talk to Dr Pur Bahlul.”

  “Talk to him? What for? The office opens at three.”

  “I know, but I’d like to talk to him now.”

  “What about?”

  “I’d prefer to discuss that with him.”

  He looked at me, thought it over, then said, “Stay here. I’ll go and ask.”

  I stood at the gate for a long time, until the door was finally opened by a grey-haired man with a pipe clenched between his teeth.

  “Good morning, young man. I assume you’re looking for me.”

  “Good morning, doctor. I’d like to talk to you about my father.”

  “Your father. What’s wrong with your father?”

  “His teeth.”

  “If this is about teeth, you’ll have to wait until three o’clock,” he said and sucked on his pipe.

  “No, it’s not about teeth. It’s about me.”

  “But also about your father’s teeth.”

  “No, not just that, it’s about his pain and … well, you see, I promised to make the pain go away.”

  “What else? Go on, tell me the rest.”

  “Well, I have to relieve the pain somehow and, uh … that’s it, doctor.”

  He looked at me as he puffed on his pipe.

  “Your name?”

  “Ishmael.”

  “Last name?”

  “Mahmud Ghaznavi Khorasani.”

  “Come on in. Follow me,” he said.

  I followed him past a rose garden, a bed of petunias and a row of apple trees filled with red apples. We went into a room with tall windows.

  “Two cups of tea,” he called.

  His library was lined with shelves full of books. He pointed to a chair. “Have a seat.”

  A servant brought us tea.

  “Tell me your story. You mentioned your father. What does he do for a living?”

  “He’s a carpet-mender.”

  “Where?”

  “Everywhere. He doesn’t have a shop, he just walks down the street calling, ‘Farshi, farshi’, so everyone knows he’s a carpet-mender.”

  “Why ‘farshi, farshi’?”

  “Well, he’s a deaf-mute. He just calls out a word that sounds like farsh (carpet).”

  “Ah, I see. And I gather he’s having trouble with his teeth.”

  “Every tooth in his mouth is rotten. The pain has aged him terribly.”

  He struck a match, held it up to his pipe, inhaled deeply and sent the smoke spiralling into the air. Then he rummaged around in his drawer.

  “I know you have to go to school. Here are some painkillers. Bring your father to my office tomorrow evening. We’ll talk some more then.”

  “Thank you, doctor.”

  “There’s no need to thank me.”

  I stood up.

  “Do you read books?”

  “Yes, doctor.”

  “OK, I’ll see you tomorrow evening.”

  The gardener let me out. “Oops,” I said, “I forgot to tell the doctor something.” I retraced my steps.

  “Doctor! May I come in?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think you should know that I can’t pay you. I mean, I’ll pay you back some day, but not now. I should have told you that straight away. But I took one look at your library and forgot all about it.”

  “It’s late. Go to school. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

  Dr Pur Bahlul was arrested a year later. He was released from prison only after the revolution began. As it turns out, he was one of the most important theoreticians of the underground leftist guerrilla movement, but until his arrest, his role had been kept secret even from his own party members.

  When nearly all the leaders of the underground movement had been arrested by the shah’s secret police, Pur Bahlul, using his profession as a cover, was able to keep the party going for a couple more years. I was totally unaware of it at the time and only found out several years later when I myself became an active member of the party.

  Over the next three months, Dr Pur Bahlul pulled out all of my father’s teeth, one by one. My father, with his toothless gums and grey hair, was now truly an old man. We made an appointment to come back in two months. Dr Pur Bahlul checked to see if my father’s gums had hardened, then measured his jaw and jotted down a few notes.

  I’d seen dentures before, but it never occurred to me that my father would be fitted with a pair. I thought he’d have to drink soup for the rest of his life.

  A few weeks later we came back for yet another appointment. My father sat down in the examining chair.

  “Open your mouth,” Dr Pur Bahlul gestured.

  He did.

  “Now close your eyes.”

  He did that, too.

  The dentist took a set of dentures out of a plastic bag and, without looking at me or saying anything, inserted them in my father’s mouth. Then he tapped him on the shoulder. “Look in the mirror!”

  Oddly enough, I felt as though the person staring back from the mirror was not my father but me. It seemed to be my mouth reflecting that shiny row of teeth and me staring in astonishment at my mouth, which held something new and modern, something young that didn’t fit with my old, worn face.

  Now that my father was able to eat, he gradually put on weight. You could see that he felt like living again.

  He was the first man in the mountains to have false teeth. In the summer, when we went to Saffron Mountain on our holidays, I kept having to tug at his sleeve to hurry him along, because every time he ran into an elderly villager, he’d take out his dentures and demonstrate how good and strong they were. He advised everybody to get a pair.

  Sometimes I had to admonish him, “That’s enough. Behave yourself. You’re the father of three daughters. Put those teeth back in your mouth before everybody thinks you’ve gone crazy.”

  It didn’t help. After that, he simply did it when I wasn’t looking.

