In 2002, a friend returning from a trip abroad asked me if I wanted anything from the country he was visiting — a magazine or something, he said.
I told him that that wasn’t necessary but if he insisted, a book would do. At that time, I had just started to pick up reading as a hobby and books are not cheap. He told me he knew nothing about books but he would grab one anyway.
Returning a favour
I guess he was just returning a favour for having bugged me with long distance calls asking about political development back home whenever he was abroad.
My friend is not a politician but he love to talk about politics. Even now whenever he is overseas, he will call or text message me about the latest happenings back home.
Sometimes he would call just to say he had read something about Malaysia in newspapers in the country he was visiting.
As usual he would ask for my opinion. “Reporters know a lot of inside stories,” he would say.
There’s something about Fatherland
Coming back to that particular trip in 2002, he returned home a couple of days later, invited me for a coffee and handed me five books, one of them was “Fatherland” by Robert Harris. “These are cheap books, that’s why I bought five altogether. I got it from a bargain store,” he said.
Of course, the conversation soon shifted to politics. Vintage him.
It took me nearly a year to finish reading all five. Fatherland was unusually compelling that it left an impression on me till this day despite the fact that I could no longer recall what the book was all about except that it had something to do with Nazi and Germany.
But there are other things about Fatherland — things that made my stomach churn when I read them at that time.
So, yesterday, I rummaged into the heap of paper boxes containing my personal library and found the book buried deep below. I plan to re-read it; I really want to know what were the stomach-churning tales that Harris had weaved into the pages of Fatherland.
