My Father’s Books

The Documents (Epilogue)

192 The Doc­ u­ ments (Epi­ logue) My ­ father ­ searched once again for the lost Ot­ to­ man time in the Bal­ kans, for his own de­ light, as he often said, but his ­ friends, ­ schooled Orien­ tal­ ists, spe­ cial­ ists in Tur­ kol­ ogy, would say to him that it was a his­ tor­ i­ cal mis­ sion. The day would come, they told him, when the coun­ tries that ­ emerged after the fall of the Ot­ to­ man Em­ pire would fate­ fully seek out doc­ u­ ments con­ cern­ ing their iden­ tity, an iden­ tity pre­ served for cen­ tu­ ries. After my ­ father res­ cued the doc­ u­ ments from the ­ mosque and set them in order, he ded­ i­ cated the re­ main­ der of his life to them. For­ twenty years my ­ father ­ tended to that bun­ dle of yel­ lowed paper that could eas­ ily have ended as dust and ashes. He dis­ cov­ ered mes­ sages writ­ ten on the old of­ fi­ cial doc­ u­ ments, and he wrote them anew onto small note cards. Thou­ sands of them! In this way this ma­ te­ rial was tamed, pre­ pared for its exit from the old era to the new. My ­ father built his Ot­ to­ man Bab­ y­ lon page by page. Bal­ kan Babel, as his true ­ friend, Mr. K., ­ called it. For the re­ main­ der of his life, my­ father ded­ i­ cated him­ self com­ pletely to his bat­ tle with the old man­ u­ scripts, which threat­ ened to van­ ish com­ pletely if one did not de­ vote to them suf­ fi­ cient pa­ tience. And pa­ tience was what my ­ father had most of all in his life. The peo­ ple ­ around my ­ father ­ grasped the his­ tor­ i­ cal sig­ nif­i­ cance of this res­ cued pile of yel­ lowed paper. My ­ father had no other am­ bi­ tions; he just con­ tin­ ued his quiet friend­ ship with the old doc­ u­ ments; he dis­ persed the treas­ ures of these old doc­ u­ ments; for days and ­ nights he trans­ lated from the doc­ u­ ments for those who stud­ ied the Turk­ ish pe­ riod 193 in the his­ tory of the Bal­ kan na­ tions. Those grate­ ful to him ­ thanked him in the foot­ notes of their schol­ arly works and dis­ ser­ ta­ tions, but later they omit­ ted his name. It was only when he was com­ pletely worn out by di­ abetes dur­ ing his bat­ tle with the ­ papers that he went on dis­ abil­ ity pen­ sion and sep­ ar­ ated de­ fin­ i­ tively from his old doc­ u­ ments. Oth­ ers took them and con­ tin­ ued to trans­ late and pub­ lish them. They even­ tu­ ally came to the trans­ la­ tions my ­ father had made on the note cards. On them ­ nearly every doc­ u­ ment had been inter­ preted. While work­ ing for a news­ paper, I hap­ pened to come ­ across the fin­ ished man­ u­ script of the trans­ la­ tion of the court ­ records in a pub­ lish­ ing house. I look and see my ­ father’s fa­ mil­ iar ­ records, his trans­ la­ tions. His name is not ­ listed with the oth­ ers on the book. I race home. My ­ father is re­ cov­ er­ ing with dif­ fi­ culty be­ cause of his last ­ stroke. Once again he is bent over some books. I see my ­ mother, wor­ ried. She tells me not to dis­ turb him with new books. But I can­ not act in any other way, and I tell him about my dis­ cov­ ery in the pub­ lish­ ing house. My ­ father ­ stands with dif­ fi­ culty, he holds on to his cane, he goes over to the type­ writer, he in­ serts a sheet of paper, and he types the first words: “A great ­ breach of copy­ right . . .” He can­ not go on. He loses his last ­ strength, and I curse my­ self for hav­ ing ­ brought him the news. My ­ mother wor­ riedly grabs him and looks at me with re­ proach. I am com­ forted by the ­ thought that if I had not told my ­ father about the event, we would have been tor­ mented by the si­ lence even more. So what had to hap­ pen hap­ pened! But deep...