The Book of Ordinary People

by Claire Varley

  ‘How dare they?’ he raged to no one in particular, my mother’s head popping up from behind the kitchen counter like a startled owl.

  ‘How dare who?’ she asked, but my father only shook his head, anger seething through the space between his teeth and tongue with a soft comedic whistle.

  ‘How dare they?’ he shouted again, this time catching our attention.

  Alireza, used to our father’s moments of academic frustration and venting, simply leant forward to turn up the volume, but I rolled away from the television, watching my father with interest.

  ‘Censored,’ my father spat, the word hurtling from his mouth as if he’d mistakenly bitten into rotten fruit. ‘The manuscript. The publishers think it’s too controversial, that there will be backlash from the government.’

  His hands shook as if conducting a light-speed orchestra.

  ‘Cowards!’

  My mother made as if to come and comfort him but then thought better of it.

  ‘Is it important? Is there something you can change?’

  My father’s orchestra went into overdrive. ‘You can’t change history! It is our duty – our responsibility – that it be told!’

  He looked at my mother with a practised impatience that she quietly ignored.

  ‘So what are your options?’

  ‘Leave things out – important things – or find another publisher.’ He glared bitterly at the tiles at this prospect.

  ‘Will someone else publish it?’ my mother asked him.

  My father raised his shoulders in helplessness. ‘Some might, but . . .’

  He trailed off, his self-disgust evident.

  ‘But what?’ my mother prompted.

  ‘But there might be repercussions. For me. For the publishers. For us.’

  They both fell silent, their thoughts most likely drifting to the faces of friends and acquaintances who had been arrested – or worse – on account of their dissenting views. Later to be known as the Chain of Murders, the first decade of my life saw more than eighty writers, intellectuals, poets and activists disappear or die under suspicious circumstances, their mutilated, beaten bodies often found abandoned by the roadside far from their homes. Some my parents knew – had dined with, laughing long into the night amid glasses of black market wine only days before they were murdered.

  ‘But you write history – not even modern history,’ my mother protested, forgetting for a moment that neither reason nor logic played any part in the ways of the present-day regime.

  My father shrugged again, his shoulders collapsing in defeat. ‘Everyone is scared of inadvertent dissension. They’re being overly cautious. No one wants to end up dead in a gutter of a heart attack.’

  This was the official reason given for so many of the deaths. My father sighed heavily, his work rewriting itself before his eyes as he trudged back to his study. My mother watched him, her anger powerless against a force much larger than herself. She turned back to the potatoes, the knife grating her feelings into their skins. I watched them both a moment, my head tracing from one frustrated tableau to the other, before I too turned back to my television shows.

  Not long after this, twenty-one writers were lured onto a bus under the guise that it would shepherd them to a poetry conference in Armenia. Mid-journey, it was said, the driver attempted to steer the bus off a mountain and they were saved only by a boulder that stopped them plunging a thousand feet down. Because of events like this many Iranian writers buried themselves under the cloak of self-censorship, clipping their voices or turning their creativity inwards. Forcing themselves – and their stories – to become invisible. Writing, just as I write now, about the trivialities of the domestic, or from the safety of mythology. Careful and cautious and quiet. Perhaps this is why we Iranians like poetry so much – who is to say what all that symbolism really means? Is the emptying cup the steady flight of Iran’s best minds out of the country amid the pressures of censorship and restrictions, or is it just a simple cup, releasing its sweet wine to the thirsty open-mouthed world?

  It had happened suddenly and unexpectedly, a phone call from out of the blue with the offer of a job at one of the many indistinguishable places she’d left her résumé. The days passed faster now, shaped around the steep learning curve Aida found herself struggling to scale in her new job, and soon the mid-year solstice was upon them. Each evening she would walk towards the train station from the café exhausted, marvelling at how winter stole the daylight so swiftly. The cold surprised her, confronting and heavy, and she would hurry along the streets despite her aching feet. She’d once thought this country existed in perpetual summer, but how wrong she’d been. A few weekends back, Sarah’s organisation had taken them on a day trip to the state’s historic goldfields. A place known for being the coldest in the state, they’d spent the day re-enacting the misery of panning for gold by plunging their hands into the freezing river as subarctic wind blasts whipped about them.

