‘You are the only woman for me. I want to carry on our relationship,’ he said. ‘Forget the past. We will leave this city and start a new life somewhere else.’
He told me he loved our children too, and my family, though at one point he also said that it was Mansoor’s arrival in Australia that was the cause of our problems.
It was, of course, all too late. By now there would be no reconciliation on my part. I was six months pregnant and looking to the future.
After I left the counselling room I walked down a flight of stairs to the foyer. Reza was standing at the bottom.
‘I am only waiting for a taxi,’ he said.
But as I walked out of the building he started following me. I became nervous, and then scared. After I had walked about 50 metres he was still behind me. I turned to go back to the court for help, but as I tried to walk past Reza he took hold of my arm.
‘I want to talk,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to hurt you.’
After he forced me onto the nature strip and sat on the lawn beside me, I cried out, ‘Help! Someone help me.’
There was a man some distance away who shouted at Reza. ‘Hey, what are you doing?’
This caused Reza to let go of me and stand up.
‘It’s okay. She is my wife,’ he said.
I clambered back to my feet and started moving towards the court again.
‘I have an intervention order,’ I said firmly back at Reza. ‘You are not allowed to talk to me. I have nothing else to say.’
Reza followed me, in silence now, back inside the court building. There I found two police officers and asked if they could accompany me to the bus stop. One of them kindly took me to his car and drove me to the bus station while the other spoke to Reza.
Since that day, I have never seen Reza again. Nor have I had any desire to.
A week later, on 11 March, Ali and Shirin had another supervised visit with their father. It was the last one. He chose not to attend any further sessions. They, too, have not seen or heard of him since then. Many years later they would make a brief but unsuccessful attempt to find him.
Fourteen months after the scene at the Family Court, on 1 June, 1989, my divorce was finally granted. A month before that I had become an Australian citizen.
~
‘My good daughter, I love you more than my own life.’
How these words from my father lifted my heart. From my father! Less than a decade earlier I could never have imagined such language coming from that mouth about anyone, let alone me. Yet here we’d been, in Frankston in February and March 1988, walking the streets together looking for somewhere for me to live with my two – soon to be four – children, and my father was openly sharing his love for me.
I have an abiding memory of my father’s face looking anxiously down at me. On one of our days of walking it was very hot and I fainted outside a real estate agent’s office. Dad and Mansoor, who was with us that day, lifted me into the office and laid me on a sofa. When I regained consciousness the first thing I saw was my father’s tense face.
This fatherly concern wasn’t the only way he had become a ‘normal’ father either. He also offered me plenty of advice in the weeks after I left Reza.
I should stay out of politics. ‘You don’t need to be active politically when you have two kids, no husband and you are pregnant with twins.’
I should save money.
I should never go back to Reza nor even show him any mercy.
I should know the laws in Australia and ask for help if necessary.
One day Asghar asked me to sit down with him and write what he called the ‘will of the father to Sohila’. My mother listened, quietly nodding her agreement from time to time.
Today is different from yesterday. The responsibilities of today are more than in the past. You are responsible for everything and should not think about the past from now on. You shouldn’t look into the past, you should look into the future and move forward. You should remember to save money and also work. I ask God that from now on you are happy and healthy and having happy times, and if you do these things I will come back to Australia. Otherwise I will never come back . . . I wish you every success. Go and act.
Were his references to the past alluding to my childhood and his poor treatment of our family? Or were they referring to my marriage? I didn’t ask. I just absorbed all his words as the soil soaks up water at the end of a drought. All my life I had dreamed of a father like this. Now I had one – I did not know how – and I was going to make the most of it. From the time he drove me to Kananook to confront Reza, this ‘new’ father of mine was someone I could, and did, love and respect for the rest of his life.
By the time March came around, our real estate search was becoming more urgent. Mary continued to live in her own nearby apartment, however for most of February, until Fariba returned to Warrnambool, there were seven of us – Mansoor, Fariba, my parents, me and my children – squeezed into Mansoor’s tiny one-bedroom flat. At night almost the entire floor space was covered in bedding. More than once Mansoor’s landlord sent his agent to raise concerns about overcrowding.
One part of our search was made easy: I wanted to stay in Frankston. Though it was only one train station away from Kananook and Reza, it was a populated area well served by facilities for someone like me who did not have a car. I had already moved Ali, now in his second year of school, to a nearby primary school, and I was booked into the local hospital to have the twins. And in any case, since the incident at the court and the support I had from the police, I no longer held any strong fears of Reza. Our real challenge was that we wanted a property for sale, not lease, that was available for immediate occupancy, was within my father’s budget and would have room for my young family. The arrangement was that my father would buy the property outright using funds he had raised by selling the house next to our manb-e abb house in Tehran. The property would be bought in the name of my brother Mansoor, who was keen to own a home and take on the responsibilities of that – something I did not want to do at the time given all the uncertainty in my life. I would pay rent to my brother.
