After a while my mother thought that Dad should move into a nursing home. My sister Fariba worked in one now – perhaps he could go there, Mum suggested. ‘All cannot be sacrificed for one,’ she said.
One day, my father became lost in Frankston. A police officer found him, discovered the business card I had left with him and called me from the station. I found him sitting in the late afternoon sun on the steps outside staring at the ground, his right hand on his forehead. He looked so sad and lost until he saw me and his face became alive again.
‘Baba, did you get lost?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said, holding his palms up with a shrug.
This happened a number of times and the police became impatient, especially if I was delayed in retrieving Asghar because of my work. The stress started to grow for all of us. We never knew what was going to happen the next day.
Finally, after a lot of deliberation and pain, it was decided in March 2005 that Dad needed to go to a nursing home. He could go to the same home where Fariba was the manager. I drove him there and we sat in the lounge where there was a woman providing some entertainment. Dad looked very happy sitting next to me and being among all these people. After the entertainment the television was turned on. I kissed my father.
‘Dad, I have to go now. Fariba is here. You sit here for a while, then it is dinner time. Okay?’
‘Yes, you go,’ he said with a smile.
As I left the room crying, I met Fariba, who was crying as well. We both held each other. ‘He will be fine,’ she said.
I cried all the way home.
The house was not the same without Dad.
~
It turned out that James was not going to leave my mind as easily as other men. After saying goodbye to him in that carpark I kept thinking that perhaps I’d been wrong. He was a gentleman. Surely that was important? The things I objected to – his clothes, his teeth – they could be changed. I already knew of a good dentist because I’d had my own tooth problem corrected. A friend of Ali’s lent me a recording of Tony Robbins speaking about relationships. He asked, ‘Why do we end up with the same idiot every time? It is because we have not changed ourselves.’ Perhaps it was me who needed to change, not James. James was a good man; it was me who was in the wrong.
But I had to face facts. I had said no. I had sent James away disappointed. Why would he risk being made unhappy again?
A few weeks went by and James had started to fade in my mind. But then, to my pleasant surprise, he sent me a message and asked me to meet for coffee. He told me later that he had been driving and suddenly thought to send me one last message. I accepted straightaway. We agreed to spend six months getting to know each other. We started going to restaurants and shows and we did a lot of walking. And talking.
James told me how shocked he had been on our first date at the Morning Star Estate: he had spent all morning working out what to wear, all the time believing that ‘smart casual’ would be appropriate. Having arrived early, he watched me get out of my car and was immediately stung by how striking – and well dressed – I was.
I learnt that James had had plenty of pain in his life. He never knew his father, and his mother was seldom around and had virtually no emotional connection with him. She used to beat him and his siblings. His saviour was his maternal grandmother, a kind and caring lady who ended up taking responsibility for James, his two brothers and sister. It was his grandmother, he said, who taught him how to be a gentleman: opening the car door for a woman, pulling out her chair at a table, always walking kerbside along a footpath. His passions were (and still are) surfing and cars. Later James had married and had two children, but the marriage was not a positive one and eventually he had to leave his wife. This was the sadness I had seen in the car that first time he picked me up from the station.
I knew that James’s confidence – and my comfort – would benefit from his getting his teeth fixed. I stipulated that it would be the condition of our first kiss that this was done! I introduced him to my dentist, who did a great job. Only years later did James reveal to me that the cost had been thousands of dollars.
One morning I was doing my exercises and dancing on Frankston beach when I noticed James standing and watching me from a distance. He was wearing his grey suit, ready for work. I ran to him and he lifted me up from the waist and turned me around a few times. I looked up at the sky and felt weightless, like a real ballerina, a little girl. Perhaps love could be like in the movies after all?
James met my family and they all grew to know and love him. He and my father found a common language in their shared love of cars – something that was able to overcome the language barrier between them. At one point my dad took my hand and placed it into James’s, then held both our hands in his. He looked at James and said, ‘You . . . Sohila . . .’ This simple gesture meant so much to me: this time he was approving of the man I had chosen.
Eventually James started coming on some of my business trips with me. In early 2005, soon after Asghar had had one of his ‘lost in Frankston’ episodes but before he went into the nursing home, we flew with Ali to Adelaide to attend the wedding of one of the lawyers we worked with. After the wedding James and I walked around the beautiful Elder Park on the banks of the Torrens River. We came upon the rotunda, which reminded me of the tomb of the famous Iranian poet Hafez in the ancient city of Shiraz in southern Iran, and when we walked into the rotunda James stopped. He knelt on bended knee, presented me with a beautiful diamond ring and asked me to marry him.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ I said.
‘Say “Yes”,’ he said.
~
The sadness after leaving my dad at the nursing home is hard to describe. We were advised not to visit for a few days to make the adjustment easier, but all I could think about was how he was feeling. Five long days passed and finally my mother and I went to see him. It was Persian new year’s day.
