Homecoming (18 page)
Authors: Adib Khan
‘I’ve had to light the barbecue twice,’ Ron says pointedly.
Martin apologises. Colin settles for mineral water and Martin opens a couple of cans of beer. He has agreed to stay at Colin’s whenever he comes to Melbourne, and he knows they’re all anxious that nothing should change after this day is over.
The charcoals begin to glow fiercely. There is more meat on the barbecue than they can possibly eat. Mindlessly Ron brushes a corner of the hot cast-iron plate with a mixture of melted butter and olive oil. He adds more chops and steaks, crushes an empty beer can and throws it in a cardboard box.
‘Will it work?’ he says to Martin.
Martin grates carrots for the salad with a methodical slowness.
There is never a perfect outcome to anything that is contentious.
‘That isn’t a question I can afford to consider. I didn’t set out to create new problems, you know,’ he says slowly, his eyes on Colin. ‘But I can’t run away from them either.’ He measures and mixes seeded mustard, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, rock salt, pepper and brown sugar in a bowl.
‘You have to look after your own interests,’ Ron emphasises, turning the sausages with a large pair of tongs. ‘Wasn’t that the lesson of Vietnam?’
‘That’s what I’m doing.’ Martin smiles.
‘Mind you,’ Ron scratches his unshaven chin, ‘I was the one who was planning to move. But I’ve done bugger all about it. Guess I don’t like change. Figured you didn’t either.’
‘There comes a point when you’re forced to break from what you’ve been.’
‘No one returns happily from a war,’ Martin had heard Nguyen tell Maria. ‘Afterwards you are always afraid of shadows and darkness. There is a consistent ache of loneliness. Maybe that’s why soldiers come back with so many stirring stories about friendship and courage. They give some worthwhile meaning to the emptiness in their lives.’
TODAY MARTIN WILL
not tell Ron and Colin that he has phoned his local MP, that he has spoken out at last about Ken Davis. Or that he is late now because after that phone call he had visited the Buddhist temple close to Maria’s parents’ house. Inside the temple it was cool and tranquil. In a corner a group of saffron-robed monks were chanting. The droning was serene.
He had walked up to one of the candle stands and fumbled in his pocket for the box of matches he had brought with him. He knelt down on the shiny floor. With unsteady hands he lit the candle. The tapering light was like a two-way lens through which he could gaze into time, both the past and the future. Martin saw the girl, in the quietness of an afternoon, little more than a child. She smiled shyly and held
up the friendly offering of vegetables to surly strangers. He thought of her as an adult, a mother, living the simple life of a villager. Then, in old age, she was a wise grandparent, sharing her experiences with a younger generation. And he saw masses of billowing smoke, giant plumes of fire, charred bodies and mangled people.
He had intended to stay a few minutes, but it was almost an hour later that he became conscious of the time.
‘
THIS SORT OF
breaks it all up, doesn’t it?’ Ron asks between mouthfuls of meat, looking at Martin as if he were the perpetrator of a heinous offence. ‘Probably I’ll leave Melbourne some time next year.’
‘And I’ll be going nowhere,’ Colin says moodily. ‘Except to the hospital. Again.’
‘Things were going okay for a while,’ Ron reflects nostalgically. ‘We had a bit of a social life. But now…Ice cream? Coffee or tea?’
The conversation peters out. Overeating and alcohol induce drowsiness. The afternoon passes gently. Colin reads them his final rejection letter and then daydreams about how he might have reacted to an offer of publication. He thinks aloud about writing a verse novel. It would occupy him purposefully. He likes the idea. They exchange gifts. Books and CDs. Martin presents Colin with the imitation of Rodin’s statue. This, Colin knows, has stood on Martin’s bedside table for years. ‘You deserve it more than I do,’ Martin says.
Colin grips it with both hands.
‘The Thinker.
I can’t help wishing that he had done one called
The Doer.
Thank you
very much, Martin. I shall do my best to let it guide me deeper into the confusion of the mind!’