Finally, in early April 1988, Ali, Shirin and I were able to move out of Mansoor’s tiny flat and into a small two-bedroom unit in Joy Street, not far from the Frankston city centre. My parents also moved in with us. Their plans were that my mother would stay in Australia for a few more months to help me with the babies, while my father would return to Iran.
Extending my mother’s visitor visa was a formality but my father’s departure turned out to be a bureaucratic nightmare typical of what we expected from the Iranian authorities. Like Reza and I, my parents had come into Australia on a joint passport. Now, because Asghar wanted to leave the country while Shahin stayed on, we thought they would need to have individual passports prepared, as Reza and I had. We sent my parents’ passport to the Iranian embassy in Canberra in early February along with a request to separate it, and the associated fee of $425. When we had had no response a month later I called the embassy and was told we would have to pay another $628. But then I was told that we didn’t need to separate the passport at all: as my mother was already in Australia the Australian Department of Immigration would allow her to remain on a tourist visa with just a certified copy of the existing passport. So we didn’t have to pay anything, but my father would need to write to the embassy to cancel his previous request and ask for the return of his passport. We wrote again, but another month went by and we still had not received the passport.
When we called again in early April, I was told that Reza had been in touch with them. He had expressed his desire for me to return to Iran with him. I was advised that the Iranian government would prefer that we did not divorce! They were also displeased that I had written to The Age newspaper in response to a television interview with the Iranian ambassador. These revelations caused fears to resurface in me that had only recently dissipated. Since leaving Reza I had been worried that he might kidnap Ali and Shirin and
return to Iran with them. Caught off guard by the embassy official, I denied the letter to the newspaper and said that I planned to go back to Iran later but could not do so now because of my pregnancy. I meant none of this of course, but even after seven years found myself switching back to the sorts of lies Iranians had to tell routinely in their dealings with the authorities.
(Later I would realise that it would have been difficult in practice for Reza to steal the children as I still had his passport with me, taken on New Year’s Day along with my own. I still have it today. In late 1989 my lawyer, Michael, received a request from Reza’s lawyer for the passport to be returned. Michael suggested I provide them with a copy only, which I did. That was the last we heard of the matter.)
Finally, on April 7, my father’s passport arrived. He was due to fly out just two weeks later. Then, after everything he had been through, the flight was cancelled due to industrial action and he had to wait another week.
~
On Sunday, 24 April 1988, over a month premature and three days before my father’s rescheduled flight, I gave birth to two very beautiful, identical girls. Sima arrived at 2.35 am and Mina eight minutes later.
It would be nice to say that their birth and the end of my abusive marriage cleared the skies for me, but it was not quite so straightforward. My path away from constant fear and Reza’s mental and physical abuse was not a road free of anxiety and wretchedness. I was now the single mother of four ‘half height’ children: two newborns, a two-year-old and a six-year-old. I had no job. My income was the sole- parent pension. I had very few belongings: from our unit I had taken only my clothes, my books and a few items that had been gifts.
~
But there was one thing I did have, and it was perhaps the most important thing of all: my future.
~
Sima and Mina’s early birth meant they had to remain in hospital for about a month after they were born. This was an intense period. I raced around every day between home, school and the hospital. After the twins came home, they had a number of health issues with ongoing colic and vomiting. They hardly slept – or if one slept the other was awake. My diary entries at the time are a catalogue of busyness and illness. If Mina was well, Sima had convulsions. If Sima was well, Mina had dysentery. If, miraculously, they were both well, Ali or Shahin had a cough or a high temperature or a stomach bug. Sometimes all four were sick at the same time.
My mother was with us for the twins’ first seven months and she was, of course, an enormous help. She cared for the twins, hugging them, cleaning them and talking to them. She woke in the night to help me calm them down or deal with the juggling act of breastfeeding the two of them. She took them to the nearby child health centre for immunisations and, once they were eating solids, cooked simple foods for them to supplement my breast milk. She cooked meals, took Ali to and from school and did a lot of housework.
But apart from all the practical help she gave, my mother was a source of constant encouragement to me. She taught me how to be a human again. When I felt down, a comforting word from her would get me back on my feet. Her experience was invaluable and she kept me looking forward, reminding me often that it would not always be so hard. She was never excessively concerned by a crying baby or one that would not eat, having the wisdom to know it was just a part of life and that the moment would always pass. She told me often that I could, and should, get an education for myself and build a better future for all of us. That the children would grow up quickly and I would be able to support them throughout. If I worried about Reza coming back she told me what she had always known: that he was all show.
In short, she showed unbreakable confidence in me at a time when I desperately needed it.
