by Osamah Sami
‘Get out and close the door.’
The guard goes to remove me, but I give up without a fight. I’ve tried paying money. Being nice. Talking polite. And what’s left? I’m not far off an anxiety attack; I can feel it. I’ve been hospitalised for blacking out before.
My stomach goes empty. My heart rate jacks up. I fight to keep my senses going.
I’m losing the fight.
Slow the fuck down, I urge my heart. I remind it who’s in charge. I’m the boss. I love my dad. The chemicals can’t wreck this. I have to start breathing again, just like I do in yoga.
Think of the pool.
Think how long I can hold my breath underwater.
The hours I spend underwater.
And on the football oval.
All that work has to come back now.
Steady.
Steady.
Steady, mate.
I’m snapped out of it by the sensation of a hand upon my shoulder.
It’s the young soldier. ‘What’s wrong, brother?’ he asks. ‘Can I help you with something?’
I focus on my breathing. I focus on his big, dark eyes. Does he want money?
But I can’t read him. I can see the whole universe in those eyes.
He feels I am about to fall, and grips my shoulder harder. He squats down in slow motion to match the pace of my drop.
He leans me against the wall, his hand still on my shoulder.
‘You point your weapon at me one minute and help me in another?’ It takes a while to get the words out; I’m breathing all heavy.
‘That?’ he says. ‘That was just my job. This, this is my duty.’
‘Thank you, brother. Thank you.’
‘I haven’t done anything yet,’ he replies.
‘I took it to the highest person here. You can’t help me. It’s all over.’
‘Have you seen the deputy? He’s a true gentleman.’
‘I’ve already seen the cleric.’
‘The deputy has just as much power. Just go in, he’s a good man. A really, really good man.’
‘As are you, brother.’
I place my hand on his shoulder; his is still on mine. We must look like schoolboys.
But we’re not schoolboys. We’re adult men. I instinctively reach for my wallet. But he grabs my hand and pushes it firmly away.
‘Duty is priceless, brother. All I ask is a prayer. I’m going to be a father soon.’
My eyes light up at the news. ‘Congratulations!’ I tell him. ‘My daughter just turned seven.’
‘And how does it feel?’
‘It’s amazing, man. You’re really going to enjoy it.’ I shove a banknote in his pocket, for the child. And before he can give it back, I hurry downstairs.
◆ ◆ ◆
At 3.35 pm, I’m in the deputy’s office.
He is a neatly bearded middle-aged man, wearing a thick precious-stone ring. I immediately get a great vibe from him: maybe it’s the fact he’s not pointing a gun at me, or maybe it’s just the way, miraculously, he stops sipping his tea as soon as he notices me.
I explain my story and, thank God, he understands the problem of time. He stands up at once and yells out into the main hall, gesturing to the tiny man with the large glasses. He calls him in.
‘Why are you giving this young guest of ours a hard time?’ the deputy asks him.
‘I didn’t. He was the deaf one not hearing my instructions.’
‘First of all, you just don’t insult a guest like this. Second, if he made a mistake, you should show compassion and help him solve it. What is this computer-system business you’ve been dealing him? You can’t use your head and bring the file to me so I can delete it?’
‘I’m sorry, sir. I knew you were busy and I didn’t want to disturb—’
‘Don’t tell me you’re sorry. Just fix it. And while you’re at it, apologise.’
The tiny man with the big glasses takes my paper and regards me. He heads out of the room and the deputy says, ‘I hope you can get your father out in time.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ I say. ‘I will never forget your humanity.’
But he’s already back to his papers. He really is a busy guy.
◆ ◆ ◆
I arrive at the Department of Foreign Affairs fifteen minutes after closing. The guard doesn’t even want to let me past the checkpoint. I plead with him. I beg with him. ‘Please, just call and check.’
He shrugs, picks up the phone, dials it. Nothing. ‘They’re gone.’
Before he can finish, I see the lady-lieutenant leaving through the gates. I scamper across to her.
‘Ma’am! Ma’am-Lieutenant!’ I call.
She turns to the source of the clamour and stops.
‘I made it! I made it!’ I cry.
‘No, you didn’t. We are closed,’ she motions, moving on.
I stand, stock-still. ‘Please, you know my story. Please!’
For one second, she stops.
She turns around slowly.
‘You are keen to ruin my day, aren’t you?’
◆ ◆ ◆
Ten minutes later I am in the office. The lady-lieutenant takes the death certificate—and stamps it. All is good.
She writes me an exit paper, stamps it too.
My hands are shaking.
Shaking.
The paper is no bigger than the size of my palm.
All this pain, all this trembling, for one flimsy little card.