  ‘Isn’t this fun?’ Sarah had called from somewhere within her parka.

  The cold had stayed in her bones since. As a child, Aida had a habit of measuring the day’s coldness not by the numbers on a thermometer or inches of slushy snow burying Tehran’s footpaths, but by the density of the visible breaths that escaped her mouth with each exhalation. On their way to school she and Amin would see who could heave the longest breath, Alireza storming ahead, embarrassed by his younger siblings who spluttered and sprayed like asthmatic dragons.

  ‘Today’s a five!’ they’d call out to him, timing the moment perfectly to coincide with the passing of Laleh, his neighbourhood crush.

  Amin liked to joke that Alireza’s ensuing anger was such that the smoke pouring out of his ears would be a ten, at the very least.

  Today the sullen streets of Melbourne’s north would be a six, perhaps a seven, the early moon rising in the grey mid-year sky. Aida shoved her hands deeper into the pockets of her coat, her breath tumbling out as she quickened her pace. A seven, for sure. The house was a four, the café an artificially sweltering zero, and the little cocoon made when she propped the cranky electric heater next to her bed was a two or three. It was costly, that little electric demon, but the alternative was to freeze.

  When Aida had first started at the café a few weeks back the walk from the station to the front door hadn’t seemed so long, but as the temperature dropped each walk stretched further than the one before. Sometimes she would pause, drawing her notebook from her bag to scribble down thoughts, but other times she daydreamed about universes where she possessed useful abilities. Waitressing skills, for instance, or the ability to memorise long orders. Peter, the café’s owner, was adamant that his staff all master the art of paperless order-taking, something he had experienced once in a restaurant in Mykonos and thought classy enough to employ in his own suburban sit down/takeaway gyros café. Aida had attempted different strategies for this, such as making up songs or creating mnemonics, but most of the time when Peter wasn’t around she just resorted to asking the customers repeatedly in between trips to the cash register. Her colleague Nina carried a contraband scrap of paper in her pocket along with a stolen minigolf pencil, and Kat, who was Peter’s second cousin’s daughter, just openly ignored him, much to the chagrin of Peter’s wife Evangelia.

  Evangelia seemed chagrined by a great many things. While Peter was the face of the business, Evangelia appeared to be the brains, as well as the mouth, the muscles and, Aida suspected, whatever it is that controls the body’s ability to hand over money. The other staff seemed to fear her, for she never seemed satisfied with their efforts. She would appear at random, surveying the café as if it were a ship in distress, and it was not uncommon for her to seize a broomstick from someone’s hands or the tongs from their grip and deliver a pointed demonstration of how things should be done. Subsequently, the staff spent much of their time hiding in the storeroom when Evangelia was about. Peter,
too, who seemed possessed of some form of marital ESP that allowed him to escape to the back office moments before his wife swept through the front door. There was shouting, often, as if the high stakes of operating a middling quality rotisserie meat food service was on par with a Michelin star restaurant, and after she’d leave Peter would storm behind the counter to construct himself a towering souvla. He would eat it quickly and quietly standing over the hand basin, then turn to his hovering staff. ‘Marriage, eh?’ he would say with the conviction of a Shakespearian actor, the balled-up wrapper held before him like poor Yorick’s skull, then retreat once more to the back office.

  Aida knew the handful of notes Peter paid them each night from the register was less than legal, but after so long searching, any job would do. Nina was a university student and Kat a single mum, so the three of them existed in an unspoken coven of mildly committed social security fraud for the benefit of a few extra dollars in their bank accounts each week. For Nina it made up the rest of the rent and for Kat it allowed her children to go on school excursions, so for the sake of this stability they put up with Evangelia’s nitpicking and Peter’s short-changing.

