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The Silence of My FatherReviewed by Norbert Hirschhorn
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The Silence of My Father by Alexandre Najjar is translated by Laurie Wilson and published by Telegram, 2010. Price: £7.99
Text Version (click here for PDF version)
GIVE you a profile of a man. He is Lebanese, Francophile, a maritime lawyer, devout Catholic, proud of his descent from one of Napoleon's officers and known to the family as the 'Admiral' (the word from the Arabic 'Amir al-Bahr'). He has six children, five boys and one girl; he gives out nicknames mainly for what he hopes they will accomplish in life, such as Leonardo, The Little Lawyer, Le Corbusier. He is punctilious in his habits to the point of obsession – in his meals, his work (which is almost all day, every day), his immaculate dress and even in his shaving. But while shaving, he reveals to anyone listening carefully a romantic streak as he hums to himself melodies sung by Piaf, Pavarotti, Caruso and Tino Rossi. He doesn't smoke, washes his hands often, makes his children do one hour of calisthenics every morning, under his watchful eye. Most games and nearly all movies are proscribed – he has not gone to the cinema himself in 30 years. His heroes are Napoleon and Charles de Gaulle. He instructs his eldest son, over and over: 'Be a leader.'
His legal briefs are models of concision and brevity. He is so well regarded for his honesty and purity of mind that even judges stand when he enters. A measure of the man is that while taking shelter in the basement of their Beirut home during the Civil War, he continues to work on legal briefs, saying: 'Tomorrow, peace will come, and I have to be ready.'
He is an authoritarian figure striking… fear is too strong a word; say, apprehension in his children's hearts. He will punish infractions of discipline by whippings with 'sticks… hard and flexible like a whip… which he carefully stored behind the radiator in his bedroom'; or by making rebellious children kneel for one hour, 'to atone for our crimes'. He is too busy to watch his boys play football, but second place is shameful. 'In his eyes, we were always on probation, which, far from discouraging us, motivated us to push ourselves beyond our limits.' He makes sure the children are in bed, lights out, no fooling around. Of course, they do.
Yet, there is also a soft, subversive side to the man. He knows that the children have snuck out of their beds at 2 am to watch a video of Texas Chainsaw Massacre – but only alludes to it in the morning, noting that children who don't get sleep look like clowns.
Children discover how much he loved them only years later, finding their childish compositions and letters carefully filed away in his studio. He shows physical affection when on moonlight walks with any of his children, he clasps the nape of their necks; sometimes he cries. He is so in love with his wife. They call each other 'Mine'. When asked if she had to choose between her husband or the six children, she answered after a moment's hesitation, 'Mine'.
The man, of course, is Alexandre Najjar's father. Najjar has written a worshipful love song to this larger-than-life authoritarian, whose full name is never given, but one that is virtually without conflict or rage or any need for reconciliation. Even at the end, when the father suffers a near fatal dissection of the aorta leaving him speechless (speechless!) and in a wheelchair, father and son are united in an understanding of what fatherhood means. 'Who can judge one's father… measure the sacrifices he has made or guess the problems he has secretly had to face?' I find this remarkable when I compare it to the many coming-of-age poems, novels and films by men elegising their turmoil and rebellion before making peace with their fathers, who are often no longer alive. Najjar is blessed.
Norbert Hirschhorn MD is a poet and physician living in London and Beirut. www.bertzpoet.com
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