Exit granted. Exit bloody granted.
The more I try to calm myself, the bigger the earthquakes in my brain. The lady-lieutenant leaves the office. ‘Oof! You are so persistent,’ she says on the way out.
I raise my voice above a whisper and wish her a very good weekend.
◆ ◆ ◆
My decrepit driver has been with me almost twelve hours, and I suggest he take his money and get back to his life. He declines. ‘You still look stressed,’ he says. ‘So my job isn’t done.’
He’s right about the first part, so I let the second part lie. I ask him to take me to Reza’s Paradise. I haven’t seen my father since I left him for Tehran.
On the way, I’m reminded that we haven’t stopped for food since our colourful breakfast, waiting for the Department of Births and Deaths to open. My poor driver’s been surviving on tea and biscuits all day long.
We stop by an Iraqi restaurant—a rarity in this town. A few Iraqis greet me down a flight of stairs. The driver is taken aback. He hadn’t known I was an Arab. He jokes that I have chosen the wrong old man to spy on.
This is the first time he has eaten at an Iraqi establishment in his long life. Two of his brothers were shot dead by Iraqis in the war.
‘Should we leave?’ I ask him.
‘No way,’ he replies. ‘I actually want to try the same food as the men who killed my brothers. Must
’ve been some kind of super food. They were smart, fit lads!’
TRUTH ISN’T THE BEST MEDICINE
Melbourne, Australia, 2001
Creative answering
For a seventeen-year-old Muslim boy on the Kangaroo Continent, the last year of high school and the beach were not a good match. I spent a lot of time checking out babes at the beach instead of balancing chemical equations.
As the millennium came to a close, so did my education. I collected my Year 12 results and put them in my pocket. I didn’t have the guts to look at them in public.
High school wasn’t all awful; I was going to miss some of it. English was mandatory, but I happened to love it. Arabic was great too, and Maths came naturally.
But I’d been barred from doing most of the subjects I really wanted: Visual Art, Performing Arts, Music and Phys Ed. These were non-starters for the Shiite Iraqi Muslim. ‘Do they teach that as a subject?’ my family said of the arts. Not only were artists rebellious outcasts who would go to hell, they also didn’t have real jobs and lived in their own fairy-floss worlds. They sat on social benefits and/or swindled the taxpayers into funding whatever foolish ‘vision’ they’d set their hearts on next.
And so while Dad had once said, ‘As doctors heal us physically, so artists heal the soul,’ I was pretty sure this magnanimous theory would not apply to his own eldest son.
I did contemplate running away and becoming an artist, with a view to setting up camp in a remote locale and probably eating raw insects. But my warm bed and my mother’s cooking were too much to give up.
In lieu of such drastic measures, I enrolled in Chemistry and Physics, under not-inconsiderable pressure from my family. The fortune teller had predicted that I’d become a master surgeon, and who was I to argue with fate?
And yet my aptitudes and her predictions completely failed to match up. I quite simply sucked at science subjects. When exam time rolled around, I had to resort to some creative answering.
How convincing was this? I really wasn’t sure, but I had to believe it was possible I’d passed. All I needed to get into Medical Science was a 98.9. I opened the envelope with a bold spirit and a light heart.
68.7.
Shit.
I walked inside the house. Mum was waiting at the door, barely containing her excitement.
‘Hey, sowmeh! The results, the results, please! Your friend Luay got 99.2.’
My mouth was so dry I’d have paid for some saliva. ‘Good, good, good, good. I’m good. Reallllly good,’ I said.
‘Are you okay?’
‘Yes, goooood. I’m just veeeery tired from things. I will go to my rooooom and I will pray, I think. I need to pray, it’s prayer time. Prayyyy!’
‘So what did you get?’ Mum’s words fell on my mind like five little axes.
‘I haven’t checked. I’ll check after prayer. Prayer is of utmost importance.’
I rushed to my room and closed the door, praying for an earthquake.
Not only would my results not get me into Medicine, they would make my father the laughing stock of Melbourne. He was so well educated, two PhDs to date. And this all despite a past that included having been tortured by his uncle and fleeing oppressive countries, twice. And who was I? I was a pampered boy in a pampered country, and I couldn’t muster half as good a score.
Downstairs, all night, the phone rang off the hook with people calling to brag about their own children’s results. In response to this, I continued to hide.
People assembled outside the mosque, just metres from our house. I could see my fellow graduates, chatting with their proud dads. I didn’t really care what any of them might think of me, but Mum and Dad would have to endure something unimaginable. People would lose respect for Dad; what good was a community leader if he couldn’t raise his own children? They would say so many hurtful things it already hurt.