  • • •

  Dr Pur Bahlul sent me a bill for 3,000 toman. It was an enormous amount of money, which I’d never be able to pay. After all, my father earned only three toman a day.

  “You have an obligation to pay the bill,” the dentist said. “And you’ll pay it down to the last penny.”

  “I know, doctor, but …”

  Everything had already been arranged. He’d made an appointment for me with one of the editors at the city newspaper. If I agreed, I could work twice a week, for three hours a night, sorting letters from readers, editing them and getting them ready for print. I would be allowed to keep half of what I earned; the other half would go towards the dental bill.

  It would have taken me years to pay off my debt, but fate intervened. A year later, I was heading towards his house with another book under my coat when I saw that his street was swarming with policemen. There were even three armed officers standing guard on his roof. The police held back the crowd and wouldn’t let anyone into the street. I hung around to watch.

  Half an hour later, Dr Pur Bahlul was escorted out of his house by three policemen. He was smoking his pipe. The policemen started to shove him into the waiting car, but he wasn’t about to be shoved. He squared his shoulders, took a deep breath, stared into the crowd, then seated himself in the back.

  The doors closed and he disappeared.

  On Your Own Two Feet

  we skip a few years,

  years in which Tina worked *

  and Akbar was often gone.

  But first Hannah’s good name has to be restored.

  I wondered where my father slept when he was in the mountains. I knew the
re was another woman in his life, and he knew that I knew, but it remained a secret between us. Now that I’m so wrapped up in his notebook, I’m reminded of her for the first time in years. I can’t get her out of my mind. It’s a pity I don’t have a picture of her, that I have no idea what she looked like. I don’t even know if she’s still alive, though I suspect she is. You’re less likely to die, in my opinion, if you have a secret to pass on. I think s he’ll go on living until she and I somehow manage to meet.

  Here, in the silence of the polder, I’d like to utter her name, to shout it out loud, but I can’t, because I don’t know it. Someone in Saffron Village once told me that she was the daughter of a Russian immigrant and that she lived in a mountain village near the border of the former Soviet Union. Though I’d never met her or officially known of her existence, she and I had a tacit agreement.

  She did a lot to help the party. She frequently crossed the border with clandestine packages. And she sheltered a number of important party members and smuggled them across the border at night.

  I know she did it for my father. However, now that I’m able to look back at events more objectively, I’ve sensed, or rather realised, that to some extent she also did it for me—the son of the man she loved.

  I think she also came to Golden Bell’s rescue.

  Is she the one who sent me my father’s notebook? There was no return address on the package. No letter, either. Not a word.

  What’s her name?

  Since she exists only in my memory, I suppose I can call her whatever I like. But what name should I give her? A Persian name? A Russian name? No, she already has a Persian or a Russian name. A Dutch name? I’ll give her a temporary name. Hannah, for example. Aunt Hannah. Tonight, when it’s dark, I’ll go stand on the dyke, look out at the inky sea, and call her name: Hannah! Aunt H-a-a-n-nah!

  I must call to her, otherwise this story will grind to a halt and the book will lose its momentum. That’s all. I’m not going to say another word about Hannah.

  And now my father and I are going to go to the bathhouse.

  • • •

  Whenever my father came back from the mountains after a long absence, Tina refused to let him in. She used to hand me a towel and a bar of soap and say, “Scrub him!”

  Did Tina know about Hannah? I’m sure she did, though she never said a word about it to us.

  My father knew he wouldn’t be allowed in, so he always came back just before sunrise, when he and I could go to the bathhouse together. Since Tina wanted me to make sure he didn’t bring back any diseases from the mountains, I used to get into the shower with him.

  “Wash between your buttocks!” I signed.

  He did.

  “Turn around.”

  He turned around and I checked his body for lesions or rashes.

  “Bend your head!”

  He bent his head and I checked his grey hair for lice.

  “OK, it’s fine, you’re clean.”

  Then I tied a towel around him and went into the prayer room.

  Together with the other men, we faced Mecca and prayed. At the end, we turned around and, following a long tradition, greeted the person behind us. I always sat behind my father, so when he turned and put out his hand, I’d shake it and say, “May your prayers be answered.”

  But this time, when he turned to greet me, I wasn’t there. I was standing beside the pillar in the bathhouse, watching the people pray.

  “Why aren’t you praying?” he signed.

  It wasn’t the first time I hadn’t joined in the prayers. I’d stopped a long time ago. It had all started after I’d met Dr Pur Bahlul. He didn’t pray, either.

  I didn’t answer my father’s question.

  He asked me again on the way home. “Why didn’t you pray?” I told him I’d explain later. I didn’t feel like discussing God. I’d learned a lot from the books Dr Pur Bahlul had given me to read.

  Late that night my father came to my room. He didn’t say anything, but I saw the question burning in his eyes.

  “Isn’t it past your bedtime?” I signed.

