Scattered Pearls

  I walked to my old primary school and high school, both of which seemed dusty and decaying. At Takht-e Tavoos our first house was no longer there. Like the manb-e abb house it had been replaced by a larger building.

  Despite my reservations about the regime I had a big smile on my face everywhere I went, though I noted that most women were avoiding eye contact and maintained emotionless faces. At the lavash (flat bread) bakery near our home I chatted with the bakers but I don’t think they could read me. Was I a good woman or a loose one? They were not Tehran natives and I had been gone too long. I chatted to a convenience store owner whose shelves were half empty. ‘Things have changed,’ he said. When I went to the supermarket I expected to find the shelves similarly sparse, but they were surprisingly full. However, everything was very expensive, probably because of the international sanctions imposed against the regime’s refusal to suspend its uranium enrichment program. (I don’t believe most of the population were even aware of this program. In any case the opinions of the masses would have had little influence on this regime.)

  Perhaps the only time I lost my smile was when I walked around the reservoir, past the place where I had first met Reza. That seemed like two lifetimes ago. How stupid I was! Thank God for my four beautiful children.

  Shahin seemed very happy to be back in her home and I had no concerns about leaving her there when it came time for me to return to Australia. She was physically and mentally healthy, showing only the occasional memory lapse you would expect in a 76-year-old.

  I returned home with both a renewed fervour for my country of birth and a sadness for what it had become. Two years later I would join my community in Melbourne’s Federation Square when millions of protesters in Iran and around the world took to the streets to oppose the loss of true democracy in our proud nation.

  ~

  James moved into my Mount Eliza home in 2008. With six children between us, all at busy stages of their lives as they finished school and moved into the world, we had never found time to actually get married. We would talk about the outfits we would wear but really the formality of marriage was not necessary for us.

  By now James had left Frankston Toyota and set up his own mobile mechanic business, initially out of the back of my Toyota then later out of a van. He spent many weekends shifting furniture as my children gradually moved out on their own. Thanks to the success of Prime Law Brokers I had earned enough over the previous decade to help all of my children into their own properties. I was very pleased to be able to do this – my mother had always said it would be the best thing I could do for them. Ali and Shirin moved out first. A few years after Ali finished his hairdressing course he would establish his own business in Mornington, calling it Zanjani Salon in honour of his grandfather. Shirin travelled for a year or so after finishing school and then trained as a beautician. After Sima and Mina completed their schooling in 2008, they also moved away from home. Both studied accounting and have since started working in that field.

  After Shahin returned to Australia in June 2009 there were just three of us in the house, plus my dog Majik and my cat Persia. It was a comfortable time as my mother loved James and we all got on well. ‘There is only one James and that is my son-in-law,’ she would say. ‘James is the best son-in-law in the world.’

  On Friday nights the three of us would buy fish and chips and Coca-Cola and sit at the top of Olivers Hill enjoying the view of Frankston beach, Port Phillip Bay and the Melbourne central business district in the far distance. When my mother sipped her Coke through a straw she looked like a little girl again, cheeky and bright with a bratty sparkle in her eye.

  In October 2009, Mum and I went to Canberra by coach to join another demonstration outside the Iranian embassy. By the time we reached Canberra she was hallucinating and kept saying, ‘Let’s go home, let’s go home.’ When I worked out she meant Tehran, not Melbourne, I realised for the first time that we were going to have to start limiting how hard we pushed her.

  On the other hand, when we kept to a routine she was very good for her 78 years. She was certainly fit and strong. Like my father, she loved to walk. She started walking to the Mount Eliza shops. Sometimes she would go to Frankston and walk up the steep Olivers Hill. It was here that she had a fall in late 2010 and badly broke her left leg. Nine bones were fractured. The long process of rehabilitation was made more difficult by her limited English, the foreign environment of the clinic and her age. After two months’ treatment she was wearing a ‘moon’ boot and was still not able to walk any distance. It was a long time before she could walk to Mount Eliza again and, with her pride and independence, she found this very frustrating. (She would suffer through a similar process two years later after breaking her right arm in another fall.)

  We did continue to go to various Persian community functions together, like Norooz, and Mum always enjoyed meeting and talking to other Iranians. I also drove her around, especially to Melbourne’s parks and gardens as she loved the outdoors, the trees and flowers and eating in the fresh air. Other times we would catch the ferry across to Queenscliff; I’ll never forget how excited, happy and tearful she was the first time we did that. Every time we came home she would comment that there were not enough street lamps in Mount Eliza; she’d suggest that I should write to the council about this. (I did eventually and they installed two extra lamps in our street.) As we drove I would look at her profile, which was calm and trusting as my father’s had been. I held her hand, thinking about how much work those hands had done, and cried quietly to myself.