For all of this, there were also times when she added to my pressure.
After Asghar returned to Iran, a part of Shahin’s mind was always in Iran. She worried about how her husband was surviving on his own, and when they spoke on the phone he told her that he had complained to the neighbours about why she was staying away for so long. He seemed to forget the reason for her staying. She also worried about whether she would be able to leave Australia with just a copy of the passport my father had taken with him. She increasingly missed her own home and I knew she was becoming tired by the workload my family created.
My mother finally returned home in November 1988, over 10 months after arriving in Australia. In the end the certified copy of the passport was sufficient for her to make the journey. There were many tears when she left. I didn’t know how I would manage, nor when I would see her again. But at the same time I was anxious to be on my own. With the confidence my mother had instilled in me I was more determined than ever to assert my independence.
~
An early priority after Shahin left was to find somewhere else to live. The Joy Street unit was already too small, especially for growing, active children like Ali and Shirin. But more than that, by now I felt Mansoor was acting more like an overbearing landlord than the caring younger brother he had so often been. He was still helpful at times, but I felt he constantly complained about the way we looked after the place. Whenever he dropped in he would witness the general chaos that is characteristic of most young families’ homes. I don’t think he could comprehend the situation and it became more and more uncomfortable for me. To me, his attitude felt negative and humiliating, which upset me very much and the only way to change this was to find another place to rent.
Yet again, I started visiting real estate agents around Frankston. With no one to look after the children I had to take them with me, which meant the twins being pushed in a wide, double pusher I received from a church. It was white and largely resembled a box on wheels. With Ali and Shirin walking on either side (or sometimes Shirin sitting in the pusher too) we became quite a recognisable caravan in the local streets. With my small frame I was always hunched over as I drove the pusher along, often in the heat of a Melbourne summer’s day. I was constantly run down, with no time to groom myself nor to concern myself with which clothes I was wearing. I suppose it is little wonder most of the agents looked down their noses at me. The icing on this unappealing cake was my sole-parent pension, my only source of income. Who was going to trust this family with their property, and how could I afford anything anyway?
On one occasion we had been walking for hours on a particularly hot day. The twins were both screaming – oh, what a noise they could make together! – and needed to be fed but there was nowhere to stop. When we passed the office of a district nursing service I decided to act. We made our way to the front door where I pushed the buzzer. The lady who came out must have wondered what she had struck. I asked if I could sit somewhere to breastfeed my babies; she kindly took me to the waiting room and left me with a glass of water while I tandem-fed the twins in the cool of their airconditioning.
Unfortunately, the kindness shown to us by this lady was not our common experience. In fact, every time the five of us headed out to the shops or to visit property managing agents I had to steel myself for the likelihood of some form of abuse.
One day we were waiting at the checkout of a supermarket in Frankston. I was tired and struggling to keep the children in line – like any parent. I was speaking to the children in Persian and an elderly lady behind me snapped, ‘Speak English’.
I felt this was wrong, but I was dumbstruck. All I did was blush.
Finally I managed to say, ‘I am the mother of these children and I must teach them my language. You must be happy that I speak my own language.’
‘Well, you are here now. You must speak English.’
This upset me. I felt she could only speak to me like this because she knew I would not have a strong retort. Would she have spoken to me like this if I were Greek or Italian?
Eventually I stammered, ‘I am a good fighter’, which in the Persian translation means ‘I am determined’ but obviously has a different context in Australia. I think she thought I was being aggressive. I wish I had just po
inted out that, obviously, I also spoke English.
‘Good for you,’ she said.
Another time I accidentally bumped into an older lady. I said ‘I’m sorry’ but a younger woman, perhaps the lady’s granddaughter, chided me as if I were a school-aged child.
‘Say sorry,’ she said.
I told her that I had apologised, but she said that I had done so too late. The older lady told the younger one that they should go, and she should leave me alone, but the young one continued muttering as they walked away. It was so humiliating that this child – she did not even seem 18 – could take advantage of my slowness to respond.
There were many other times when I was told off as if I was a child – when pushing a shopping trolley along the footpath because I had no other way of getting all my groceries home, or when Ali stood on the seat of a train to see out the window. I often wondered whether people would have been so quick to tell me off if I were white-skinned like them, but I also felt that my inability to respond quickly enough, or with any form of clever words, encouraged them further.
In the bank one day the man in front of me in the line was smoking (as you could in those days). When I screwed up my face and waved my hand to disperse the smoke, the lady behind me said, ‘You’ve never had it so good.’ ‘You come here and breed like chickens’ was another comment made by a middle-aged woman to me one time when I had all four children with me. Just as at other times, in both these instances I was stuck for words. Later I was angry with these people. How dare they say these things, knowing nothing about what my life had been? But I was more angry with myself.
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