Category Archives: Books

SCOOP INTERVIEW AND BOOK REPORT:

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Literary Giants Hail ‘A Threefold Cord’

 

Since the quiet release of ‘A Threefold Cord’ last week, giants of literature and history have joined a lengthening queue to sing choruses in its praise. 

Leading the push is Leo Tolstoy who confided to your reporter: ‘I wish I’d written it instead of ‘’War and Peace.’’ Another writer remarked: ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged that a child in possession of a love of stories will much enjoy this book.’
The author penned the novel in 2013 at the age of sixty-seven years. For that somewhat flimsy reason he decided the work would consist of precisely 67 chapters. When he told his daughter-and-publicist the title was, ‘A Threefold Cord’, she replied: ‘That’s got to be a working title Dad.’ ‘No, that’s the title, darling.’ ‘No kid will buy a book with that title,’ was her crisp retort. For the pleasure of defying his firstborn the author determined the title would stay. 
From its inception the author of ‘A Threefold Cord’ has always spoken of it very highly. ‘It’s a cracker of a story’, he told your reporter. 

Intended for shared reading between a parent and an adult of eight years and above, the novel has been trialled in readings to primary school classes across Victoria. 

‘Listening to early chapters, children laughed. Upon meeting the enigmatic and sinister Dr Vandersluys they gasped. Upon hearing the testimony of Samara, sole survivor of a refugee family whose boat sank off Christmas Island, children were moved to tears. That wasn’t entirely unexpected,’ said the author. But when teachers wept I was surprised.’

I wondered whether the book was too sad for children? ‘No, not for children, but it might be too sad for grownups. Children like it because the three friends who make up the Threefold Cord are so brave, and loyal and clever and inspiring. And FUNNY.’
But Doctor Vandersluys, I wondered, ‘Is he a he or a she?’
‘I ask the same question’, said the author. ‘I hope to find out in the sequel.’
‘THE SEQUEL! Will there be a sequel?’
‘Yes, I’ve already written the first twenty-three of seventy-one chapters’, replied the 71-year old author.

As an e-book A Threefold Cord is available from:

ITUNES:

https://itunes.apple.com/au/book/a-threefold-cord/id1237456156  
AMAZON:

KOBO:

https://m.indigo.ca/product/books/a-threefold-cord/9781925281415

ADVANCE COPIES OF THE PRINT EDITION OF  A Threefold Cord ARE AVAILABLE HERE NOW 

A Threefold Cord


AUTOGRAPHED COPIES MAY BE OBTAINED DIRECTLY FROM THE AUTHOR

Favourite Books

By Posted in Books, Childhood, Family, Life, Literature, Love, writing Tagged , , , , 2 Comments

After he died, my brother Dennis’ lifetime collection of books was set out on tables and benches, in boxes and on shelves at our parents’ house, for family members to choose and keep. Revealed before us was a catalogue of the brilliant and searching mind of my big brother. Biographies, especially political, books on management, art books and book after book on music. And cooking books, books on sailing, on fishing. The study and the joys of a big appetite for life and ideas. Books of all sorts, but not much literature and very little fiction. 

 

Dennis always named his three favourite books as the biblical Book of Ecclesiastes, Kahlil Gibran’s, ‘The Prophet’, and Siddhartha’, by Hermann Hesse. I knew and loved the first of the three, I knew and liked (and mistrusted) the second, and – as for the third – I didn’t know Siddhartha from Hiawatha. 

 

Dennis would read my writings, shaking his head, unhappy with my obliquity and my complexity. ‘Read Siddhartha’, he’d say, ‘And learn the beauty of writing simply.’ Dennis admired narration that was free of ornament and artifice. ‘You make me think too much,’ he said. I felt flattered and confirmed in my path. And I did not take up Siddhartha.

 

‘Ecclesiastes,’ I read religiously, every year, entranced by The Preacher’s philosophic quest, as he tastes and tests every idea and temptation, as he broods and takes up and sets aside every sacred and profane thing. And the rhythms of the text, whether in Hebrew or in English, have always entranced: 

 

To every thing there is a season,

and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;

a time to break down, and a time to build up; 
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;

a time to mourn, and a time to dance; 
a time to cast away stones,

and a time to gather stones together;

a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to get, and a time to lose;

a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
a time to rend, and a time to sew;

a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time of war, and a time of peace.

