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| This book may shock you, will make you laugh, and may break your heart, but you will never forget it. |
Shortly
before we moved back to the United States from East Pakistan, on the precipice
of undergoing a revolution to become Bangladesh, we were frightened by an event
that made my family and I pack our bags for flight. We had been in Dacca three
years, and for the first two, life had been sedate, albeit not normal. Nothing on the Subcontinent appears normal to westerners. But we felt safe. We were
Americans after all, the White Gods,
impermeable .
This past
year, however, our status as rich foreigners made no difference to the rioters
and demonstrators. Because I was young, fourteen, and lived a privileged
lifestyle rendering me immune to local politics, I didn't pay much attention to
outside forces unless they inconvenienced me. My brother Paul and I attended
the American School, and began missing school at least once a week because
of strikes and curfews. Phone service grew
sketchier, and power outages occurred almost daily. Still, I had my books. I
read by lantern light.
Our house
had a flat roof, perfect for watching weather or surveying happenings in the
neighborhood. One spring evening my
father and i stood rooftop after supper and noticed a trail of light snaking
its way in our direction. "What is that?" I asked.
Dad
squinted, and said, "I don't know. Go get the binoculars."
I
returned with the field glasses, and my father stared at the light, now much
closer and brighter. "Jesus," he said.
"What
is it." He handed the binoculars to me. A crowd of men, perhaps a hundred,
carried lit torches. They were shouting, waving the torches, and heading toward our street.
One of
our servants stood in the doorway at the top of the staircase. "Sahib, it is
not good what is happening."
“What are those men saying,
Kardir?"
"Death
to the governor, Sahib."
The
governor's daughter lived in a large new home caddy corner across from our
compound.
My father
hustled us downstairs, shouting for my mother and brother and I to pack a bag.
"We may have to get out tonight."
I
retrieved my blue suitcase from the godown (closet) and flung it on my
bed. This bag had seen me through several trips across the United States and
overseas. The suitcase was blue, yet covered with decals and stickers
signifying various places i had journeyed.
"We
might not be coming back," my father had said. "Take what you
need,"
I
gathered up my favorite books, records, my diaries, yearbooks, and a few
souvenirs and dumped them inside the bag. I threw in a few clothes and sat on the case to close it.
My father came in to get my luggage.
"What the hell?" He set it down and opened it. "You can't take
all these books,"
“But you said take what's
important to me."
He
sighed. "We can buy you new ones when we get back to the states. Now pack
some more clothes. "
After quick
negotiations, I was allowed to keep my yearbooks, diaries, a few record albums,
a couple of souvenirs and one book. I filled the rest of suitcase with clothing
and a pair of shoes. Dad and I dashed to the back fence where my mother and
brother waited in the dark.
The
solitary book was a paperback copy of Catcher in the Rye. The book had
leapt into my hands one day when the book wallah, a man who sold books
from his bicycle, every Saturday, visited our house when riots didn’t keep him away. The cover bore a picture of a young man
wearing a brown coat, backwards red cap, and a red scarf. He was illuminated by
lights from a strip club at night as he held a battered suitcase littered with
stickers, much like my own.
The text
on the cover read: “This book may shock you, will
make you laugh, and may break your heart, but you will never forget it.” How could I resist that?
I fell in
love with crazy old Holden Caulfield on the first page."If you really want
to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was
born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied
and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I
don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth."
Having recently turned fourteen, I identified
with his disenchantment with school, parents, peers and life in general. Catcher
in the Rye is the first novel I read more than once, the first novel that
made me laugh and cry sometimes simultaneously, such as a scene in Chapter 25,
when Holden takes his little sister Phoebe to the park and tries erase all the graffiti. He resigns himself to,
"That's the whole trouble. You can't ever find a place that's nice and
peaceful, because there isn't any. You may think there is, but once you get
there, when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write "Fuck
you" right under your nose. Try it sometime. I think, even, if I ever die,
and they stick me in a cemetery, and I have a tombstone and all, it'll say
"Holden Caulfield" on it, and then what year I was born and what year
I died, and then right under that it'll say "Fuck you." I'm positive,
in fact."
As a
toddler before I could read the words
myself, I tortured my parents to “read it again!” and
in elementary school I repeatedly recited lines from The Cat in the Hat
and Green Eggs and Ham. What kid didn't?
But the Catcher in the Rye is the first story I lived within; I was
Holden Caufield, even though I was not a seventeen year old boy living in New
York City. It didn't matter. His voice
lived inside me, and I became part of the story.
It's been
years since I have read the book, but subconsciously I channeled Holden when I
wrote my first novel, Parallel Lines. The lead character, Nick Verseau, unintentionally
bears a similar voice, so Holden still lives inside me. I'm oldish now, yet perhaps
still a rankled teenager at heart. Maybe
someday I will be promoted to tell you all the “David
Copperfield kind of crap” about my life.
This
morning I thought about how there are no original stories. All the major themes
in life can be placed written on one 3 x 5 card. Yet every new novel, memoir or book of poems released is
original because each of us experiences the universal themes uniquely. So even
though all the stories seem to have already been told, there are still some
great tales yet to be written. Write one.
What is YOUR favorite all time book? If you were being evacuated
to a new planet and could only take one book, which would it be and why?
Happy Writing.