‘When’s the house-warming?’ As always Ron pulls the talk away from anything too abstract.
‘Soon—I’m not sure when.’ Martin looks at his watch. ‘I’ll help with the wash-up and then I have to get going.’
Ron dismisses the offer. ‘I’ll do it. I’m going to hang around and give Colin some suggestions for his
verse novel!
Firm handshakes. Ron and Colin come out to the footpath. In a fragile silence Martin gets into the ute. Alignments shift. As he drives away he sees his friends in the rear-view mirror, waving, until they’re out of sight.
THE CORRIDOR IS
deserted. Most of the residents have gathered in the dining area for afternoon tea. Martin stops nervously in front of Nora’s room and then steps back a couple of paces. He thinks of the small house in front of the cluster of gum trees and the spaces around them like a vast canvas.
Fantasy is a different kind of reality.
He turns to see if there is an attendant nearby. Then he steps forward again and knocks firmly on the door, opening it a little before Nora can respond.
‘Who is it?’
If I am distressed or in trouble, I expect you to be supportive without flinching. You must humour me and indulge my whims.
‘Sebastian,’ he replies. ‘I have come to take you home. ‘And for the first time since Martin has known her, he hears the note of pure joy in Nora’s laughter.
Ideas, interviews & features included in a new section…
Meet the author
KHAN WAS BORN ON
29 January 1949 in Dhaka, Bangladesh. It was his Muslim father who named him Adib, which means ‘writer’ in Urdu, one of the major languages in the Indian subcontinent. He went to a ‘crusty private Catholic school’ and he attributes his discovery and love of literature to a teacher who introduced him to
The Iliad
and the Greek playwrights. After finishing high school, he studied Engineering, English Literature and History until war broke out ‘between what was East Pakistan and West Pakistan’ in 1971. The war resulted in the liberation of East Pakistan, which became the independent nation of Bangladesh. ‘I was one of those helpless civilians caught in the war,’ he says. ‘It changed my entire life. I came from an upper middle-class background, fairly comfortable and complacent. It was trendy to discuss politics…but it’s very different to talk rationally about political injustice in a foreign country than to speak about it when it’s all around you…The Pakistani army came in with tanks and demolished the suburb next to us. I was shell-shocked. It turned me upside down and gave me a very different perspective of life. Even now, I’m hesitant to go back to Bangladesh.’
In 1973 Khan came to Australia to complete a Masters in English Literature at Monash University. Why Australia? ‘Somewhat facetiously I decided that I couldn’t live in a country where they didn’t play cricket,’ he says. ‘I remember telling members of my family that in America they didn’t play cricket and in England they couldn’t play the game. I thought Australia
was paradise in the 1970s.’ His wife followed him to Melbourne six months later, and they moved to Ballarat three years after that. Khan now lives in Ballarat on weekdays and in Melbourne on weekends. He teaches English and History part-time at Ballarat Grammar and Creative Writing at the TAFE branch of Ballarat University. He and his wife have two daughters studying at Monash University.
Khan explains, ‘Writing fiction was purely accidental during a period of soul searching to know why I was so restless when I turned forty…Underneath all of this was a kind of insurgency, a revolt from within, insisting that I pay attention to myself. Well, I made an effort to meet the real me by recording my reflections in fragmented bits of writing.’ He says, ‘In your forties, there are unavoidable familial responsibilities. A number of writers who start early perhaps don’t have a full understanding of the fickle nature of writing and publishing…My first impulse is to advise them not to throw away their jobs. When you are in the business of writing serious fiction, you belong to a threatened minority…Putting it another way: I’m too old to go back to drinking cask wine.’
Despite this modesty, his first novel,
Seasonal Adjustments,
was plucked from the slush pile at Allen & Unwin and went on to win several major awards. Khan has written three other novels:
Solitude of Illusions
(also an award winner),
The Storyteller
and
Homecoming,
as well as a book of literary criticism,
Poetry Examined.
Currently he is working on a novel about terrorism, tentatively titled
Spiral Road.