 

 

Dennis’ birthday falls on November 22. Each year on that day the stated gap between our ages would open up from two years to three. On November 22, 2016, Dennis would have turned seventy-three. But he never reached even threescore years and ten. He died aged sixty-three. Ten years later I pick up Siddhartha and read it, to mark his birthday and to honour the wishes of the older brother who always willed me to be better in the particulars that he selected. I read the work, too, to learn more of my brother’s questing soul.

 

I need to digress here, to my misgivings about ‘The Prophet’. I find it calming, pleasing, gently uplifting. It is as smooth as gravy, as sweet as the dulce de leche upon which my Argentine relatives were weaned. That’s my problem: ‘The Prophet’ lacks grit. You read and you wallow. As an essayist remarks in the New Yorker: ‘In “The Prophet” Gibran (mixed) a warm, smooth, interconfessional soup that was perfect for twentieth-century readers, many of whom longed for the comforts of religion but did not wish to pledge allegiance to any church, let alone to any deity who might have left a record of how he wanted them to behave. It is no surprise that when those two trends—anti-authoritarianism and a nostalgia for sanctity—came together and produced the sixties, “The Prophet” ’s sales climaxed.’

 

 

Raised as we all were, in a strictly Orthodox Jewish family, Dennis chafed against God the father and against our godlike father. He found the courage – indeed the compulsion – to rebel, but he never ceased to feel the pull and the lull of the old-time religion of his early nurture. He tried to relinquish Jewish restriction but the ritual would not let him go. Hence the enduring attraction to him of ‘The Prophet’, with its ‘anti-authoritarianism and its nostalgia for sanctity’.

 

Back to Siddhartha, another huge hit among those who were young adults in the seventies. When a book is so uncritically adored as this I start to feel uneasy. When I take up my newly purchased copy and discover that Paulo Coelho has written the introduction, my unease deepens. For – possibly alone among its millions of readers and adorers – I found the pretentious simplicism of ‘The Alchemist’ alienated me.

 

So you see, these works find me out as cynical.

 

But cynicism falls away as I read Hesse’s account of his searcher for enlightenment. Dennis sought enlightenment with his strong, rational mind. I recognise Dennis as the Buddha’s chastens Siddhartha: ‘You are clever…,’ said the Illustrious One; ‘you know how to speak cleverly, my friend. Be on your guard against too much cleverness.’

I see here Dennis, my too clever brother, the troubled searcher, endlessly testing his traditions, endlessly questing. This is the brother who embraced ‘Ecclesiastes’, in which The Preacher seeks but never finds a truth that satisfies. ‘Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, all is vanity.’ It is an honest quest, brave and lonely. That was my brother Dennis, brave and lonely, longing, as his son remarked at the funeral, ‘to love and to be loved.’

 

But unlike the monk Siddhartha, Dennis did love: most particularly he loved our mother, and he loved me. And I loved him, and I miss him still.

 

 

 

 

Report of the World Preview of ‘A Threefold Cord’ 

By Posted in A Threefold Cord, Books, Howard's published work, Life, writing Tagged , , , , , 5 Comments

 
they came from barwon heads

they came from the usa

they came from king david school

they came from haredi schools

they came in their numbers

they came with their foreskins and without
they numbered ten – plus adults
they fell instantly and hard in love with tali lavi, my interlocutor

she told them the book was exciting

and rude

and scary

and funny

and sad

and wonderful
i said the same – especially wonderful
i read, tali and i spoke and discussed, kids made comments
and i collected phone numbers and email addresses to advise attendors – there is no such thing as attendees (in this context) – of publication details
it was a triumph

NOW I HAVE THE PLEASURE OF SHARING THE TRIUMPH WITH YOU, DEAR READER OF THIS SOMETIMES SLUMBERING BLOG:
I’d be grateful if you would open the link below and watch and listen to the video in which the author reads from the first five chapters of this quite outstanding work.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5WiuKpPeWv9RHlTQlRTeWdjTEk/view

IN RETURN I HAVE A FAVOUR TO ASK OF YOU: After enjoying the viewing of my video would you very kindly respond to two questions:

1. Please indicate whether you would buy a copy of the E-Book of ‘ A Threefold Cord’ at $5.00
2. Please indicate whether you would buy a copy of the print book at $15.00
3. (Yes, this is the third of two questions): Would you purchase additional copies as gifts?

