by Osamah Sami
It worked a treat. People still stole our goods sometimes, but they also became walking billboards about the dangers of handling fireworks when you didn’t really know how.
It was still a taxing business, and it lasted no more than that unforgettable summer—unforgettable, and grim. There was no way we could have known the group of teenage buyers was the Monkerat—because they weren’t really the Monkerat, they were only their conscripts. The boys looked street-hard, and were street-hard. They were honest-to-God juvies who’d signed a deal with the District Court in exchange for early release.
The police tracked our payphones and rained down with brutal force. They deposited us in a cell and bashed us to their liking. We gave a sworn statement that we would all be good boys from then on.
When our parents came to pick us up, they gave us such a flogging that at one stage I moaned, ‘I just want to go back to jail.’
Dad goes to the Kangaroo Continent
I was man of the house again—only this time, my father hadn’t gone out to the front line. He’d gone to a country called Australia to lecture, and to preach, which Mum thought was more dangerous than the war. He’d gone there before, but only for four-week periods, during a special religious month in the Muslim calendar. This time, he’d been called there for a three-month stretch, so I’d switched to a less-risky method of making cash: I was a legitimate shoe-shiner, just outside the shrine. It wasn’t exactly smoothie money, but it was enough for books.
I knew that Dad was in for a lot of kangaroos. (We’d watched a dubbed version of Skippy on TV.) I also knew there was a Queen who liked colourful hats for obscure reasons. I learned more at the library: it was a country and a continent. Its white people wore cowboy hats and raised sheep, while its indigenous people roamed nude and hunted the white people with boomerangs, in retaliation for the white people’s having hunted them with bullets.
In one journal I came across the Sydney Opera House: ‘that asinine building dubbed the house of the opera which looks like a hideous cockscomb…’ Another article emphasised the newness of the country, and placed great import on the population’s origins as British convicts. Another told how Australia had never been through a real civil conflict, and how its entire population didn’t match that of Iran’s capital. The articles treated Australia with brevity and contempt. A Kangaroo Continent, impossibly distant from the rest of the known world.
And Dad had gone to this strange, impractical land to lecture its people on Islamic History and Arabic Literature.
He called international every day to see how we were doing, and to check that I was taking care of the house. He was also making real money, and promised that when he got home, we’d finally get to move into a house with actual bedrooms.
He told us about the place he was staying in, which was called Sydney. He didn’t mention the Opera House or the beaches. Instead, he was entranced by the abundant aisles of the supermarkets. He understood his audience: we, too, were amazed.
‘A thousand different types of cheese?’ I asked, flabbergasted.
‘A whole aisle dedicated to cheese! They have everything.’
‘What about butter?’
‘A thousand types of butter, too. And you don’t even have to have cheese and butter for breakfast, because they have cereals for breakfast, a thousand types!’
This was clearly ridiculous. During and after the war, we’d been on rations. Each family had received a coupon, entitling them to the basics: vegetable oil, sugar, flour and rice. You could always buy more commodities on the black market, but that was for wealthy families. Prices had been severely jacked up.
In Iran, there are six or seven different types of bread, each unique and ‘baked on the spot’ at its own special bakery. But the problem of a small town like Qom’s being flooded with a population more often found in a capital city was that bread ran out before even half of us got a turn. As such, it was essential to line up as early as 4 am, well before the dawn prayer. Unfortunately, the same situation applied to buying milk, and it was my job to secure both necessities.
It was a daily catch-22. Did I line up for milk for an hour, or did I risk the milk and go for the bread first? The stress had been immense back when I was six or seven. I’d got used to it by now. Practice makes perfect.
My head was spinning as Dad went through his absurd list of products. There was:
LOW-FAT MILK
NO-FAT MILK
FAT-BOOSTED MILK
SOY MILK
GRASS MILK
VEGAN MILK
SMART MILK
INTELLIGENT MILK
STUPID-PEOPLE MILK
LACTOSE-FREE MILK
LACTOSE-ENHANCED MILK
CELEBRITY MILK
WOMEN-ONLY MILK.
We didn’t believe him, but he promised photographs.
I wanted to go there. Not really to flee persecution; the truth is, I didn’t know any better, it was just our everyday reality. And while I knew about the beaches, I couldn’t even imagine them. I didn’t dare imagine them—surely such a beautiful location, filled with equally gorgeous women, existed but in heaven. I could barely picture what women looked like without their headscarves. Combine that with the descriptions of Australia I’d read in the library, and you can see why bread and milk were so alluring. Dad also assured us there were no midnight raids by naked tribesmen.
