My Father's Notebook Read Online Free PDF Page B

baton. In turn, the general beckoned seven soldiers, who were lined up with seven bulging bags in their arms. The soldiers marched over to the shah, deposited the bags on the ground in front of him and snapped back to attention.
    “Open them!” he commanded one of the soldiers.
    The soldier opened the bags, one by one. The shah took out a handful of brand-new bills.
    He turned to the peasants. “Start smashing those rocks!” he ordered. “This money will be your reward. I’ll be back next week!”
    “ Jawid shah … Long live the shah!” the men shouted three times.
    The shah climbed down again and went over to his jeep.
      
    The engineer quickly led the peasants, each equipped with a pick-axe, to the place where the work on the tracks had come to a halt. The peasants made jokes, flexed their muscles andswore they would reduce even the hardest rocks on Saffron Mountain to rubble. They had no idea what was in store.
      
    Years later, a faded black-and-white photograph proudly displayed on Aga Akbar’s mantle showed him with a pick-axe resting on his right shoulder and a spike—as thick as a tent stake—between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand.
    Akbar is turned at a slight angle. The photographer had focused on the pick-axe and spike, but the young Aga Akbar had flexed his muscles, so that your eye is drawn to his bulging biceps rather than to the tools.
    When Ishmael was little, Aga Akbar told him a long story about the picture. A story that was actually about his biceps and about the money—the large sum of money—he had earned.
    “Come here!” he gestured to his son. “Tell me! Who’s the man in the picture?”
    And he launched into a story. “I, Akbar, was very strong. I—and only I—could break that rock with the pick-axe. Can you see the rock? There, in the background. No, you can’t see it, the picture’s no good, it’s old. But there, behind me. Sure you can’t see it? Never mind. That rock had to go, all the rocks had to go. They couldn’t use those exploding things. They were bad for the cuneiform inscription.
    “One day I’ll take you to the cave. Wait a minute. Don’t you have a … where’s your schoolbook? Have you ever seen a picture in your schoolbook of an officer, a man in a military tunic with a crown on his head? Isn’t there one in your schoolbook? … Seven, yes, seven potato sacks full of money. And that money was for us. Because of the train.”
      
    Did Ishmael understand what his father was talking about in his rudimentary sign language?
    One thing little Ishmael did know was that his life was interwovenwith that of his father. Everyone—his mother, his uncles, his aunts, the village imam, the neighbours, the children— made him sit, stand and walk beside his father. His job was to be his father’s mouthpiece.
    Later the missing bits of information would be supplied by his aunts and uncles, or by the old men of Saffron Mountain. Or he himself would look up the facts in history books and novels.
    More often, however, he would go and visit his father’s elderly uncle. He would sit down by Kazem Khan and listen as he filled in the missing parts of the stories. “Your father was strong. I told him that a railway track was being built. Personally, I’ve never cared for aristocrats and generals and shahs, but I’d heard a lot about Reza Shah. Though I was hoping to catch a glimpse of the man, I didn’t see him.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because I was stubborn. I rode over there on my horse, but the gendarmes wouldn’t let me through.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because people weren’t allowed to approach the shah on horseback. You were supposed to go on foot, to grovel on your hands and knees. I refused to do that. I turned around and went home, but I came back the next day, because I wanted to see what the men of Saffron Mountain were doing.”
    “Did you go on foot or on horseback?”
    “Nobody’s ever seen me go anywhere on foot. I looked at the men from a