Fars Rygg

The narrator, reflecting on his past, gazes out from the porch in search of his deceased father. Despite his father’s passing fourteen years prior, the narrator still yearns for him deeply. Desiring to immortalize his father’s essence through writing, the narrator hopes to encompass all facets of his father’s being and experiences. Memories flood back, recalling his father’s habitual walks and chance encounters in town after school, revealing that constant movement was a coping mechanism against loneliness ingrained since childhood.

In the narrative, the father, aged 65 in 1986, shares a similar age with the narrator. He descends from the family home, shared with the narrator’s mother, G, to visit his own mother, Ellen, residing in care for the past five years. Ellen’s passing in 1987 leaves unspoken mysteries, such as the father’s relocation from Alexandria to Norway as a 13-year-old, alone for schooling. His upbringing in various locales, including Northern Africa and Geneva, is attributed to the Judge, his father, whose work led the family to Egypt in 1926 when the father was five years old.

Possessing his father’s documents and sketches from their Alexandria residence, the narrator strives to reconstruct his father’s story, riddled with gaps and untold tales. Despite fragments of recounted stories, a substantial void remains within the narrator, longing to fill it with his father’s narrative. Vivid recollections surface, depicting moments of his father’s life, from Alexandria’s ocean-facing bedroom to encounters with figures like the Judge, Ellen, and his Norwegian hosts, Mr. and Mrs. K.