Odyssey of a politician in the making
Nazma Yeasmeen Haque sketches the rise of a future American president
Barack Hussein Obama casts a spell on us. He does it here as a writer in Dreams from My Father, with a very meaningful subtitle, A Story of Race and Inheritance. Although it is obvious that the narrative is in line with the travails of the author's discovering and re-discovering his father, nevertheless at the same time it is his finest tribute paid to his wonderful mother who was his friend, philosopher and guide. A burnt offering from a son to his mother when he says in the preface that he sees his mother everyday --- her joy, her capacity for wonder, in his daughters. He does not stop there but adds that "........ what is best in me I owe to her." Thus a weeping soul that oftentimes is tired, somewhat baffled; and although it bends somewhat somewhere, it never breaks. There emerges a strong-willed young man, facing an antagonistic society at large and aiming at putting the pieces of his life into one mosaic in order to recognize his own self by tracing his roots that lie thousands of miles away in a village in Kenya, in the generally less tempting continent of Africa. This is a real life story that was partly unveiled to Obama by his mother; and partly it was the writer's own discovery through firsthand experience when he made a trip to Kenya immediately after he got accepted at Harvard Law School in 1982. The same year he receives news of his father's death in a car accident over the telephone from an unfamiliar voice that introduced itself as his Aunt Jane from Nairobi. The father whose advice regarding his education and other things he quite resented when he (Obama senior) paid a visit to his family in the United States in 1972, now takes full shape in his mind's eye. The author begins to measure his personal loss in its totality. In fact, with this episode the first chapter of Part One of the book under Origins begins conveying the mute silence of grief to a reader, as it once did to the writer. The significance of the writer's dream of his father a year after his death is immense in its content, duration and vibrancy. There are graphic details of every bit, making it larger than life. His description of the conversation between the father and the son is so charged with emotion and profound in its underlying meaning that it can be felt only by a receptive mind. The dream is so overwhelming that the writer feels a stronger urge to search for his father and talk with him again. In other words, the father once again comes back alive in his life. Tears are rolling down his cheeks as he awakes from sleep. The experience is traumatic yet most fulfilling, almost cathartic. It seems paradoxical, though, that a child who was deserted by the father in his early infancy along with his mother and whom he met only once briefly at the age of ten, will now occupy his world in such an all-pervasive way. It would not have been so but for the mother's conviction that her son must know his ancestry that gives him a sense of identity through knowing his father. She not only kindles the image of the father in his son but also sustains it by nurturing it at every opportunity that she can seize. And all for the sake of rearing up the child. Although she has no clue as to how, when and why her husband has disappeared, she bears no grudge against him for that, which if she did would have been rather normal. Instead she sees to it that the bond of love between her and Obama's father 'survived the distance' and in this regard the writer feels that there is this 'distant authority of his father on his mother'. She would defend her husband in the absolute sense of the term, which is a manifestation of her unalloyed love and respect for him; and she would find reasons behind acts that he did, however whimsical those might appear to others. She upholds before the son the image of the father as a gifted person who had studied at Harvard, thought independently and was forthright even at the risk of his career. Thus an image of a missing and an absent father comes to be etched in the mind of the child, one that would remain with him permanently. His carrying the letter written by his father to New York and reading it again while he waits for the Pakistani Sadiq, whom he has known from his days in Los Angeles, to be back from his night duty exemplifies how he treasures it as his inheritance. The same way he collects letters written by his father and also those in reply to his applications that he gets from his grandmother, who had reared up his father, while visiting his extended family in Kenya and utters, 'My inheritance.' There is a constant search in his mind for his father. Thus any memorabilia that he comes across constitutes his treasure trove. Also resonating in his mind are his father's words, "Confidence. The secret to a man's success." Combined with such pictures frame by frame, his realization of his father's struggling life in Kenya during the regime of President Kenyatta, when tribalism eroded the socio-political fabric of the country and also afterwards, makes up the configuration of his father's life against a background that is discordant and much variegated. The writer has seen poverty in the streets of Djakarta, in his own life as a school student when he could not be sent to the International School there because of limited funds. He is an object of derision at Pinahou Academy in Hawaii because he has a funny surname and he looks different. At one stage the children even ask him if his father eats people. As someone involved in the Developing Committees Project in Chicago, young Obama comes face to face with the condition of the blacks living in a cesspool of misfortunes perpetrated by the dominant segment of society, of which there is seemingly no end in sight. The most attractive feature in this book is the author's sense of detail in every event that has woven a tapestry of a rich life story. He surpasses any social scientist in this regard. Simple language flows at ease and with facility throughout the book, making it a masterpiece of literature. His adaptability to his people who are absolute strangers to him, except for his two half siblings, Roy and Auma, and to the surroundings of his ancestral village is remarkable and bears testimony to his quest for finding a sense of belonging. This is the lesson he learns from his mother who remains a tower of strength to her son. In fact, in this emotive saga, Ann Dunham, the writer's mother, is the celebrated hero.
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