We found Dad in his room, sad, confused and restless. The staff told us they were having trouble looking after him – a job made more challenging by the fact that he was still fit and healthy physically. When he saw us he started hitting his head with both hands.
‘I am well. I should not be here.’
We were confused. His mind seemed sharp again as he clearly knew where he was and that he didn’t want to be there. Something seemed not right. When Fariba told him that if he came back to Mount Eliza he would just want to go to Iran, he hit his head again, harder this time, and simply said, ‘I don’t want to be here. Where is the house with the stairs and the flowers and the trees?’
We started to think that we had made a bad mistake – that perhaps we had put him into this home too early. Our hearts were broken. We agreed that I would take him home again.
A month later I terminated the lease on my office in Frankston. It was becoming too expensive anyway; business was slowing due to the rise of the internet and the decline of the Yellow Pages. Ali and Shirin had moved out of home by now, so there was more room in the house. I set up a home office so I could work from there and care for Dad at the same time.
Of course Dad wasn’t any better and as soon as he arrived home he started with the same repetitive activities again. I created what I called chame-doon bazi – the ‘suitcase game’: I put his clothes in a large box outside, but under the verandah out of the weather; Dad would find his clothes in this box and pack his suitcase, walk around the house saying he wanted to go to Iran, then wait out the front for hours. I would later empty his clothes back into the box for next time. We went through this process over and over again. When he wasn’t packing a bag he was up and down out of his chair all the time. It was unbearable; it was almost impossible to work and it was exhausting just being around him.
I decided that I would have to try another nursing home, but this time I would ease Asghar into it. I would try to convince him that this new place was our home, and that our real home was my work. The management of the home agreed to allow us to
visit for a few hours every day. We took part in some of the activities, sat in the garden and had tea together, and we talked a lot. Dad seemed happy. We continued this for about three months before eventually I told him, ‘I’ll go to work now. You stay here at our home and I will be back soon.’
It didn’t really work. Even though I visited him every day and tried to keep up the pretence that this was our new home, he was just too restless for this environment. Again there was the problem that he was still so much fitter than the other patients, and he was incapable of communicating with the people around him. I took calls from the nurses, day and night, if they wanted to know what Dad was saying or needed help to calm him. Finally the management of the home told me that they could not look after my father any more – they suggested a high-care facility in nearby Mornington.
I brought him home again, and we played the suitcase game once more, but only long enough to organise a place for him at this new home. During this period, he managed one morning to take his suitcase to a bus stop on the main road, from where a lady gave him a lift to the bus stop for the airport shuttle from Frankston. Luckily she called me from there, having found my number on the business card my father was carrying, and I was able to stop him going all the way to the airport.
It was the saddest day of my life when I took my father to this new home. I looked at his profile as he sat beside me in the car, staring straight ahead with a smile on his face, as always. He was so trusting. He just followed me wherever I went, including to this next facility. I looked at his hands resting on his thighs and quietly wept as I thought about all the work those hands had done. I was crying as I checked him in and we took him to his room. At one point the nurse said to me, ‘Don’t worry, nobody gets out from here’, which I think was a reference to their security system but at the time I thought was a way of saying ‘the only way out is to a grave’. Once again I left my father confused and lost. I sobbed all the way home, where Mum comforted me, saying, ‘You cannot look after him any more.’
In this place my father went downhill very quickly. They used a lot of medication to keep patients sedated, and the locked doors prevented him from moving around very much. I would go to see Dad almost every day, taking food that I knew he would like and massaging him from head to foot, which he loved. It gave me great pleasure to see that his body absorbed every movement of my hands, especially over his spine. (I remember noticing that so many of the other patients were rarely touched, let alone massaged, by their visiting family.) My siblings also visited when they could, though none of them lived as close to the nursing home as I did so it wasn’t as easy for them. Perhaps me being the eldest child, and my parents having lived with me for some years now, I naturally took on an extra level of responsibility. Whatever the reasons, I always felt it was my honour to be able to care for my father as much as I could.
Once I danced for him and other patients along to the music from the radio while nurses accompanied me. My dad clapped and smiled. I wrote a long list of helpful words – water, toilet, food and so on – in both Persian and English to help the nurses understand what Dad was saying. But he was losing weight and becoming frail. He was dressed like a doll, wearing anything wearable and with buttons undone or askew. Somehow he kept smiling, but soon he could no longer recognise James and then he didn’t know who my mum was either. If he was out in the yard he would walk in circles for hours, trying to find a way out; once he even tried to climb the fence. This just led to more medication. One day I found him wandering around without any pants on and another time he was lying in the sun, with a burnt face. I was concerned about the level of care but I didn’t know what to do about it. My heart was in pain all the time as I thought about my father realising none of his family were around him and not being able to ask where we were because of his limited English. Today I still feel guilt every time I think of how lonely he must have felt.
