My Father’s Books

The Margins of My Father’s Books: The Constantinople Dream, in Search of Lost Time

The Mar­ gins of My ­ Father’s Books: The Con­ stan­ tin­ o­ ple Dream, in ­ Search of Lost Time R 129 My ­ father’s ­ spirit lin­ gered most of all in his books. In his em­ i­ grant fate the books sti­ fled and cov­ ered over that sec­ ond per­ son­ al­ ity that, in those who are up­ rooted, is by na­ ture al­ ways pro­ nounced. My ­ father suc­ ceeded in pass­ ing on to us chil­ dren, to all his chil­ dren, his great at­ tach­ ment to books. My ­ father’s li­ brary was the great es­ cape in our lives. All life was con­ tained in the pages of my ­ father’s books. If life was for him a pas­ sage­ through hell and pur­ ga­ tory, then his books rep­ re­ sented ­ heaven. He col­ lected books from all parts of the world but ­ mainly from the coun­ tries of the East and the Bal­ kans—as many, ac­ cord­ ing to his cal­ cu­ la­ tions, as he would be able to read in his life­ time. These cal­ cu­ la­ tions ­ proved in­ cor­ rect: many books re­ mained un­ read; there were books left for us to read in order to dis­ cover our ­ father’s life­ time, his lost time, the time that was ded­ i­ cated to un­ cov­ er­ ing the Ot­ to­ man era in the Bal­ kans. R There were two ­ strong cur­ rents in my ­ father’s soul, two tur­ bu­ lent riv­ ers that ­ flowed con­ tin­ u­ ously but never ­ touched, never ­ merged, never ter­ mi­ nated in the dis­ tant sea of his ­ thoughts. 130 One cur­ rent rep­ re­ sented his in­ stinct for pre­ serv­ ing his iden­ tity, for rais­ ing it on a ped­ es­ tal at the bor­ der­ line ­ between the or­ di­ nary and the ex­ traor­ di­ nary; the other cur­ rent rep­ re­ sented his readi­ ness to con­ tex­ tu­ al­ ize the ques­ tion of his iden­ tity. In ­ search of his de­ fin­ i­ tive opin­ ion, he gath­ ered ex­ pe­ ri­ ences from the Ot­ to­ man tem­ po­ ral magma, from past times in the Bal­ kans. How many na­ tions, pow­ er­ ful or weak, autoch­ thon­ ous or later ar­ ri­ vals, dis­ ap­ peared, as­ sim­ i­ lated into one an­ other? How many ­ faiths were inter­ woven in the ­ people’s souls? In his life nei­ ther ­ stream dom­ i­ nated the other; their wa­ ters never ­ merged. Borne­ within each was an un­ re­ solved rid­ dle from that Bal­ kan part of hell from which there was no clear exit. R My ­ father’s life ­ passed, flow­ ing ­ across sev­ eral coun­ tries and ­ faiths, ­ across­ quests ­ through man­ u­ scripts in di­ verse lan­ guages. To the end of his life he re­ mained un­ bound to any one father­ land, one lan­ guage, one faith, or one ideol­ ogy. At the final mo­ ment, sens­ ing, al­ most in­ stinc­ tively, the dan­ ger, he­ pulled away from pos­ sible ex­ cep­ tions and set­ tled in no father­ land. To the end of his life he re­ mained faith­ ful only to the coun­ try of books and to their ideas. Among his books there were al­ ways gram­ mars and dic­ tion­ ar­ ies of the lan­ guages he ­ needed to study and mas­ ter, lan­ guages of those na­ tions whose fate, it ­ seemed to him, was inter­ woven with that of his own na­ tion. He had a sim­ i­ lar at­ ti­ tude to­ ward the holy books. There among his books were old hand­ writ­ ten ver­ sions of the Koran, an old edi­ tion of the Bible, a copy of the Tal­ mud. It was pos­ sible to find among his books val­ u­ able works about the Ja­ nis­ sar­ ies. For a long, long time I could not under­ stand why he col­ lected books about goats. But later, in the ­ course of time, this too be­ came clear to me. In ­ Father’s books one could dis­ cover his strat­ egy for the sur­ vi­ val of his fam­ ily in the Bal­ kans, one of the most trou­ bled spots on the ­ planet. ...