My Father's Notebook Read online

  I was startled. Why was the dictator’s picture hanging in his shop? At first I was angry, but then it occurred to me that perhaps it was better this way.

  I gently pushed open the door. It squeaked. I should oil those hinges, I thought. I slipped inside. My shadow fell over the book. He raised his head and looked at me, without a flicker of recognition. I took off my hat. A shy smile appeared on his face.

  “I didn’t recognise you with a moustache,” he signed and stood up.

  I thought he was going to hug me, but he didn’t. He kept staring—at my hat, my glasses, my moustache. I held out my hand. “Why don’t you shake my hand? Here, I’ve brought you some firewood.”

  He pointed, looking slightly embarrassed, at his pile of twigs and branches, then hesitantly shook my hand. He hung the bag of firewood respectfully on a hook and probably never touched it again.

  “Why are you staring at me like that?” I signed. “Aren’t you going to offer me a cup of tea?”

  “Oh, yes, sit down,” he pointed at the carpet, then corrected himself. “No, not there, wait a minute.” He pulled out a chair and offered it to me. “Please be seated.”

  He thought I’d become a gentleman, a gentleman in a hat. I put the chair back and sat on the floor next to the stove. He poured me a cup of tea and stood hovering over me like a waiter. “Why don’t you come and sit by me?”

  He did sit, but at a respectful distance and with his hands on his knees. It was what he wanted, so I stopped protesting.

  “How’re you doing?” I signed. “Are you pleased with your shop?”

  “Yes, thank you, I’m pleased,” he replied and bowed his head.

  “And how’s Tina?”

  “She’s fine, thank you.”

  I pointed at the photograph. “I see you have a picture of the shah in your shop,” I said.

  His eyes lit up. He started to say something, to offer an explanation, but changed his mind and kept sitting there politely on his knees. After a brief silence, he hesitantly signed, “How are you? Is everything all right?”

  “Yes, I’m fine,” I replied.

  “Where have you been?” he continued. “Why don’t you come home any more? Why don’t you phone? Golden Bell is waiting for you to call. She’s grown up. She asked me to tell you that she wants to see you. I know you don’t have much time, that you have a lot of books to read, and I understand. But maybe you could give us a call every once in a while.”

  “OK, I will, but it’s become a lot harder.”

  “What has? The books?”

  “No, not the books. Well, yes, the books are hard, too. But take that picture on the wall, for example. Do you know who that man is?”

  “He’s the son of Reza Khan,” he gestured proudly. “You know that. He’s an important man with a gold crown on his head. He owns lots of horses and rifles and carries a pistol with him at all times. He’s a very important man. All the carpet-weavers in the city have his portrait in their shops. Me, too, I bought a picture. No, wait, I didn’t buy it, a city official brought it here and I had it framed. It’s nice, isn’t it?”

  I didn’t answer. He started to say something else about the picture, then suddenly sensed that I didn’t share his enthusiasm. So, instead he said, “Do you think it’s wrong?”

  “Yes, no … I mean I’m talking about something else.”

  “But all the carpet-weavers like him,” he hesitantly signed. “His picture is in all the shops. He’s a good man.”

  “I don’t agree,” I signed.

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t like him.”

  “No? Why not?”

  “He’s not a good man. He’s no good.”

  He pointed at the portrait and was about to say something. Then he stopped himself. His hand dropped back into his lap.

  “It’s almost too complicated to explain,” I said, “but I’ll give you an example. Do you remember the policemen at my school who beat you over the head with their clubs?”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “Those policemen were working for the shah. In Tehran, at my university, there are lots of policemen, too. They beat up the students, arrest them and throw them in jail. They even want to arrest me.”

  “Arrest you? Why? What have you done?”

  “Nothing. Or, at any rate, nothing special. They don’t want me to read certain books. Or to say certain things. They expect me to honour the shah, but I don’t like him. They’re keeping me under surveillance. They’re hoping to catch me. That’s why I can’t come home.”

  “Oh,” I read in his gesture.

  “And you know what’s worse? The policemen in Tehran don’t wear uniforms. They wear ordinary clothes, just like you and me. You never know who to trust. I don’t want them to recognise me, so that’s why I’m wearing a hat. It’s also the reason for the glasses and the moustache.”

  “How can you read books about light and air when there are so many policemen?”

  I wanted to tell him that I wasn’t reading any books about light and air at the moment, but I refrained. It would only hurt him.

  “I’m going to tell you something else. Do you remember Dr Pur Bahlul? The dentist?”

  “Of course I remember him.”

  “Do you know who had him arrested? The shah! He ordered his policemen to arrest the dentist! He’s still in jail. All of his teeth have been broken. Do you understand what I’m saying? That’s why I hate the shah. Important people—people like the dentist who read books—also hate the shah.”

  Was it all right to use simple examples to explain complex issues? Was it fair to saddle him with my personal opinions? Shouldn’t I have left him in peace and simply accepted his opinions and his view of the world?