Invitation to a Preview of my Next Book 

By Posted in Books, Childhood, Howard's published work, Life, Literature, writing Tagged , , , , , Leave a comment

I INVITE THE ENTIRE WORLD TO 
THE WORLD PREMIERE
OF 
 A THREEFOLD CORD 
THE LONG-AWAITED NOVEL BY HOWARD GOLDENBERG FOR CHILDREN OF 8-12 YEARS

AND THEIR PARENTS 

AND THEIR GRANDPARENTS 

AND THEIR CHILDREN

AND ANYONE WHO HAS EVER BEEN 8-12 YEARS OLD 

AND ANYONE WHO HAS LOVED A PERSON 8-12 YEARS OLD

AND ANYONE WHO LOVES A TERRIFYING, EXCITING, HILARIOUS, RUDE, OR INSPIRING STORY
COME TO LIMMUD OZ AT 5.30PM AT MONASH CAULFIELD, TOMORROW, 27 JUNE, 2017
CHILDREN WHO ACCOMPANY A PAYING ADULT ARE ADMITTED FREE OF CHARGE

while the adult is ripped off to the tune of 30-40 bucks  
http://sched.co/77uX
Limmud Oz Melbourne #books #literaryevent #authorreading 

Letter to the Young Person Who Pinched my Book

By Posted in Books, First Australians, Life Tagged , , , , 1 Comment

 
Dear…..,

I forget your name. We met only once and it was a couple of years ago. You were a new waiter and I was an old coffee drinker. I ordered, you brought me my coffee (strong latte, in a glass, steamed milk on the side) and I opened my new book. The bright cover caught your eye. You made some remark and I was surprised: not everyone would be interested in the Tjanpi Desert Weavers.

I was just back from working at the foot of Yulara. The city hummed and throbbed and clanged around me but the red earth still glowed within me, the emptiness, the stillness and the silence still called. I opened my book. For a paperback it was pretty pricey, around seventy bucks. But for an art book it was a steal. There on the cover were two aged Aboriginal women, proudly holding their distinctive animal sculptures. Like Yeats’ ancient Chinese in ‘Lapis Lazuli’ –

    Their eyes mid many wrinkles, their eyes, 

    Their ancient, glittering eyes, are gay.

(Writing at a time of conflict, Yeats sees ‘gaiety transfiguring all that dread’. By ‘gaiety’ Yeats means the creative drive of the artist.)

 

 

Forgive me, I digress.

 

 

I lingered over the images. My women weavers, or sculptors, all come from the fantastically named Ngaanyatjarra, Pitjanjatjara and Yankunytjatjara communities. Have you ever come across such challenging place names? I’ve worked in those desert communities and still I struggle to say them right. In the pages of my book you’ll have learned the great secret of the weavers’ ‘desert’ country: with the changing seasons the desert erupts in blooms. You see colours unimaginable in the landscape and you find them again in these flimsy frail pieces of woven whimsy.

 

 

It was time for me to go. I rose and went to the counter to pay. Somehow you materialised at my side and somehow I parted with the book. As a loan. I left, delighted to share in the city’s grey morning all that gaiety and light.

 

 

When I returned to the café the following week, you weren’t there. I never saw you again. I never saw my book again. What happened? Did you leave the job for a better one? Did you leave town? Did your mum get sick, back in Sweden? I don’t imagine you saw the book and whispered to yourself, ‘I think I’ll pinch that.’

 

 

And what prompted me to part from a new book and lend it to a new waiter? Was it the coffee? I’ve done madder things after drinking coffee. Was it some small kindness, some act of courtesy, some swirl of skirt or flash of dimpled smile?

 

 

I don’t remember how or why. I don’t remember your name, I scarcely remember your face. I do remember my feeling of unexpected pleasure when you showed an interest. I hope you have the book still in Sweden or Iceland, and the Tjanpi women weave gaiety into your life.

 

 

 

About Tjanpi

Katangku kuruntu kulira kunpu palyanma Making Strong works with a Strong Heart

Tjanpi Desert Weavers (Tjanpi) was initiated by NPY Women’s Council in 1995 in response to an expressed need by Anangu women for meaningful and culturally appropriate employment.