  By early 2011 Shahin was becoming more forgetful and repetitive in what she said, but more than that she would have dark periods, especially if her routine changed, when she would hit herself on the head with her fists – just like she had done in times of high stress in Iran, such as after Zari drowned. As Dad had done, she started saying she wanted to go back to Iran, and when I asked her who would look after her she said that there were seven neighbours – she was imagining going back to her childhood in Ghal-e where they shared a yard with the occupants of seven other houses. She would sometimes ask for a match to light her bedside lamp, thinking it was an old kerosene lamp. At other times she would not talk or eat, or she would become angry for no reason.

  It seemed that dementia was striking my mother too, though it would come in waves between calm periods of normality. On good days I would make her a sandwich and she would walk to the Mount Eliza shops, sit on a bench and watch the world go by. I would take my bike out for an hour or two, returning via the shopping strip to check that she was okay. On hot days I would buy her a Coca-Cola from a nearby vending machine. She would smile when I gave this to her and say, ‘God gives you whatever you want, Sohila’.

  My mother hated any discussion of illness if it related to her. I started using the name ‘Clara’ with James so she would not realise I was talking about her. I did the same thing with Fariba and Hossein when they came to visit. (By now Mansoor and Frooshad were living further away and we didn’t see them very often.) Eventually Mum worked out my code and I stopped the pretence straightaway. She also disliked the word ‘dementia’ so we started saying that ‘D’ had come when she displayed symptoms. I started to be able to see it coming in her face. Her expression would become heavy and dark, her eyes widening in fear and her lips pushing forward into an angry pout. I gave it a name too: ‘bogh’. Later we developed a new code for referring to Mum: ‘BBB’, standing for ‘big brat baby’. She never worked that one out.

  I started to pray that God would take my mother early so that she would not suffer. Sometimes we prayed together, as in her good moments she was well aware of how her husband had suffered at the end. We prayed that God would take her from this world before she ended up in a nursing home. She always felt better after these prayers, but the angst inside me continued to build. I just could not take her to a nursing home as I had Dad. I could not see her waste away as he had. I could not see her suffer alone, isolated by her language, as he’d suff
ered. At other times I worried that she might live on with ‘D’ for another twenty years, then felt guilty for having such a thought.

  It was the walk to Mount Eliza, a five kilometre round trip, that kept her going. This was her routine – a routine she controlled herself. Now and then she would walk further – sometimes as far as Olivers Hill and back, which I worked out was about 16 kilometres. Occasionally she would simply disappear without a word, as if she was leaving the house discreetly as she had done in Tehran to avoid having to ask the permission of Asghar, who would more often than not withhold it. I think she started to see me as her husband as she would stop talking to me for periods, just as she had done with him. Still, the walk to Mount Eliza was relatively safe, and she came to know a few people who would stop and chat, or just sit with her. There was one particular lady who had a dog similar to mine and who I think also had dementia to some degree. She and Mum would happily ‘talk’ for hours. Somehow my mum communicated, and she always had a smile, so people grew to know and love her. Many of the staff in the Mount Eliza shops knew her too and I was confident they would contact me if there was a problem. However, despite my precautions, she did get lost once in a while – perhaps half a dozen times in total. Some people found her wandering aimlessly and, finding my contact details in her bag, called me so I could go and retrieve her. The Frankston police found her once; when I went to pick her up that time I found her sitting proudly in the back of a police car with two police officers in the front. In Persian she told me to thank them, which I did. There were not too many of these incidents fortunately, and because we lived in a trustworthy community I felt it was worth the risk for my mother to retain some sense of independence. At the same time, deep inside I was in conflict with myself, often wondering ‘what if . . .’

  It became increasingly difficult for James and I to go out at night because I felt someone should be looking after Mum but often none of my siblings was available due to what was going on in their own lives. Out of desperation I invented the ‘J-plan’ so that if James and I were going out, she didn’t come home to an ‘empty’ house. The plan involved stacking pillows and blankets on our bed so that it looked (roughly) as though there was someone in the bed asleep. I would then leave a note for Mum explaining that I had gone out to a meeting and that James had gone to bed with a headache, placing the note where she couldn’t miss it. It worked perfectly, though the first time we used it we were so nervous that we returned early to check. We found Mum fast asleep. She was always happy when I came home (James coming in around the back), though after a while she did comment that James was getting too many headaches.

  ~

  The following three years were incredibly tough. As my mother’s health deteriorated, my business also struggled further. We were under intense financial pressure. But I remained determined that Shahin would not go to a nursing home. I developed a recipe for dealing with dementia – I had many years of experience by now – which boiled down to unending love and care. Every morning I would greet her with a series of affirming sentences.

  ‘Good morning to the best mother in the world.’

  ‘Good morning to the best grandmother in the world.’

  ‘To the most beautiful mother in the world.’

  ‘To the most selfless mother in the world.’

  ‘To the most forgiving mother in the world.’

  ‘To the most generous mother in the world.’

  ‘To the greatest woman in Iran.’

  ‘To the greatest grandmother in Iran.’

  ‘To the most generous woman in the world.’

  ‘To the proudest mother in the world.’