It is hard to comprehend that someone as robust as my father was could deteriorate, in the space of a year, to almost nothing. I went to see him on 2 November 2006. He had so much morphine in his system that he was virtually lifeless. I sat right next to him and put my face next to his. He could not talk. He was suffering, in pain, yet couldn’t speak. His legs were bent at the knees and he couldn’t straighten them. His bones were dry; there was no muscle left. His forehead was exaggerated – it always had been but was more so now. He was like a sick little baby lying in bed waiting for death to arrive. I held him tight and cried loud; I could not stop crying. He was just looking at me. Eye to eye. I said, ‘Baba, I love you, I love you. You are good, you worked hard. I know. I love you, you were a good dad.’
He just looked at me with empty eyes, though I think he was aware that I was with him and could hear me. It seemed that he wanted to tell me not to cry but couldn’t. I kissed his forehead, his face, over and over. I held his hands and kissed them and patted his shoulders. We were alone and he just kept looking at me without saying a word. I cried until I could not cry any more. It was so painful. Nothing I could do would reduce his pain. I kissed him once again and told him I would come the next day, then left in tears. There was no reaction from him.
I can’t remember why but I wasn’t able to visit Dad the next day. How I wished I could have, because the following morning at six o’clock, on 4 November, I received a call from a nurse at the home.
‘Your father has passed away peacefully.’
~
My father’s death left me with a deep sense of guilt. Despite the many hours spent caring for him over the four years of his illness, I found it very difficult to reconcile his spending his last days in a nursing home. I felt guilt about the powerlessness of his situation, this strong man reduced to a mere shell.
Most of all I felt guilt about not realising, until so late in his life, that underneath the foul mouth and distance of the father of my youth was a genuine human being. When my siblings and I were growing up we had no idea how much Asghar suffered in his youth through the brutality of his employers. He simply did not know how to show any feelings and this failing displayed itself as a complete lack of respect for his wife and family. His temper and foul mouth disguised any other qualities he had. However, in truth, his lack of respect was reflected in us. We also showed no respect. None of us made any effort to look past the superficial and to really understand him, to recognise that there was some wisdom there, to recognise that despite all his shortcomings he was always a hard worker. He didn’t demonstrate love for us because he didn’t know how to, but we, my mother included, did not display love for him either. I will always regret this.
~
My father was buried a few days after his passing, his coffin carried by Ali, my brothers and James. We had these words inscribed on his gravestone: ‘There is no problem that love and kindness could not solve!’
The next day was my youngest sister Frooshad’s wedding.
16
Love and loss, part two
My father’s death caused my mother to become deeply sad and dreadfully homesick for Iran. She had been back for a holiday with Frooshad in 2005 but now wanted to return again. I really didn’t have time – my business was not in a strong period and I was deep in legal action against the Yellow Pages – but ultimately I agreed to go back with her. It would be the first time I had returned in 25 years.
By now I guess I knew the Islamic regime more by reputation than experience, though I still felt I had an understanding of what it would be like from talking to people in our community. I was excited, but also nervous.
In transit in Dubai, I noticed how quiet and withdrawn the Iranians seemed to be. Most women did not cover their hair but all, like me, had a scarf on hand that we knew we would need when we next disembarked. How ridiculous it was that we had to pretend to be faithful to the regime – what is the point of forcing a large proportion of your population to live a lie?
Once we arrived in Tehran the immigration officials and security police felt colder, more reg
imented. I had some more nervous moments at the passport check – would there be any ramifications as a result of the accusations Reza had made about me to the Iranian embassy in Canberra back in 1988 – particularly about my letter to The Age? The check seemed to take a long time but eventually my passport was stamped and I was waved through. After so long away from Iran I found it was intimidating at every step: the very notion that I could be persecuted simply for having an opinion different from that of the ruling class was surreal. But I was also reminded of the inherent generosity of Iranians when a gentleman, a businessman who told us he was coming home to get married, helped us with our suitcases and even paid for a taxi to take us to our old home in Yusef Abad.
Since I had left our manb-e abb home my father had sold the property to a developer who had replaced it with a five-storey apartment block. As part of the arrangement my parents were given ownership of the unit on the third level. Untouched since my mother had last been there, there was a thick layer of black dust covering everything. It took us a couple of days to clean up and then we started to meet with neighbours and family members. Then I walked, exploring the places of my childhood.
Tehran was, understandably, very different from the city I had left behind. It was much more crowded. The streets were jammed with cars, buses and taxis wrapped in the unrelenting clamour of honking horns. Crossing the road safely had become an art form – one that I needed help from passers-by to learn. The streets were decorated with billboard-sized images of Khomeini and other mullahs. It struck me that the population seemed very young. The lack of freedom or rights was obvious. Every time a van of the Pasdaran passed, people on the street would frown, turn away and lower their voices. At times it felt as though I was in a scene from George Orwell’s Animal Farm.
Scattered Pearls Page 26