A knock on my window. It was 99.2. It was actually my friend Luay, but the scores were so important they superseded people’s names. He grinned, pressing his result sheet against the glass.
‘Hey! How are you, brother? I’m off to Medical Science! Come out! Stop hiding!’
I closed the curtain on Luay and limped down to the mosque, ashen-faced on a blue, sunny day.
Our mosque, from the outside, just looked like a large square building block, which is because our mosque was just that. Inside was a different story: large halls lavishly adorned with Koranic calligraphy, chandeliers, Islamic banners and Persian carpets all spiralling out from a gorgeously carved wooden pulpit.
Another significant feature on our tour of the mosque was Dad’s rival, a severe cleric named Sayyed Ghaffar, who also happened to be the father of 99.2, aka my friend Luay.
Sayyed Ghaffar wore a black turban to signify he’d descended from the Prophet (Dad, by contrast, wore white). Family trees were extremely important for anyone named Sayyed, who considered their direct link to the Prophet’s blood not only a blessing but a mark of their inherent superiority. I once had to relinquish the front seat of a car to a Sayyed, who also happened to be five years old at the time.
And here Sayyed Ghaffar was now, Luay by his side. Sayyed Ghaffar had a habit of speaking very slowly, because that way you would know he was a thinker.
‘Please, my dear brethren! Let us not be so vocal in praising my son for his incredible score of 99.2. It is all the work of God Almighty. It is not my genes, or endless hours of schooling that have brought upon this splendid score. It is thanks to Him!’
Sayyed Ghaffar dramatically cast his eyes skyward, and the assembled neighbours chanted praise in unison. When he was finished, he spotted me standing sheepishly in the background and raised a hand to halt people’s ruckus.
‘But wait! We must not be so joyous. Perhaps our cleric’s son, Osamah, has not done so well.’
‘What are you saying, Sayyed! Osamah is a top student,’ a mosque-goer said. The support would have been comforting if I’d actually earned it.
Another joined in. ‘Even if he slept through his exams he would be the top student! There is no man smarter than his father!’
‘I would bet my entire house on Osamah getting a higher score than Luay! Of course, gambling is a sin so I will not do it.’ These fighting words came from a septuagenarian. All turned their ravenous eyes towards me.
‘Let us hear it then,’ said Sayyed Ghaffar. ‘What did you get?’
Luay was quietly watching. I suspected he knew. He knew, at least, how I was with science subjects.
Between being the cleric’s son and a Sunday schoolteacher, where I gave lessons in Arabic—all that was over now, thanks to a number—I had given so many speeches in this very hall. But never had I felt so many eyes truly on me. Then I stopped feeling any of them, because I spotted Dad. He was walking towards us, in his traditional garb and traditional smile.
‘I got ninety-nine also,’ I declared. ‘Point nine. I got 99.9.’
Complete silence.
Then a glorious chant erupted through the hall.
Better scores through Photoshop
Most of the speeches I had given at the mosque were about being a good Muslim, how
best to follow the path of the Prophet. That, I could handle. Today, I had to give a speech about being a top student—warding my fellow youngsters off the wicked course of the West, inspiring them to be more like yours truly.
Mum was calling everyone, family in Iran, Iraq and Europe, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents. If she’d had the prime minister’s number, she’d have used it now.
‘My handsome boy is going to be a doctor,’ she gushed. ‘And some thought he was going to struggle to get to eighty-five. That shows them. He has his father’s genes, you see…’
As I walked to the mosque, and my doom, I felt the air compress me. I ascended the pulpit and took a deep breath.
‘Brothers and sisters,’ I began. ‘Scores should not matter. Surely we are equal. Surely what is more important is our intentions. We cannot judge somebody simply on their score.
‘There is a funny saying the English have: you say potato, I say potarto. Whether I got a 99.9, or, say, sixty-odd, I’d still be the same flesh-and-blood person standing before you today.
‘My heart would pump the same blood, and nothing would change. Thank you.’
Convenient, or inspiring? Potato, potarto. The community decided on the latter. I stepped down and they mobbed me like the paparazzi. I was at an epicentre of attention.
‘Will you prescribe painkillers for my joints?’ one asked me, as though I was already a doctor. ‘Do you think you’ll treat Jewish patients? How?’
Edging the crowd were Sayyed Ghaffar and Luay, conspicuously less effusive. Finally, Sayyed Ghaffar interrupted.
‘We need a copy of your results, Osamah,’ he said cheerily. ‘Not because we doubt you! Because we want to frame them, and decorate the mosque with your glory.’
I marinated in my sweat.
‘Of course, Sayyed,’ I said breezily. ‘I will bring it first thing.’