  Now that I can look back on those years with more objectivity, I sometimes feel a twinge of regret. But only sometimes. There was no other way. He and I couldn’t possibly hold different opinions. We had to be one, to share one ideology. I had to bring him close to me, close to the new reality in my life, so he wouldn’t get lost in the unfamiliar world of his son. Suppose I was arrested? Suppose the secret police suddenly burst through the door in the middle of the night and searched his house because of his son’s political activities and he had no idea what was going on?

  I felt that it was my duty to explain the world to him. I had been appointed by family, friends, neighbours and even nature to be my father’s guide, so I had to lead him as I saw fit.

  Once and for all, let me make it clear—if only to myself—that if I’d had any other father, I might not have felt the need to join the movement, or at any rate I wouldn’t have become so involved or gone so far. Being the son of such a father brought me, led me, propelled me in this direction. That’s the long and the short of it. We had to adjust our steps to each other’s stride. He had to stand by me and therefore by the leftist movement in which I was involved. It was time to let him know that we—my comrades and I—might need him some day.

  “My friends and I are against the shah,” I signed. “He has to go.”

  At first he didn’t understand. He sat and stared at me, without moving. All of a sudden it dawned on him. His hands began to tremble.

  “What do you mean, ‘go’?”

  “Just go! Down with the shah!”

  “But he has a pistol strapped to his side!”

  I thought it over. Should I or shouldn’t I?

  I hesitated for a few moments, then finally reached under my jacket and pulled out my gun.

  The Dutch Dunes

  We go to see Louis. Ishmael hardly

  knows him, but that’s not important.

  There’s a young woman in Louis’s life,

  whom Ishmael is destined to meet.

  I knew what sand was, and hills, too, but I had no idea what Dutch dunes would look like or how a person could go for a walk through hills of fine sand.

  I looked up the word in the dictionary:

  dune 'd (y)ün n—s often attrib [F, f
r, OF, fr, MD dune—more at DOWN] 1: a hill or ridge of sand piled up by the wind commonly found along shores, along some river valleys, and generally where there is dry surface sand during some part of the year 2: TWINE 5

  • • •

  I received a letter from a man named Louis, whom I’d met on the train.

  It was late and I’d caught the last train home from the university. I stepped into a nearly empty car and saw a man sitting at the far end. Tired, I sat myself down, closed my eyes and dozed off.

  How long had I been dozing? I don’t know. Suddenly I heard someone calling, “Sir!”

  I opened my eyes and looked around. The man in the back was still the only person in the train. Had he said something or had I dreamed it?

  “Would you care to join me?” the man asked. “I’m sitting here all by myself, too.” I went over to him. He didn’t look old enough to need a cane, but one was resting by his side.

  “Where do you come from?” he asked.

  “From Persia … Iran,” I said.

  “I thought so,” he said, nodding happily. “That’s why I called you over. I can sometimes spot an Iranian just by the way he carries himself. I spent years in Iran, working as a doctor.”

  “Oh, really? How nice!” I said.

  I sat down.

  “Let me introduce myself. I’m Louis.”

  The conversation quickly became more personal. He talked about his stay in the south of Iran, where the rich oil fields are. He’d been there at the beginning of the revolution, but the embassy had made him leave, much against his will, along with all the other Dutch citizens.

  As with most chance encounters, we talked about how I’d ended up in Holland, what I was doing and what I thought of it.

  After an hour-long conversation, he wrote down my address. I got out at my usual station and he travelled on to spend the night at a friend’s.

  A few weeks later a letter arrived. It was only after reading the first few lines that I realised who it was from. At the bottom of the letter he’d included a translation of a poem by Omar Khayyám:

  We are no other than a moving row

  Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go

  Round with the Sun-illumined Lantern held

  In Midnight by the Master of the Show.

  I remembered how delighted he’d been to hear that I was studying Dutch literature.

  He thought Persian literature was beautiful. When he was living in Iran, he’d known very little about our literature. Only after his return to Holland had he gone looking for Persian classics in translation.

  In his letter he said that he very much hoped we could meet again and he invited me to go and visit him.

  At first I didn’t take his invitation seriously. I had several Dutch friends—Igor, a number of local artists and poets, a few teachers at the university—but this was the first time a Dutch person I hardly knew had asked me to his home. He lived in Agnet aan Zee. I looked at the map. It wasn’t all that far away, but still I thought, no, I won’t go, he probably wants to spend all night reminiscing about Iran and I’m not in the mood for that.

  And yet my curiosity had been aroused by the final paragraph of his letter: “We have beautiful dunes here—the most beautiful in all of Holland. If you come, you can take a long walk through the dunes. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. I hope to see you.”

  Maybe it wouldn’t be too bad. The name “Agnet aan Zee”, in particular, sounded intriguing.

  I could make a day of it, I thought, and go and visit the sea. The first time I’d ever heard of the Dutch dunes was during one of my courses, when we were analysing an excerpt from Frederik van Eeden’s classic De kleine Johannes (Little Johannes):

  Oh, if only I could fly away from here! Far away, to the dunes, to the sea!

  Early every morning he asked [his dog] Pluizer if he could go back again to his house and to his father, if he could once again see the garden and the dunes.