  The café’s major trade revolved mostly around elderly southern Europeans and tradies on their lunchbreaks. The days were long, spent bustling about tables, directing the tongs between the steel food bins and chasing a broom after the mess arising from the charcoal ash and dropped lettuce. Aida’s feet ached each night and her face felt layered in various meat greases, but it did allow her the chance to practise her colloquialisms. Since starting, Aida now felt confident employing a friendly ‘mate’ when required or flinging a casual ‘no worries’ in with the tomato, onion and garlic sauce. However, she’d yet to find a way to offer a jovial ‘g’day’ without it sounding forced and unnatural, so she stuck with the less off-putting ‘hi’. She’d even attempted a couple of ‘yassous’ for the Greek patrons, but she’d quickly stopped this as it routinely invited a long, demanding response in indecipherable Greek. It was the nose – one look at it and they assumed she was Greek too. She had learnt from watching Peter that ‘nai’ was Greek for yes, so for these customers she simply responded to each shouted instruction with an obliging ‘nai, nai, nai’ and corresponding nod of her head. Greeks, she was discovering, seemed to naturally communicate at a volume normally described as ‘yelling’. It reminded her of her own relatives, of her aunts Simin, Sohila and Farzaneh, who had each entered her life at various points via a high-volume stream of grievances drifting down from Uncle Asadollah’s upstairs apartment. They’d been so similar, each of his wives, with a similar chorus of complaints – the doogh had been left out of the fridge, the farangi toilet was clogged again and why did his clothes smell so constantly of finches? His refrain was the same following each divorce too.

  ‘Never again, Aida-joon. This marriage business, it is like a brick. It will either help you smash through windows into glorious new worlds or pull you down to the bottom of the ocean.’

  He would shake his head mournfully, letting his little finches out so they could fly about the place and rest on his shoulders.

  ‘If you have love for yourself and the Almighty, that should be enough.’ And he would offer her whatever sweets were left in the tin on the high shelf as he whistled softly to his feathered loves.

  Despite Evangelia’s dramatic visits, things could have been worse at the café. Nina and Kat made the day amusing, joking with each other between bursts of customers about the unappealing slabs the uncooked gyros meat arrived in or their own questionable hygiene standards. When she wasn’t present, Kat pretended to be Evangelia, using the special voice she reserved for her children when they were being especially ratty. Nina would respond with her best caricature of Peter, a Gollum-esque miser who hoarded every last cent and refused to part with even the last stale circle of flatbread.

  ‘Anything can be used again,’ she’d explain in a deep voice, pretending to scrape together the ash and dust off the floor to funnel into a cone of pita.

  ‘Petro!’ Kat shrieked, hands on hips. ‘You gonna feed the customers dust with no smile? Basic customer service, for god’s sake, malaka.’

  She’d turn to Aida, one angry foot tapping disappointedly on the floor.

  ‘This man,’ she’d say. ‘This man I married . . .’

  ‘The dust! You’re scattering the precious dust!’

  They’d fall about in fits of laughter, until the bell rang and they’d separate guiltily in case it was Evangelia. If it was, Nina and Kat would disappear into the back, leaving Aida to conjure her best foreigner smile.

  ‘Is this meat ready?’ Evangelia might quiz her, peering at the spit. ‘Because we’re not about poisoning the customer, here.’

  Who was? Aida would wonder.

  Occasionally she would field calls from Sarah, updates that weren’t updates at all. No one had heard anything yet. Be patient. End of story. Apologies. Sarah had been able to provide a referral to someone who might be able to help with Niki’s behaviour, but the closest appointment was months away, so like the rest of them Niki was waiting. Waiting, waiting, waiting. Neither of them had mentioned the news story, how it had made Elham cry, sinking into a silence she rarely emerged from, nor had Aida told Sarah about the shift a few days prior when she’d stood by the counter laughing with Nina, both women releasing the weight from their aching soles for a moment. She noticed a customer sitting at a nearby table watching them, her face twisted in anger. The woman had stood up, her chair scattering behind her, then strode over to them.

