‘Of all the men in the world, of all the doctors in the world, of all the fathers in the whole world. I happened to be the one present in that place at that time.’ This line from Mirza Waheed’s Tell Her Everything immediately brought to mind that iconic dialogue from the iconic movie Casablanca: ‘Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine…’ It also brings into immediate recollection, the character of Dr K from Franz Kafka’s The Trial, a recognition that is deliberate. Waheed’s protagonist is Kaiser Shah, a doctor with his name abbreviated to Dr K by colleagues, thereby strengthening the Kafkaesque connection. As the title suggests, the novel is a confession from a father to his daughter.
Dr K was once a successful doctor, who now lives a retired life in London. His daughter Sara has been away from her father for the last two decades, as she has been living and studying in the USA ever since the death of her mother. Naturally, the two are estranged and don’t share much of a bond. Sara fills the pages of her diary/notebook in letters to her father, and hopes to meet him one day in person. And now, Dr K, living with tremendous guilt, decides to ‘tell everything’ to Sara.
The novel is a gradual, meandering, sometimes rambling account by Dr K on the circumstances that led to his ‘retirement’. The pieces fit together gradually, like a jigsaw puzzle coming to life. After growing up and studying in medical school, he gets a job as a doctor in the Middle East. He works hard and earns for his family comprising his wife and his young daughter and very few friends, barring his friend-turned-foe Biju. The circumstances of his upbringing also mean that Kaiser has been a spendthrift, unlike Biju. And ultimately, there is tension between the two.