  I called Louis and set off. On the way I bought a new translation of Sa’di’s Rose Garden, since one of my professors had mentioned that a good Dutch translation had just been published.

  I took the bus, really making a day of it. First to Lelystad, then to Enkhuizen, then to Alkmaar, then to Bergen and finally to Agnet aan Zee.

  Who or what was Agnet? Or was it actually Agnes? I liked the combination of “Agnet” and “Zee”. I imagined a woman sitting calmly on the beach, looking out at the sea.

  Agnet aan Zee was not an ordinary Dutch village with a church and a square, but a harbour town. It looked a bit touristy, though it was fairly quiet. Maybe things picked up during the summer. Though it was cold, a number of German tourists had found their way there.

  Finally, after walking around for fifteen minutes, I saw a sandy hill covered with tall grass—golden-yellow grass. The cold wind rippled the grass and made it even more beautiful. I’d never seen anything like these sandy hills of rippling grass. They had to be the dunes I’d read about in De kleine Johannes. I stood and stared at that amazing landscape. There were dunes, dunes and more dunes, as far as the eye could see! Just as in other places there were hills, hills and more hills. You couldn’t tell where they ended or what was on the other side.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” I heard a voice behind me say.

  I turned.

  “Good afternoon,” a man called from a window. I didn’t realise it was Louis.

  “Don’t you recognise me?” he asked.

  “Oh, now I do.”

  “Wait a minute, I’ll open the door.”

  After a long while, the door swung open. Louis started to walk towards me, but after a few steps he lost his balance and nearly fell. I rushed over and took his arm.

  “Thanks,” he said cheerfully. “You thought I was going to fall, but luckily I never do.”

  I offered him my left shoulder and he placed the palm of his right hand on it. “You’ve got a strong shoulder! Go on inside. I’m glad you came.”

  How stupid of me not to have realised when we were on the train that he was disabled. I’d been so struck by his personality that I hadn’t even noticed. Now I acted as though I’d known all along. As soon as we entered the house, he let go of my shoulder and took a few steps. I thought, Oh, oh, he’s going to fall and bang his head against the wall. To my surprise, he didn’t. He grabbed the chair, then the bookcase, and made his way through the room by going from one handhold to another.

  “There’s coffee in the kitchen, but I can’t bring it here. I can walk, but not with a cup of coffee in my hand. So if you’ll go and get the coffeepot, I’ll pour. While you’re at it, would you bring me my herbal tea?”

  As I stood in his kitchen, I felt a strong liking for this unknown man.

  I didn’t feel like a stranger. Everything in his house—the furniture, the chairs, the heater, the bookcase—all seemed familiar. I took my coffee and his tea into the living room and sat down. I was glad I’d come.

  “What a beautiful view!” I said, pointing at the dunes.

  “Yes, it is,” he said. “But my wife’s tired of it. She’s been looking at those dunes for twenty-five years and now she’d like something else.”

  “What about you?”

  “Me? I think it’s as beautiful as ever. I’ve got a plan. In a few years I’ll be totally bedridden. Before that happens, I’m going to have the house re-modelled. The upstairs balcony will be converted into a room with a big picture window. Then I’ll put my bed by the window so I can look out over the dunes. Unfortunately, I won’t have a view of the sea, but that doesn’t matter. You can’t have everything.”

  We chatted for a while about Iran and the kingdom of Persia, and about Persian culture and ancient Persian literature. Then I asked if he’d show me around upstairs.

  “No, not me. You can take a look, though. I haven’t been able to climb stairs for ages.”

  “I’ll be glad to help you.”

  So we went upstairs. It wasn’t easy, but we made it. Lou
is was pleased. “I can’t believe it. How long has it been since I was up here? I can’t even remember … it’s been years, years, since I looked at the dunes from upstairs.”

  “Do you have any children?” I asked. “A son, perhaps?”

  “Not a son. A daughter.”

  “Are you on good terms with her?”

  “Yes, why do you ask?”

  “How old was she when you got sick and couldn’t … well, couldn’t walk anymore?”

  “It was a gradual process. She was a child when it started. Why do you want to know?”

  I told him about my own father. I explained that, as a child, I had felt it my duty to stick as closely as possible to my father, so I could help him. In short, wherever he went, I went, too.

  “My daughter’s also been a big help. Thanks to me, she’s got strong shoulders. Her left shoulder, in particular, is well-developed: muscular and strong. She’s always been there for me. Always. She still drops by almost every evening.”

  Propping himself against the wall, he pointed at the dunes. “Look,” he said. “There are twenty-one dunes between here and the sea. It’s just behind the twenty-first dune. I haven’t seen the sea in years. I used to go down to the beach every night after dark, but since I fell ill, I haven’t had the strength or the courage to climb the dunes. It’s now become a dream that will never come true.”

  “What has?”

  “Walking to the sea one last time.”

  “You could pick a shorter route, use your cane, take your time and walk there step by step. Or you could ask your daughter for help.”

  “That’s not what I mean. I want to walk across all twenty-one dunes. Go up and down the dunes in the dark, just like I used to. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Life isn’t a bed of roses. Sometimes the simplest pleasures are suddenly impossible.”