My Father’s Books

Time Discovered

Time Dis­ cov­ ered R 181 Be­ fore my eyes were all his old books, his man­ u­ scripts, maps, notes, note­ books, old geo­ graphic maps, and proc­ la­ ma­ tions, those that had been read and those left un­ fin­ ished. There were those that had been stud­ ied and those that re­ mained un­ ex­ am­ ined. All had a sig­ nif­i­ cance that ex­ tended ­ through time. All of ­ Father’s books could be read as one book, the book of his life. I was left to page once again ­ through a life, the his­ tory of one jour­ ney trans­ fused into me and into the new era of the fam­ ily. In these books and notes my ­ father had car­ ried his Ot­ to­ man time, later to un­ pack it in that part of the Bal­ kans where he would set down roots for his whole life. He knew that this era had not com­ pletely ­ flowed out of the Bal­ kans. These books would fol­ low my ­ father ­ through the col­ lapse of sev­ eral king­ doms and em­ pires. The books out­ lived eras; they out­ lived my­ father as well. I re­ mained pow­ er­ less to inter­ pret them; I fol­ lowed a dif­ fer­ ent route ­ through other lan­ guages and cul­ tures. Yet, I know very well that much of my ­ father re­ mains in them—his ­ spirit, his un­ spoken ad­ mo­ ni­ tions and ad­ vice. The books con­ tain ­ streams of time not yet past. With these books one could col­ lect the cur­ rents of past times. These books en­ chant be­ cause they stand out­ side of time. They re­ vived 182­ within me my ­ father’s il­ lu­ sions and his pow­ er­ less­ ness to build from them the truth. I do not know where these books will end. When our life ends, what of us re­ mains in the books that we have read? . . . ...