  ‘You sit here laughing for what, you queue jumper? My family wait in line in a Turkish camp because you Iranians come here in boats wanting more money.’

  She spat at Aida then hissed something in Arabic. Once the woman had left, Aida calmly wiped the spit from her cheek with a napkin. Nina stared, shocked. Aida hadn’t said anything, folding the napkin into a square and placing it into the bin. Aida still kept an eye out for this woman.

  Pulling her coat tight around her neck, she winced. The knot was back, aggravated by the cold weather. She stepped off the curb, checking the street for traffic, then crossed between the cars. She rejoined the footpath by a padlocked clothing store, the large glass windows shiny from polishing. She glanced at the sparkling gowns in the window, all plunging necklines and fishtail skirts.

  Aida caught her reflection, her wide eyes set in darkness by the unlit store’s shadows. She looked so tired and, she hesitated at the thought, so unlike herself. For a moment, she caught her mother from one angle, high cheekbones and arched brow, and from the other her father’s sorrowful nose. Her mother had messaged early that morning, a restrained few lines about how the doctor had recommended her father spend a few nights in hospital as a precaution. She’d said no more, her superstition and fear filling the message’s gaps. It hadn’t surprised Aida, this news she had been suspecting, and when she’d sought more detail from her brothers, their silence only confirmed her suspicions.

  Now that it was real and no longer in her head, it stayed with her all day, buzzing about her consciousness like the determined mosquitoes back on the island; hiding when she sought it and pouncing as she relaxed. She would not bury her father. Shackled to this country that did not want her, visa conditions meant she could not go back to Iran if she ever wanted Australia’s protection. Not that she would anyway, not with the list of names it was rumoured they kept watch for at the airport. She would not bury him – could not. Her mind fled to the halls of her childhood, scrambling at the files and folders of her family. Her father’s beaming face at her graduation. His great nose swollen greater after Alireza kicked a football square into it.

  Quickly she heaved this door shut, blocking the memories that clawed to be free. In their place came those of later, of the period between the Green Movement and her arrest. An interview she’d conducted one deceptively pleasant day with a man who had lost his daughter amid the violence of
the protests. His hands shook, never still for a moment, as if the unbearable nature of it all rattled inescapably within them. He’d sobbed, unrestrained and broken, and she’d hidden her head at the shame of witnessing a grown man’s tears. It never left, the strength of those sobs or the tremor of hands, not for him or any of the others she’d interviewed. And in it she now saw her own tears, the ones she would cry when she finally received the news. Her grief would be the grief of any child the world over, but the difference was in her proximity to this. Three things the same, three things different . . . One, two, three, my grief, my grief, my grief . . .

  Aida forced her mind to halt, scolding herself. Enough. No more of this. Where would this get her? Useless and broken, or else locked in a place for the insane, and none of that would help. She forced herself to look out at the world around her, the way the hastening darkness shrank the world thinner, or the way children invariably walk in great awkward zigzags instead of straight lines.

  She turned into the suburban outdoor mall that led to the train station. A crowd stood in her path, soft music floating into the night. She joined the crowd’s outlier, peering over the heads. A young man in a beanie and scarf was settled under an awning. His piano accordion came alive with home songs from faraway lands that belonged to neither of them. His fingers worked the notes as he sang along to the melody. He merged the old gypsy waltz into a new song. Aida recognised it, searching for the name. Adele, wasn’t it? He played with his eyes softly closed, tapping a beat with one foot on a small wooden box. All around curious eyes bore into him, young and old, judging and appraising and dismissing him. Open your eyes, Aida thought. See how the world closes in on you. See how it traps you and controls you, squeezing you in as you shrink and fade. How it pushes you smaller and smaller until there’s almost nothing left of who you remember being.