 

Coiled basketry was introduced at workshops held in the Ngaanyatjarra Lands. Within two years, artists were making a quirky range of sculptures as well as baskets, and by 2000, weaving had spread right across the NPY region.

 

A Downtown Medical Professional

By Posted in Books, Life, Medical Tagged , , , , , , , 2 Comments

 As I walked past the couturier’s shop in Collins Street, peering in as a beggar at a feast, I sighted a chic young lady within. She looked at me and beckoned. I looked at myself. I saw myself, dressed for my work, in all the formality and  

the finery of a downtown medical professional. And I bethought myself: I do not look chic. I will not look right within those bright halls. I shook my head, but the chic one persisted. She nodded emphatically. I approached the crystal doors and the chic one emerged. ‘How good to see you, Howard! Come in! Come in!’
I came in. A large man dressed in tails stood on the threshold. He bowed and smiled a welcome. He finished his smiling and remained where he stood, large and decorative and solid.

  

My friend looked really happy to see me. I looked about me. I was the only person present who was not a member of staff. Perhaps I should be a customer. I looked at the goods on display. I sighted handbags. In a discreet undertone I remarked to my friend: ‘I am glad I am not wealthy enough to buy this one’ – indicating an overdecorated number in a shade of steatorrhoea. My friend looked at me searchingly: ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean this probably costs the earth and it’s grotesque.’

My friend gasped. I must be joking.
We crossed to the sunglasses. I wear sunglasses about as often as I wear a handbag. I asked: ‘Can you show me your most expensive pair?’

Good naturedly my friend indicated a pair of sunglasses resting in a box labelled ‘First Edition.’ I asked, ‘How much?’

‘One thousand, nine hundred.’

I thought of my First Editions at home. Patrick White’s first novel was published in a limited print run. He came to judge the novel, ‘Happy Valley’, an embarrassing failure. He forbade reprint. As a result, copies of that First Edition are extremely rare and quite costly. The purchase price of my copy was less than the price of the couturier’s sunglasses. 

I decided I would not buy that pair. I sighted another pair whose convex lenses shone golden in those halls of light. I tried them on and admired myself in a mirror. ‘How much?’ ‘Seven hundred.’ I put the glasses down carefully. 
My friend and I surveyed the shop. ‘Nice shop’, I said. My friend smiled, ‘Yes, we like our boutique.’

Before us, seven young ladies and one nearly young, gazed at us, smiling warmly. I find it pleasant when young ladies smile at me. I smiled back, revealing the broken paling fence of my front teeth. ‘This is my friend Howard,’ said my friend. The smiles shone, still warm. ‘He’s a doctor,’ said my friend. 

‘What sort of doctor?’, asked the nearly young one. She looked truly interested. She rested a friendly hand upon my forearm.

‘A GP’, said my friend.

‘Oh.’
I looked around. Seven young ladies, one nearly young, one old friend and one large man keeping station at the threshold. My eyes feasted on their finery. ‘I think I’m the only customer, ‘ I said. My friend gasped. ‘Shhhh’, she said. I shushed. I made my farewells and I stepped out into the autumn.

Gap Years 

By Posted in Books, Family, Life, Medical, Travel Tagged , , , , , 5 Comments

The friendly young man in the bookshop approves of my reading choice*: ‘Good book, I really enjoyed it. It was prescribed in my literature course last year.’He looks young, too young to be a uni graduate: ‘What was your course?’

‘School. I finished last year.’

‘What are you doing this year?’

‘Working here. Saving. I’m going to travel; I’m taking a gap year.’

 

Everyone takes a gap year nowadays. I never thought of it. No-one did back in 1963. I was keen to get on with becoming a doctor. I couldn’t see a gap and I would not have walked through it if I found one. Tempus was fugit, vita was brevis, gluteus was maximus, so I sat myself down and flogged my humanities brain over the sciences that were the stepping stones to doctoring. I never gave thought to my already clear history of stumbling through the sciences. I entered medical school, I studied the sciences and I stumbled on. If in later years I referred to my undistinguished undergraduate days, patients refused to believe it. They’d look at their trusted doctor and smile, knowing he must be joking; their peace of mind required he have no gaps.

