Title: Quiet time with the president
Authors: Peter Friedland, Jill Margo
Publisher: Jonathan Ball
ISBN: 9781776193523
“Madiba would hear the words of many leaders, but there is a difference between hearing and listening – you hear with your ears, but you interpret and listen with your brain. My sole task was to make sure he could hear clearly enough, so that he could listen without strain.” (110)
This book is called Quiet time with the president, but first of all it is the memoir of a South African doctor who worked during a tumultuous time in the country’s history, and struggled with the decision to uproot his family from everything they knew to start a new life in Australia. As a frontline medical worker in a Johannesburg hospital, Doctor Friedland came to experience his own failing mental health, and, with the added loss of three close friends, he felt forced to face the question: should he stay, or should he go, and this becomes the central dilemma of the book.
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Having worked his way up to become a prominent ear, nose and throat surgeon, Friedland went on to become Mandela’s ear doctor; and, through introducing him to state-of-the-art hearing devices, he brought him a whole new way of “listening” – or, as Mandela says to him, “Now, Doctor, I am going to hear all the things I should not be hearing” (87).
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Having worked his way up to become a prominent ear, nose and throat surgeon, Friedland went on to become Mandela’s ear doctor; and, through introducing him to state-of-the-art hearing devices, he brought him a whole new way of “listening” – or, as Mandela says to him, “Now, Doctor, I am going to hear all the things I should not be hearing” (87).
The whole theme of “quiet time with the retired president” offers Friedland plenty of space for reflection on the intersecting fates of his own life and career path with that of South Africa. In this way, the authors – Peter Friedland and his sister, Jill Margo, an award-winning journalist in Australia – have managed to blend the country’s backstory, both socially and politically, into Friedland’s own personal timeline. Margo’s skill in researching and reporting are felt strongly between the pages, and the familiar voice of Mandela has been well captured; one can hear the deep and gentle lilt of, “No, Doctor,” as Mandela addresses Friedland during their conversations.
The book taglines with “a doctor’s story about learning to listen”, so I thought it would include more specifics about Friedland’s conversations with Mandela, but I found the inclusion of Nelson Mandela and his legacy to be largely research-based. But there are still many exchanges with him, and these discussions have created impetus for an interesting and thought-provoking story, which encouraged me to follow my own research as I read the book.
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The story of Friedland’s own father threads through this narrative. His own helplessness to cure his father’s medical condition led him to be good at observing and understanding the needs of his patients; and, maybe, through the career he chose, he was always trying to fix his father, but ultimately never managed to.
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The story of Friedland’s own father threads through this narrative. His own helplessness to cure his father’s medical condition led him to be good at observing and understanding the needs of his patients; and, maybe, through the career he chose, he was always trying to fix his father, but ultimately never managed to. He is so reverential of Mandela – choosing to call him Madiba – and speaks of him in such respectful tones, that it almost gives the impression that he saw Mandela as a father – not just of the nation, but for himself. On first meeting him, he writes, “I went to him, and he put out his hand. It was big and warm and as I held it, I was trying not to cry” (86).
Some of the passages I most enjoyed in this book were Friedland showing Mandela in action, in the way we have come to know and love him. For example, when he went to visit Friedland’s medical practice, he writes how gracious he was to all the staff, and says,
Then he asked to meet the person who cleans my rooms. Angela (Angie) Mafefane stepped forwards. He shook her hand and they spoke in isiXhosa. Later, Angie translated their exchange to me. “You don’t know me but my family knows you.” She said Madiba asked for her surname and without pausing, happily confirmed he knew her parents and her grandparents but he’d not known her because he was imprisoned while she was growing up. (114)
There is also a lovely story about Friedland’s own children meeting Mandela. The two children were tongue-tied in Mandela’s presence, and in a sweet exchange he said to them, “When you qualify as a doctor, I’m going to dismiss your father and you’re going to be my new doctor.” As they were about to leave, he remarked that Benjamin was a name from the Bible, too. “When I go to heaven, they will ask me, What is your name?, and I will say, I’m Madiba. And they will say, from where? And I’ll say from South Africa, and they’ll say where’s that? Who are you? We don’t know you. But you and Benjamin are from the Bible, so you will be invited in. So, please will you put in a good word for me in heaven?” (157). These stories illustrate how incredible it is when somebody in power is humble enough to recognise another, and make them feel seen and heard (listened to); and in this era of the big political ego, perhaps this is one of the most important and enduring qualities of this book – that these examples of humility and respect from a global leader are vitally preserved between these pages.
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The climax of the story sees Friedland ultimately needing Mandela’s blessing to leave the country.
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The climax of the story sees Friedland ultimately needing Mandela’s blessing to leave the country. He feels guilty that he is leaving to give his family what he considers to be a better life, when Mandela has sacrificed both himself and his family for the struggle of the country and a larger purpose. If you take Friedland’s need for Mandela’s blessing at face value, it seems overwrought in some way; however, if you consider that Friedland looked up to Mandela as a father figure, it begins to make sense that he would put so much store by the answer he was to be given.
Quiet time with the president is a memoir that shows a country unfolding through the lens of a frontline medical worker and the decisions he felt forced to make during an important time in history. Ultimately – and I think this is one of a memoir’s superpowers: to invite the reader along on a journey to learn, in this case about a country – it shows its politics and its people through the telling of one dynamic human story.
Also read:
Nou in die verlede: Die verborge oorsprong van Nelson Mandela se Long walk to freedom
Prisoner 913: The release of Nelson Mandela by Riaan de Villiers and Jan-Ad Stemmet