“Because I have a job!”
“Doing what?”
“I study. Can’t you see, father? I’m reading this book.”
“What have you learned so far from these books?” he asks imperiously.
I don’t know how to respond to him, because the things I’ve learned from studying these heaps of books cannot be conveyed in a few sentences. I summarize it this way, “The most important thing I’ve learned so far from reading these books is that every corruption, every evil deed, including murder, theft, lying, deceiving and cheating that goes on in this world is because someone believes in someone else, and mimics him. See father, these books teach me how to disbelieve ideas and thoughts rather than to believe in them. They teach me how to become like a sheet of blank paper, a mirror without the reflection of anybody’s ideas in it.”
I’m certain he doesn’t understand my response. I’m right, for my last remark infuriates him, which is the last thing I want to do. He loses control. Furious, he grabs my wrist firmly with his coarse strong hand and drags me into the house. I’m taller than him now, over six feet four inches, and even though I’m lanky and skinny, I’m stronger too, but I don’t put up any resistance to his action.
We pass through the house on our way onto our large backyard. Once in the backyard, with one hand holding onto my book, I gently release my wrist from his firm grip.
“Why can’t you become serious about your future? Why don’t you study religious laws, become a teacher, so you can earn a decent living, so you can marry someone, settle down and have a family like other people? Or why don’t you become a serious merchant?” he utters the same wishes as always.
I stare at him, and then I look around the yard and see a mother hen surrounded by her chicks. There is a duckling among the chicks. It’s the trick my mother plays, fooling the hens of our house by putting a duck’s egg or two under them for hatching. The mother hens become distressed when the ducklings jump in the water of our large pool and swim away.
“You’re like that mother hen that my mother had fooled by putting a duck’s egg under her, to hatch it among her own,” I address my father to release my frustration. “When the chicks hatch they all go to the edge of the water, but only the duck’s chick can go in the water and float. The other chicks must hopelessly remain near the edge. Now, dear father, I’m that duckling chick who likes and can sail in the sea of wisdom. This is my situation; if you’ve the same soul as I do, come into the water of this sea with me,” I wave the book in my father’s face and continue, “Otherwise stay with the mother hens and remain on the edge of this vast water.”
I see my father is stunned by my impudent comments at first, but suddenly the anger spreads over the old man’s face. I can’t blame him for becoming so tempestuous, because I myself disliked the way, the vindictive way I presented my point to him.
“If you treat your father this way, with those harsh words, I wonder how you treat strangers or your adversaries?” he goes on to voice his long-buried anger.
With that question, I understand my words have offended him, have even hurt him. I begin to regret having said those venomous words. I can’t do anything about it, nor can I herd those words back inside.
“Oh my dear father, I realize that I can speak with no one but myself, or perhaps he whose soul is as clear as a mirror, so I can see myself in him,” I reply with respect.
“Or if you only see yourself in him?”
“Yes father, for I’ve only one purpose in life, that’s to seek the divine truth. See father, I’m young, I can select and change the future if I so desire.”
He stares at me. His eyes are full of annoyance and hostility. I don’t wait for his response but walk away and go back to the platform outside the house to read my book, certain that he’ll be speechless and exasperated.
A few hours later that feels like only a minute, my younger brother walks out and asks me to go in. That’s when I realize it’s getting dark. I join my family in the main room. My mother, in her late fifties, four of my siblings and my father are sitting around the dinner sofreh [a large rectangular white tablecloth] on the floor. As usual our sofreh is full of delicious colorful dishes, and my family is enjoying their meal. The food doesn’t interest me. So I go a short distance away to the other side of the large room and, under the generous beam of an oil lamp, lean against the wall, open my book and become absorbed in its pages.
“Come eat with us, son,” I hear my father saying.
I look up and see my parents’ anxious faces. I can’t control the thought in my mind and say what I truly feel, “As long as the God who created me won’t speak to me directly, so that I can ask Him questions and listen to His answers, eating and sleeping are not important to me.”
“You’ll get weak, son,” my mother warns.
She knows that I’ve no appetite, and I’ve not eaten even a morsel of food for three or four days, not because of the obligatory ritual of religious fasting, but because eating is the least important thing on my mind.
“But I’m not weak, mother. In fact, I’m so strong that I can fly out the window like a bird – like a phoenix from the ashes of earthlings – these burned-out souls. These people around us, who call themselves human beings, but walk among us like effigies.”
“Why is it that you never have an appetite? You haven’t eaten for a long time. What’s the matter with you?” mother asks.
“I don’t know myself, mother,” I try to explain. “I feel I have a trapped soul in my body. Every few days something strange overtakes my senses and holds onto me for a while, during which time no morsel of bread will go down my throat. Strangely enough, I still feel full of energy.”
“What’s wrong with you?” father questions.
“Nothing! And I’m not crazy!”
“But you act like a crazy man,” he dispenses his opinion, telling me indirectly that he doesn’t know his own son.
“Have I ever torn anybody’s clothes? Have I ever thrown myself on you and injured you? Have you, any of you, seen me hurt anyone?”
Except the sounds of banging dishes and eating that come from around the sofreh, there is a long moment of silence that gives me hope that they’re not going to bother me anymore. But I’m wrong again. “Eat with us,” father insists again.
“No, I’m not eating today ... tomorrow ... the day after or the next day,” I reply angrily, hoping they’ll leave me alone.
“If you’re waiting for God to speak to you, then maybe He would do so if He finds you with a stomach full of food.” It amazes me the way he talks to me. It is as if he’s dealing with a child.
“Don’t be absurd, father!” I object to his assertion.
“You’re insane. God Almighty has said all He has to say through His messengers and His prophets. What are there that you want to know?”
I don’t want to argue with my father, but he doesn’t leave me be. So, I respond, “Don’t you think I’ve the right to ask my creator what His purpose was in bringing me into this world? When, why, and where He intends to take me, for what reason, and what end is waiting for me at wherever place He is taking me?”
I look up and find my father reflective. And then in response to my unconventional questions about my relationship with God, he shakes his head in bitter disappointment, and I return to my book. The nagging question of why my father doesn’t understand me goes through my mind again. If I’m a stranger in my own town, that I can understand; but why should my father be a stranger to me, while my heart always aches for a better relationship with him.
“Then, are you going to spend the rest of your life reading books?” I see that my father doesn’t ever intend to leave the subject alone.