 

I became a husband, I became a father, once, twice, thrice. I had four new people in my life to love, four more to work for. And I did work. A joyful and fulfilling part of my work was caring for women in pregnancy and childbirth. I became the intimate stranger, the guest at the birth of families. I’d be called to the hospital in the middle of the night, during dinner, at the kids’ bedtime, at quiet times alone with my wife. I’d leave home early in the mornings to visit the mother and her newborn in hospital. I’d leave before the children were awake. I left lacunae in our family, gaps where the dad was elsewhere when a daughter was sick, when our son had asthma, when our youngest cried at bedtime because a classmate at kinder teased her about the warts on her fingers. After twenty years I bade farewell, a long farewell to obstetrics, and hoped I’d mend the gaps.

 

The children grew, graduated, went to work, married, became parents. Became busy. Their time cramps them, crowds them in. The gaps that open in our children’s lives allow my wife and me in and enrich us.

 

The friendly young bookseller-bookreader will head off into his gap. He’ll travel towards his Ithaka and become rich with all he learns.

 

The truth is, life is full of gaps. As Leonard Cohen teaches us, that’s how the light gets in.

 

 

 

 

*Brenda Walker’s ‘Reading by Moonlight’. A gift for a friend with a couple of cancers.

 

Maranoa Writer

By Posted in Books, Life, Love, Work by Others, writing Tagged , , , , , , 8 Comments

In the Maranoa I met Billy Dodd, author of ‘Broken Dreams’ (UQP). I met his life. I recount his story to an able-bodied listener, who recoils on hearing how, three days before Billy’s eighteenth birthday, he came to fracture his neck and became quadriplegic. It’s the sort of shiver we feel as we recognise ourselves. As a child I dived into unplumbed streams. It was a normal action, part of the exuberant membership of the mad organism of many limbs without a brain that is a group of boys at play. We dove, we surfaced, we swam, we shouted, we splashed. Everything worked. We never thought on it. 

But here in the singular house of Billy Dodd I do think on it. Alone of the houses in Ann Street in his Maranoa township, Billy’s is not a Queenslander. That is, the structure is not elevated above flood level; it squats, its threshold at street level, hospitable to a wheelchair. Billy is glad for my visit. Although he is the town’s literary celebrity the rhythms of his life are slow. His partner is devoted and admiring, her child attentive and respectful, but the days are many, the years long.

‘How old are you now, Billy?’

‘Thirty three.’ A smile moves across his face. His chest plays its rise and fall. Nothing else of him moves.

That’s fifteen years. Fifteen years to look back, so very many to look ahead.
From across the street Billy’s house looks small. From the corner of the parlour where he reclines in his motorised conveyance the quiet rooms yawn. The spaces feel too large.
‘I’ve started to write another book.’

‘Good on you, Billy. What’s it about?’

‘About my father, my family.’

‘How’s it going?’

‘Well, I’m taking a bit of a break…’
We talk about his family, about his father’s example, his standards. Billy’s admiration outlives the old man, who never reached oldness.
Billy’s partner speaks, ‘Tell him what else you create, Billy. The paintings.’ She fetches some paintings, done by mouth, like all of Billy’s acts and works. After only a few weeks the paintings do not stand clearly in memory.
‘A cup of tea?’ The lady – Billy’s wife, as I discover – smiles her offer. ‘No thanks, no. I’m on duty, just sneaked out of the hospital, due back now. But thanks…’

Awkward, uncomfortably conscious of advantage, of my spontaneous mobility, I feel some need to redeem the situation, to rescue the moment. I speak: ’ Where can I find a copy of your book, Billy?’

‘Take this one there, on the table, it belongs to the school across the road.’
I take the school’s copy and I take my leave, running away from Billy’s empty spaces. I liked him, I liked the woman and the child. Perhaps that’s why I ran.
I read the book that evening. A short book, written in unvarnished narrative fashion, a book of real energy, written with drive. The voice is young, it speaks of family and friends, of ordinary wildness. In his retrospect Billy marvels quietly at his own transmogrification, shedding few tears. The energy of the telling contrasts with the slowness of our meeting.
And yet there was energy in the house: the child, proud of his painter-writer-stepfather, loves him. The woman, large and kind, ordinary, extraordinary, loves him too.

