from UNLESS THE FATHER

Eric Lie is a 71-year-old taekwondo grandmaster in Paramaribo, Surinam. He is the highest decorated martial artist in his country and is considered a living legend by many. As a passionate hunter of wildlife and women alike, Mr. Lie fathered many children. One of them is writer Karin Amatmoekrim. In the memoir Unless the Father, Amatmoekrim tries to discover the man behind the myths, hoping to in the end find her father.

I was eleven years old when my mother told me that my father’s name was Eric Lie and that he lived in Paramaribo. It had not so much been a notification, as well that it had been pure magic. My mother had closed her eyes when she unfolded the story, her hands plucking in the air, reaping from her memory the description of a man I had never heard of before. She unveiled a new truth: that the father I knew was not my blood, and that my true father was living in Surinam, and that my old father, who suddenly proved to be my stepfather, a common sailor on an ocean liner, but in reality a man who decisively dedicated his days to drinking, a reality that was at the time inseparable from our own lives, that my true, my real father was a famous sportsman in my birth country. It was the day that the police had come to our house and forced my father, excuse me, my stepfather, to leave. My mother and I had cleaned up the mess his drunk visit had left and we went to bed, together, me joining her on the large king-sized mattress, under the blanket that was welcoming and heavy on our bodies. She lay on her side, her face towards mine. Her eyes were closed but I could tell she did not sleep for she shook her legs softly, a habit she had when she went to bed, a soft and soothing motion that calmed us, her children, and herself. In a documentary on the nature channel I once saw how an elephant mother softly cradled her child with her trunk. The smooth voice over told me the mother did so to appease the child and that the rhythm of the lulling movement was in tune with the rhythm of her heartbeat. I thought about that, and about that my mother just lay there ever so silently and that she seemed even younger than before. She had only been twenty-eight at the time, but to children their parents always seem old, no matter what their actual age. At that moment she opened her eyes and looked straight at me with a gaze I had not seen before. “Your father,” she said. Then she stopped. I turned on my back, and I waited as she silently searched for the words. I looked at the ceiling that was divided into two halves by a straight line of light that came in through a cleft in the curtains. I listened to her breathing, soft and steady, and I could not discover anything out of the ordinary. She kept shaking her legs softly, comforting, and nothing had indicated that she was nervous for what she was about to tell me. And yet I felt something was about to happen. Something great. “Your father,” she said again. “Didn’t you ever wonder why you look so different from him?”

I shook my head without considering the question. I wanted her to get on with it, I needed her to skip steps, to hear what it was that kept us awake in that dark bed, under those heavy blankets. She studied my face and I waited impatiently, careful as to not say or do anything that could forestall the revelation. Then she said, “He is the father of your brother and your sister, but not yours.”

I held my breath for a short time. Then I let it escape through my nose.

“Karin?” my mother had asked.

“Yes,” I answered, and my voice sounded normal, there was not any emotion in it. I had laid my hand flat on...