From the questionable reading I’d been doing in the library, plus Dad’s stories—he always talked until his credit ran out—I had more than enough ammunition to start bragging. I spent my days telling total strangers how Dad was guiding Christian convicts to Islam, and hunting his breakfast via boomerang.
Many years later, I came to appreciate the absurdity of my impressions. Then again, I was recently asked by a sincere young Australian whether we’d discovered cars yet in Iran or if we still rode on camels, so maybe every teenage boy is short on wisdom.
SIPPING TEA WITH SUGAR
Mashhad, Iran, 2013: five days until visa expires
I’ve been in the court for three and a half hours, clutching a number in my hand. It’s close to 10 am, but nothing is close to happening. I go through a long mental checklist called What I Could Have Achieved in Three Hours. Two soccer games. A few overs of cricket. Disco dancing. A prayer marathon. Queueing up at Centrelink.
Finally, they call my number. I approach the desk. I brief a skinny man with a bushy moustache about my situation. He takes the letter from the police and, without a single word, stamps it.
Back to the coroner’s—where I barge my way to the front of the queue. I head straight for the man who dealt with me yesterday, twice.
He looks at me. ‘Back in line.’
‘Sir, I am under an enormous time constraint,’ I plead. I wave the court papers. He remembers me.
‘It’s close to midday,’ he says. ‘I told you to go to the courts early. Where have you been all morning? Sleeping in, I bet.’
‘Sir, please.’
‘Line up like everyone else! You don’t get a free pass just because you’re Australian.’
So I line up, at the end o
f my nerve. And another two hours pass, just like that. It’s not like there’s a thousand people here. It’s just a bad time of day. Midday in Iran is a triple-threat: it’s close to the lunchbreak and the afternoon prayer and the afternoon siesta. Not strictly in that order. The man I’ve been dealing with disappeared a good ninety minutes ago. At 2.40 pm, he returns and calls me. He takes away my papers and promptly issues one more.
‘Body’s yours,’ he says.
‘Excuse me?’
‘You can take it wherever. I would suggest you bury him here, in holy ground. But it’s up to you.’
I’m floored, but still confused. What am I meant to do with the body? ‘Sir, what’s the process?’ I ask him. ‘How do I get him to Australia?’
‘They didn’t tell you that in court?’
‘No.’
‘If you weren’t so slack this morning, you would’ve been able to do this earlier. In any case—go to the registrar, pay the fee, and ask to have the body transported. To the Paradise of Reza.’
‘What’s the Paradise of Reza?’
‘It’s a cemetery.’
‘But I want to take him to Australia.’
‘Just wait! Stop interrupting! Is this how they culture you over there? It’s also a morgue. You can keep the body there until the Department of Foreign Affairs gives you an exit.’
I think about this. ‘So Paradise of Reza, then I go to Foreign Affairs?’
I keep finding new ways to disappoint this person, I can see it on his face. ‘You need to contact your embassy. Have you done that?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Then what have you done? You are very slack, I have to tell you. Get a letter from your embassy to say they’re happy to accept the corpse back in Australia. Then go to the Department of Deaths and Births and submit your papers from the morgue. They’ll issue you a paper.’
‘What paper?’
‘To take to Foreign Affairs.’
Right. ‘Would this be all?’
‘I think so,’ he says. ‘Although, then there’s the airline ticket.’ It takes me a minute: he means for my dad. ‘But you can’t buy a ticket until you sort out all your paperwork.’
I thank him. He doesn’t reply. Like all the Iranian officials I’ve met, he takes a sugar cube, dunks it in his tea and gets on with sipping it. I walk away, going over everything I’ve yet to deal with. As I do, the man calls after me.
‘May he rest in peace, son.’
◆ ◆ ◆
The hearse driver, a portly, kind-eyed man wearing thick glasses, tells me not to worry, as the Paradise of Reza doesn’t close till 7 pm. I check the time: four-thirty. We’ve been on the road a good half-hour and the cemetery is still another forty minutes out. The driver tries to make chitchat about Australia. He asks me how much the West hates Iran, and why. I answer in short statements but he is keen to learn more about the ‘white folk’, and he keeps his questions coming at a steady pace.
Reza’s Paradise is enormous. It goes on for miles and miles. The driver instructs me to follow the ‘yellow line’; if the situation had left me with any sense of humour, I’d mention something now about the Wizard of Oz.
The body is unloaded and the driver goes, thanking me for all I’ve told him about employment rates back home (though I was fuzzy on the specifics for the hearse-driver industry, so I couldn’t help but disappoint him).
If there is such a thing as the smell of death, then this is it, right here. Dozens of corpses, laid on trays, zipped up in black bags. Dad’s is zipped imperfectly, and his hair is visible. Somehow, the hair looks alive. I can’t believe he’s gone.