The lack was my own. I alone felt heaviness, defeat.

A Christmas Story

By Posted in Asylum Seekers, Books, Childhood, Life Tagged , , , , , , , 8 Comments

Every December for a few years now a friend has written to me and to everyone she knows requesting donations so she can purchase gifts at Christmas for people who have found asylum in our country. I send my small donation, very aware of its smallness. Presently my friend sends me – and all her circle of donor people – a photo of the gifts our donations have amassed. I am duly amazed: for in total they are not small.My friend was raised in a home where the ambient Evangelical Christianity weighed heavily. In time and in pain my friend left the family code behind. And so it is that my lapsed Evangelical friend and her many friends – including this unlapsed Jewish friend – send Christmas presents to a bunch of Muslim refuge seekers.

Christmas was never a part of my upbringing. When as a child , inevitably I learned the story of the nativity, I was moved. “No room at the inn” stayed in my mind as the saddest phrase, as a reproach. The inn in which I live is a Four Star establishment called Australia. There is room at this inn, lots of room.

In this state of mind I post the following children’s story. It feels appropriate to the season of goodwill. This is excerpted from a forthcoming book* provisionally titled ‘A Threefold Cord’, to be published on-line in 2016 by Hybrid Publishers. I have read the book and I like it. I commend it to your children: it is ideal for shared reading between an adult and a child aged from eight to twelve years.

This story begins with a five year old girl named Samara mustering her courage and her crumbs of English to tell her story to her Aussie friends, Jennifer, Nystagmus and Snoth:
“This story, my story. Today I say story. I English say.”
Samara spoke eagerly, her face serious and excited at the same time.
Her friends of the Threefold Cord were surprised to hear shy little Samara speaking like this. They listened without interrupting.
Samara stood up and screwed her eyes closed for a moment. She wanted to be brave and she needed to think hard, to search for every English word.
After a moment she started: “Mans with guns come our village. We family very frighten. Soldiers shoot many shootings. Father’s brother run outside house. He praying. Soldiers shoot guns. They angry because I girl, I going school. They think big mistake, they think Father brother is my father. They shoot father brother. He fall down, he not move, he many blood. Soldiers laughing, go away. Father hold his brother, he say Ahmed! Ahmed! He say Ahmed, soldiers shooting wrong man. Must shoot me, not brother.
Ahmed not answer. Father crying, his face on his brother face. Mother crying, my brother crying, Samara crying. Soldiers send bombings onto house. House is breaking. Is very noise, is very frighten.
Then Father hiding us under house. When is dark outside, Father bring donkey. He putting Mother, brother, Samara on donkey. Father walking. We riding, Father walking all night. We come far village, we hiding, we sleeping in day at Aunty house. And in night we riding, walking, we hiding when hear soldiers in night. Always we hearing shootings, bombings, we very quiet, Father giving donkey eating so donkey mouth have food, donkey not speak soldiers.”
Samara paused and blinked. The friends saw drops of water at the corners of Samara’s eyes. The child took a deep breath and spoke again. “I tell about more bad mans. Not gun mans, truck mans. Man say Father, you give money, I take you in truck. Father give man many money, man put family in truck in night. We say goodbye donkey. Brother cry, he loving donkey.
Truck go. Truck stop. Truck man say truck broken, not go now. Father pay money, truck man take money. He say, Truck not work. You walking. Sorry for truck.
We walking, walking, no donkey, no truck.
We come new country, no soldiers shooting. We come big, big water, shiny water like silver. Man say father, You come boat. I taking you family America. You pay money. Is also bad mans. He take all father money, none left now, we get in boat, fast fast, much peoples comes in little boat, such much peoples, boat very crowd. Is dark.
Boat start to move. I am excite and I am too fright. All peoples in boat very fright because big wind and big black cold water. Water come in boat, all peoples scream, cry, cry, scream.
Mother hold Samara and brother, Father hold too, boat is jump, jump, fall, fall, water is in boat, we very fright.
I praying, mother is pray, brother, father – all pray to Allah:please save us, save us please.
Boat stop, water push boat on side, push boat on other side, peoples falling on floor, fall on peoples. Mother, father holding tight children,
Big big water come and boat fall over, all peoples fall out, we all in water, wind is loud. We call Father! Mother! – no-one not hearing. I not hear voice, I looking, is everything black.
I not swimming, we family is not know swim, in our country is desert, is mountain, not is big water.
I look father…”
Samara stopped again and blinked. She blinked again, and a third time. She breathed deeply, opened her mouth, closed it. Finally she produced a small voice: “I look brother, not see.
I look mother, not see.
Father say Samara, you get up on top this wood, you hold tight. Father is lift me, I am hold tight, father head under water. He come up, he not close now, he under water.
I not… I not see him again more. I not see no-ones. I hold wood, I crying, I cold, I not family. Family is gone.
I pray Allah, I praying Allah, you bring back Samara family. If family not live, I not live. Allah, You take Samara paradise. I not family, I not want live.
But all time I holding wood like father saying me.”
The child shivered as if she felt again the cold water. She said: “Soon I say end of Samara Story. Big ship come with big light. I see water, water, empty, all empty. Not peoples, only many water. Man taking me in big ship, coming Australia. Man is good man, Australia man. But Samara alone, I no-one have. I in Christmas Island, I in Australia, Samara sad, sad all days.
Red Cross say they try find family. Maybe in one country, not Australia country.
Then one day you friends come Refugee place.” A small smile as Samara looked from Jennifer to Nystagmus to Snoth. She touched the face of all three.”You tell me many story, you teach me speak English. Samara not alone now.”
 