  I was remembering all the sacrifices she had made for us. I would kiss her and hold her tight, and massage her back, her waist and her hands, then kiss her some more and repeat, ‘Mum, I love you,’ over and over again. These words and sentences filled her soul with pride and happiness and I honestly believe had a positive effect on her dementia. She knew that everything I said was true and came from the bottom of my heart. After I had finished she would often simply say, ‘I know’ and we would look into each other’s eyes with more love than I can explain. Sometimes she said, ‘That is why I am here. Otherwise I would go to Iran tomorrow.’ Each day I repeated the story about the sport shoes she had bought for me after she was badly hurt by a motorcycle. Each time she cried with happiness and said, ‘How many times you repeat this!’

  For a time Hossein took Mum to his house over the weekends in order to give me some rest. He did this for about a year, but then it became just too difficult as he did not have the skills to care for her. He also came up with an activity that we used to keep her busy for many hours. We called it ‘cleaning lentils’ and it mimicked something she had done for much of her life since Ghal-e. We gave her a tray with a handful of dry lentils on it, mixed with a few small stones, then we asked her to separate out the stones. She never realised that once she finished this job, I remixed the lentils with stones again so she could repeat the process. This happened as often as five times per day.

  Fariba was also heavily involved through most of this time, calling most nights to chat to Mum and sometimes taking her to lunch in Mount Eliza.

  In February 2014, my mother complained of stomach pain and was unable to take her walk. I took her to hospital and she was diagnosed with cancer of the stomach. It had spread to the liver. From that point she declined quickly. However, she did come home, and she was guest of honour at a party held to celebrate her life. Sixty people came from Melbourne’s Persian community, whom we had originally met at protests against the Islamic regime in Iran. Together we all remembered her hard work and determination. It was almost impossible to comprehend how much she had experienced in her 82 years: the opulence of Eisa Khan and the poverty of Ghal-e; 14 pregnancies and the loss of nine children; deprivation at the hands of an uncaring husband; the ceaseless labour needed just to keep her family happy and alive; the pain of discovering that I, too, had been in an abusive and demeaning marriage. And so much more.

  In the early hours of 7 March 2014, Mum lay in my arms with Fariba on her other side. Majik, who had kept her company so often in the last few years, and Bella, Fariba’s dog, were also in the room. She was so beautiful and at peace, her breathing almost imperceptible. I watched her face intently. Over and over Fariba and I said, ‘Right now the love of God will help our mother. Right now the love of God is victorious.’

  We must have repeated those words over a hundred times. I believe my mother heard what we were saying and I believe she felt comfort.

  At four o’clock in the morning she opened her eyes and looked into mine. I still had her in my arms. After two more struggling breaths she passed away with a smile on her lips that will last in my mind forever.

  Shahin’s death quickly became a community celebration of her life. She had walked back and forth to the Mount Eliza shops so often over the past few years that nearly everyone in the area knew – or knew of – her. The little old lady who walked with such determination; who sat quietly surrounded by a culture so different from her own and a language she could barely comprehend, but who always had a kind smile. Two friends of mine posted a notice in the shopping centre about her passing and we started receiving bunches and bunches of flowers at our house. It was overwhelming. Then the local newspaper made contact and my mother featured on the front page under the headline ‘Our fair lady’.

  What a life!

  ~

  I imagine anyone who has lost both their parents moves to a new phase of life. I’m the mother of four grown-up children and the grandmother of one young child, yet it is confronting to no longer be anyone’s ‘child’ myself.

  Mum’s death lifted an enormous weight from my shoulders after over a decade of caring for both her and my father. I eventually looked to the future with a much broader perspective on life.

  While I was deeply, deeply saddened by my mother’s death, there was none of the guilt I felt after my father’s
. I was left with the proud memories of her years and years of hard work and dedication to her family. Of her unending love. The sadness stays with me still, of course, and I will counsel anyone who is prepared to listen that they should value their parents no matter what, for one day, quite suddenly, they will no longer be there.

  My parents’ photos are on the mantelpiece of my living room and I look at them every day. I know my father told me not to look back, but I can’t help thinking about how different their lives might have been if they had grown up in a free and democratic society. If their Persian culture, endless energy, simplicity, trustworthiness, justified pride, generosity and determination were not tempered by lack of education and fear-mongering dictatorships. If my father had not been the victim of brutality and bullying. If my mother had been loved and adored in the ways I had witnessed at my friend Shahnaz’s birthday party.

  Then I think about how my parents saved me.

  How my mother had shielded me and my siblings from the worst excesses of my father during our childhoods. How her resolve and sacrifices ensured that I got the best education available to me. How she never discouraged us from spreading our wings – even if it meant that all of us ultimately moved to the other side of the world.

  And then my father – my ‘new father’. If it was not for him I think I would have perished years ago under the pressure of living with Reza. It was the humanity – the ‘sympathy for human pain’, as Saadi put it – of both my parents that prompted them to come to Australia and ultimately encouraged me to break free. It was their love that helped me escape and create a new Sohila. It was their willingness, for the love of their children, to stay – and ultimately die – in a land so far from their beloved home that has added so much richness to my life as well as the lives of my siblings, my children and even the wider community over the years.