I stand there, lost, a few minutes before somebody informs me to register my entry, and to follow a green line. It takes me to a small office where a number of young men are warming themselves over a fire. The main office is far, they say; a bus comes every half-hour. I pay the entry fee, and some extra ‘thank-you’ money just in case I’ll need their help later on.
Back in the room of bodies, wailing women mourn the deaths of their husbands, sons or fathers. They gather to one side as the men of the family lift the bodies off the trays and take them away for the washing ritual.
I help some men lift their loved one and carry him away, chanting prayers with them as we go. When the body is lowered I kneel with everyone, place my right arm over the body and read the Fatiha—the first sura, or chapter, in the Koran.
The Fatiha is the Koran’s utility; it performs many roles. It forms a fundamental part of the daily prayers, read a total of ten times a day. But it’s also read in the event of death, to ‘brighten the souls’ of the departed, and funeral rituals are in fact called the Fatiha, so when someone passes away a Fatiha is organised. Last but not least, it’s also used in engagements—when a couple is engaged, people all around them will read the Fatiha.
I read it for a few bodies—one youngster, just twenty-two. His face is visible, but unrecognisable, just ash black. The uncle tells me he was secretly engaged to a lover, a city girl from Tehran; the boy was from Mashhad. His parents found out and banished him. He got a job in Kish—an island in the Persian Gulf—so they decided to elope. He took a friend’s car, drove to Tehran, close to twelve hours’ driving, and picked up his beloved. While he was there he decided to come back to Mashhad, to say goodbye to his parents, and called them from the highway. An hour later, both sets of parents were informed the car had flipped, 200 kilometres from Mashhad. The bride’s body was over by the women’s section.
I tell the uncle why I’m here, and that I’m alone in Mashhad. Immediately he yells for a group of men to help. They all respond at once, taking Dad’s body to the wash hall. They all kneel down and pray for his soul as well. As a group of strangers read the Fatiha for Dad, I look at my watch yet again. I wonder about each and every one of my friends and family, again. Where are they now? Are they laughing? Having a good time? Crying? Sleeping? Having sex?
I miss the bus, and ask someone how far the office is. A few minutes by car—so maybe six, seven kilometres. I hit the yellow line on foot. It’s a thirty-minute run; the next bus passes me just as I cross the finish line. Deep down, I know I needed the movement for my sanity. Waiting for the bus would’ve damaged me much more.
The office has sludge-green walls. As usual, photographs of the Ayatollahs salute the visitors.
A woman listens to my story with a rude look in her eye. She mutters they will store my father’s body for a fee until I have the Foreign Affairs papers. She asks for my passport, as it’s policy to keep government-issued ID. But it’s the only identification I have in Iran, and I’ll need it if I’m to fly to Tehran. Maybe they can photocopy it, I suggest, so they know it’s not a fake.
‘Policy is policy,’ she says.
I take a deep breath, and explain again, as best I can. I’m all too aware they close in an hour’s time, and I don’t know what will happen to my father’s body if I can’t deposit it here. ‘It’s unreasonable, what you’re asking. I need my ID to do all these things. But I also don’t want my dad to be tossed out in the cold all night.’
‘It’s not like he feels anything,’ she says.
‘Ma’am. What if thi
s was your dad?’
She looks at me levelly. ‘I would leave my ID.’
‘Miss, if you came to Australia and had this exact same problem, I promise you with all my heart they would look after you very differently.’
‘Is this the Australia that is making videos about how their government turns away poor people who arrive on boats from Iran?’
I have nothing to say to her. I try to practise my Zen. I wonder if this woman’s always had it in for me, if the minute she saw my Australian passport it was all over. My mouth is cotton-dry, but there’s more talking to do. I ask if I can talk to the manager.
He is more sympathetic, but offers little help.
‘I want to speak to your manager,’ I say.
It’s too late to call anyone higher. ‘Also, there’s no one higher than me.’ But I think he knows I mean the lawmakers. Suddenly, an idea occurs to me. I do have a card, with my photo on it, back at the hotel.
But going there and back will take three hours.
The manager convinces me to leave my passport here, and to come back and swap the IDs in the morning.
It’s not ideal but, then again, I’m running out of options. I take the bus out to Mashhad.
◆ ◆ ◆
I arrive at the hotel at 9.30 pm. I can feel I am no longer welcome.
I ask to use the hotel’s phone—a local call, I assure them. I ask the airline when the next flight out to Tehran might be.
‘Sir, it’s a meat market on every airline right through to next week.’
I take a deep breath. ‘Next week?’ I say.
‘Sir, there are millions of pilgrims who’ve booked way in advance. Your best bet will be the bus.’