  “I can’t sleep,” he answered.

  He looked at my new books, the ones I’d been reading while he was away. My bookcase contained several books that used to belong to Dr Pur Bahlul, but were now mine. He ran his fingers along the spines, as if he were checking out the titles.

  “Sit down,” I signed.

  He sat back on his heels on the carpet. I sat down across from him.

  “You asked me why I didn’t say my prayers,” I began. “But first tell me why you pray.”

  “What?”

  “I said, Why do you pray? Why do you bow? Why do you touch your forehead to the ground?”

  “Heaven,” he pointed upward. “I do it because of Heaven.”

  “Heaven? What’s in Heaven?”

  “The Holy One,” he signed.

  “Which holy one? Tell me which one you mean.”

  He smiled, seemingly at a loss, and rested his hands on his knees. The discussion appeared to be at an end. Then he suddenly made his move, a counter-attack: “The Holy Book comes from Heaven. It was written by the great Holy One who lives up above. So there must be a Holy One in Heaven.”

  I shook my head. “The Koran doesn’t come from Heaven. It’s a book—a good book—but it has nothing to do with Heaven.”

  “Yes, it does. Kazem Khan told me so. And so did you, Mine, The Boy Who Crawls Under the Blankets and Reads. You yourself kissed the cover of the book and washed your hands before you read it.”

  “You’re right. I used to touch my forehead to the ground. Then I read these books and found out about other things, and they … wait a minute, let me start at the beginning.”

  I got up and hunted around for a book on outer space, one with lots of pictures of stars.

  “Look at this picture. Can you tell me what it is or what it’s about?”

  No, of course he didn’t know what it was. All he could see was a milky stripe, a trail, a path through the night.

  “Come look!”

  I opened the window. It was a dark blue night. Millions of stars were shining and the Milky Way was clearer than ever.

  “It’s a picture of this,” I signed.

  I wanted to tell him that in the beginning there was nothing and then suddenly there was a big bang, and after that everything was set in motion, everything started to move, just like the Milky Way, which consisted of lots and lots of stars and was still in motion. I did my best. I tried to tell him, in our simple sign language, all that I had learned. But he stared at me in perplexed silence, thinking, what on earth is he talking about?

  In sheer desperation, I switched to something else, suddenly surprising him with a bit of everyday reality: “Did you know that the earth moves?”

  “What?”

  I gestured towards the stars, collected all those stars in my left hand, added the river that ran through our town, threw in the mountains for good measure, placed my father on top, squeezed them all together into a ball and then transferred that ball of matter to my right hand. I held it up in front of his eyes and suddenly let it explode: “B-o-o-o-m! Stars, stars, more stars, then the sun, then the earth, then the moon and then my father and then me … do you understand what I’m saying?”

  No, he didn’t understand. I didn’t, either.

  I took out a map of the world and tried to explain to him where we were on it. “Here, we’re located here, on this little spot on the earth, and the earth is located here in the sky … Look, now I’m drawing the earth and the sun. We, you and I, are located here, but we can’t see the sun. No light. Night.”

  I’d wandered far away, so far away that I could no longer connect these theories with my “not praying”. I stopped.

  “It’s late, go to bed,” I signed.

  He left.

  But later I noticed that he was still thinking about it. Sometimes, when he was in the right mood, he’d joke about it with Golden Bell. He’d pl
uck the stars from the sky, squeeze them into a ball, hold them up in front of her and shout “b-o-o-o-m!” Then he’d roar with laughter. Another time he saw me standing with a group of old men. He stamped his feet on the ground and signed, “The earth is round. And it revolves. You and me, us, we all revolve around the sun. And Ishmael has stopped praying.”

  My father went away again for a long time. When he came back, I was eighteen and ready to leave home.

  In the last five years, our society had changed completely. The shah was firmly entrenched on his throne and in control of almost everything.

  Oil prices had risen and the United States was helping him become the region’s watchdog. The opposition had been crushed and the economy had started to grow—more jobs, higher salaries.

  Everything was different. Even the seasons weren’t what they used to be. The winters didn’t seem as cold. Maybe that was because we’d bought a decent heater, or because we ate better—more meat, more fruit, more vegetables.

  Tina no longer had to work. My father, who had gone back to mending carpets, now earned enough to support us.

  Our remote city, which used to be controlled by the imams, was now divided among the Americans, who built a new refinery, the Germans, who revamped our railway system, the Dutch, who dug our canals, and the Russians, who were building a tractor factory.

  For the first time ever, we painted the doors of our house and replaced the front door, a worn-out wooden affair, with a sturdy iron one. We had the courtyard paved with yellow tiles. Tina was delighted with all these changes.

  Imagine that your daughters had a deaf-mute for a father and a house with an ugly front door. Who would come to ask for your daughter’s hand in marriage?

  One chilly evening in autumn, I took hold of my father’s arm and said, “Come with me. I have something to tell you.”