BORN
1949 in Dhaka, Bangladesh
MA in English Literature and Diploma in Education, Monash University
Teaches English and History part-time at Ballarat Grammar as well as Creative Writing at the TAFE division of Ballarat University
Married Shahrukh in 1972; they have two daughters, Aneeqa and Afsana, who are both studying at Monash University.
Novels
Seasonal Adjustments
1994
Solitude of Illusions
1996
The Storyteller
2000
Poetry Examined
1983
Spiral Road
AWARDS AND HONOURS
Seasonal Adjustments
1994 New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards: winner of Christina Stead Prize for Fiction and Book of the Year
1994 Shortlisted for the
Age
Book of the Year Award
1995 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book
1996 Braille & Talking Book Library Audio Awards: shortlisted for Benella Award for Audio Book of the Year
Solitude of Illusions
1997 New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards: shortlisted for Christina Stead Prize for Fiction and Ethnic Commission Award
1997 Braille & Talking Book Library Audio Awards: winner of Tilly Aston Award for Braille Book of the Year; shortlisted for Benella Award for Audio Book of the Year
Favourite books
1.
Ulysses
By James Joyce
I’m still awed by the titanic dimensions of the novel. In terms of its structure, content, characterisation and language, it is simply the best book I’ve read.
2.
The Iliad
By Homer
It fired my imagination as a youngster and evoked a lifelong curiosity about the classical world. For all his flaws, Achilles has been the person I’ve admired most in mythology.
3.
The Mahabharata
One of the great inspirations for storytelling for subcontinental writers. I’m still under its spell.
4.
The Oresteian Trilogy
By Aeschylus
A mesmerising trilogy of plays written by a master craftsman who speaks to me eloquently about human fallibilities.
5.
Crime and Punishment
By Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The moral complexity of the novel has never lost its edge for me. It should be compulsory reading for fundamentalists.
6.
The Outsider
Albert Camus
More than any other book,
The Outsider
shaped a number of my attitudes towards life. Its bone-dry language is something I’ve always admired.
7.
King Lear
By William Shakespeare
As I grow older,
King Lear
speaks to me with growing intimacy and urgency about the need to trim one’s ego.
8.
The Complete Poems
By T.S.Eliot
Whenever I’m down on ideas, I turn to Eliot’s poetry to kick-start my imagination.
9.
The Inheritors
By William Golding
This fictionalisation of the ‘Survival of the Fittest’ theory is a telling reminder of the loss that has accompanied human evolution.
10.
Shame
By Salman Rushdie
One of the great political novels about the subcontinent. The intrigue and corruption of Pakistani politics are superbly told in this compelling allegory.
The critical eye
‘
HOMECOMING
IS A FEAT
of imaginative empathy’, wrote Jane Sullivan in the
Sunday Age.
The
Age’s
supplement declared that
‘Homecoming
promises to shoot [Adib Khan] into the “A-list” of contemporary fiction writers…Through the character of Martin and those around him, Khan creates a compelling picture of contemporary Australia that will reverberate with the reader long after the book is closed.’ Annie Greet, in the
Age’s
review, said, ‘Khan turns many traditional expectations of a soldier’s story on their head…This is not just a saga of war-scarred veterans at all but of all who have an interest in morality and the ability to look within…A novel of ideas,
Homecoming
bears re-reading on many counts.’
In the
Sydney Morning Herald,
Andrew Riemer called
Homecoming
a ‘restrained and thoughtful novel…Martin’s discovery of the moral and personal price for [his] silence emerges gradually, but with considerable force.’ He added, ‘Khan reveals considerable skill in constructing a layered narrative, swinging back and forth through time, from a sequence of short, at times almost impressionistic, sections…fine and absorbing’. Khan’s novel ‘is earnest, thoughtful, unpolemical’, wrote the
Bulletin’s
reviewer. ‘“Vietnam” is summoned up in a reflective spirit. This account of “homecoming” is not elegiac, in the manner of Bruce Dawe’s famous poem, but works quietly for reconciliation.’