 
* the author of ‘A Threefold Cord’ is Howard Goldenberg

Walking with my Father*, after all this Time

By Posted in Books, Childhood, Faith, Family, Life, Music, My Father's Compass Tagged , , , , , 9 Comments

Most Saturdays I walk with my father. Saturday is shabbat, when I go to shule (synagogue) in the morning and walk home alone afterwards. It is this walk that I take with Dad. It works like this: services at the shule of my choice finish around noon-thirty – precisely the time my family will be gathering at home. No-one wants to risk coming between a Goldenberg and her food at meal time; too dangerous. So just a few moments before the congregation sings the concluding hymn, Adon Olam, I duck out of shule and hurry homeward.

 
When it comes to a prayer or a song a Goldenberg is not one to short-change his Maker. So, striding like my father before me, I sing that song as I walk, feeling anew the melody I sang with my father through our decades of shule-going together. In fact, Dad and I shared two different melodies to Adon Olam, one of them quite beautiful, the other even lovelier – or should I say – slower, sweeter, more expressive of longing. We loved them both, I love them still, and so I sing – first one of the two, then the second.
 
When I was a timid child I attached myself devoutly to the final lines of this song:
Into His hand, I entrust my soul
While I sleep and when I awaken;
And while ever my soul remains with me –
The Lord is with me – I will not fear.
 
But of course I did fear. First I feared the wolves and the bears that would come for me in my bedroom from the grim tales of Europe; later I felt afraid of snakes, of adults who shouted at me, of the world. I felt safe with Mum and with my dreadnought father, and – more perilously – with my risk-taking brother Dennis. I did a lot of fearing and I seized needily at the comforting closing line of Adon Olam. I’d sing it to myself when I walked alone in the dark.
 
***
 
Dad sang sweetly, his light tenor voice rising high above the circumambient baritone drone of fellow worshippers. He’d look intent as he sang, for music spoke to Dad more truly than words. Dad always claimed he didn’t like poetry, but he loved song. Music reached Dad in his secret places of abiding anxiety, it inspired him and carried his hopes, his love of life, his belief in beauty.
 
It was late in Dad’s life that he surprised me, speaking once of Adon Olam: Whenever in my life I’ve felt afraid, that last line has come to me. As a child I’d sing it to myself when I was walking alone in the dark.
 
Now a man walks home alone. Approaching threescore and ten he walks, still vigorously, as his father walked. He sings softly as he walks. Adon Olam swells in his throat. His voice slows to climb the penultimate arc of old melody, he holds that high note, then allows his voice to fall, to slide peacefully, into peace.

The man walks home alone but never alone.
 
· *’Walking with my Father’ was a chapter title in my first book, ‘My Father’s Compass’ (Hybrid, 2007). That memoir recorded my life with my father that had ended with death at a great age, a few years earlier. It was that book in which I first went public with my (possibly regressive) ancestor worship.