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Documents III
- University of Wisconsin Press
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188 Doc u ments III My father im me di ately con tacted the archives about his great dis cov ery. He asked them to in form his fam ily that he would re main an other day on the road. The courier from the archives who should have called had a drink some where en route and did not get to our house until the next day, after my older brother had al ready gone to find out what had hap pened to our father. My father was im me di ately given the go-ahead by the high est au thor ity to re view the doc u ments and have them trans ferred to the Na tional Archives. It was not easy for him to con vince the imam to trans fer the doc u ments to an other place after they had re mained so many cen tu ries in that holy place. My father clearly ex plained to him that these doc u ments were ad min is tra tive court doc u ments that some how or other had ended up in the mosque. The imam, who also knew Ar a bic script from the Koran, now as sured that these were not holy books, al lowed my father, after three hun dred prom ises not to dis pose of the books, to take them and in form the imam of their fu ture fate. My father agreed, and they parted as friends. My mother, car ried away by the day’s events, for got her many press ing wor ries and, per haps for the first time, did not no tice when my father ar rived home with his travel ing bag. He was tired from not hav ing slept the night be fore, but in his face there was a new ex pres sion, one that none of us in the house had ever seen. Maybe he had worn such an ex pres sion once or twice a year, when we chil dren brought our re port cards home with ex cel lent grades at the end of the school year or when my mother brought him a book he had long been seek ing. But, to all of us, it was clear as day that some thing sig nifi cant had hap pened to him that would mark the re main der of his life. It was clear that he had found an exit from the lab y rinth of man u scripts that led out into life. 189 189 When he had re gained his strength and the fam ily had re turned to its daily rit u als, my father got to work on the pile of archi val doc u ments from the mosque. Time truly re sided in them. ...