Scattered Pearls Read online

  As for what was he doing with all this newspaper reading, this, in my naivety, I still did not understand.

  ~

  In the early hours of Saturday 2 January 1982 my waters broke. I wasn’t due for two more weeks and hadn’t finished up at work, so I was not ready for this. Still, it was obvious we had to go to the hospital. Reza ordered a taxi and we left for Queen Victoria Hospital in Melbourne at seven in the morning; Reza sat in the front, I sat in the back.

  I was scared. Isn’t every mother-to-be, that first time? I’d had regular visits to the doctor during my pregnancy but hadn’t gone to any pre-natal classes, so I knew little about what to expect. I would have loved to have someone to reassure me. A hand to hold. But there was no one. No mother, no sister, no friend. I sat in the back of the taxi with a heart as heavy as the clouds outside. Reza was silent in the front, apart from some occasional small talk with the driver.

  Arriving at the hospital I cheered up a little as the nurses were so welcoming. I had not yet had any contractions so was taken upstairs to a ward. I started to feel the sensitivities of a mother as soon as I could hear the sounds of other mothers and their babies. Labour started not long afterwards and soon I felt as though my body was being pulled apart. Again I felt lost and alone; the world became dark. Did I sleep or faint? I don’t know. After about four hours, at 1.52 pm, my beautiful son was born. I named him Ali because I liked the name Ali Shariati. Reza accepted this without comment.

  Reza stayed in the labour suite most of this time, but I think he was nervous too (which is probably understandable). He stood by the bed and watched. I heard him say ‘ghorbanat bram’ which literally means ‘I sacrifice my life for you’ but is used to mean ‘I am here for you’. It felt good to hear this. After the baby arrived he seemed to soften too. I could see it in his eyes. He spoke gently to me. He held our baby and said, ‘Ali, my son.’

  When I was back in the ward Reza went out to the Myer department store and came back with an expensive-looking pram – navy blue, with large wheels – and a soft-toy koala.

  I was feeling tired but relieved and happy. I took Reza’s hand and asked him to give me a kiss, but he resisted, saying everyone would see. I suggested he could pull the curtains around the bed. He did this, but even then kissed me with some hesitation.

  As soon as she had heard that I was pregnant, my mother had started knitting and sewing. It is a Persian tradition that the mother of a bride provides sis moni, a collection of gifts made by hand to demonstrate love and affection. Relatives will also contribute, much like a baby shower in the West. Two months before Ali was born, a box of gifts had arrived from Iran. It was full of handmade baby clothing and exquisite, intricately embroidered blankets, sheets and handkerchiefs. (Had I been in Iran, I would have received many boxes of gifts like this.) I left many of the gifts unwrapped until a day or two after Ali’s birth, when I asked Reza to bring the box to me in hospital. I was so happy to open every item and commented to Reza over and over about how beautiful everything was. But he seemed distracted and said nothing.

  A few days after he was born, Ali became jaundiced. This made me very nervous, bringing back the stories I’d heard of my mother losing a number of babies to this condition. Shock and anxiety washed over me. I may have been ambivalent about falling pregnant in the first place, but with Ali in my arms and at my breast I realised that all my future hopes existed in this child. Here was someone I could shower with the unconditional love I had always dreamt of. My life to this point suddenly seemed so pointless. I’m sure I’m not the only mother to have had these feelings, but the depth of them at the time made me feel like the only mother in the world who could lose her baby at any moment.

  The doctors were reassuring. Ali would be placed under ultraviolet lights for a few days and was sure to recover. In the meantime I could rest, and he would be brought to me for feeding. It was hard to believe them. How could such a dreadful condition have such a simple solution? But of course they were right. In just a couple of days Ali was back at my side, a normal, healthy baby. My dread subsided quickly.

  I stayed in hospital for ten days altogether. Such a luxury. There was good food, a constant supply of clean nappies, and I didn’t need to cook or wash or vacuum. It was heaven. For company I had a younger woman who also had just had her first child. Her husband came every day to see her and would stay for as long as he could. Each time he brought her a bunch of red roses, and he always had his camera with him, taking pictures of his wife and the new baby. They were so happy. She also had many other family members coming and going. Reza came most days and he also took a few photos, but I can’t say his visits displayed any of the unbridled joy of my roommate’s.

  ~

  On the day I was to go home, Reza came to get me. One of the nurses organised a taxi for us. (It was required that the hospital make sure proper transport had been arranged.) For some reason this caused Reza to get angry. He wanted to call the cab, he kept insisting, though I don’t know why.

  Again Reza sat in the front, with me and Ali in the back. Still upset, Reza immediately lit up a cigarette, the smoke drifting over me and our son; it upset me but I didn’t say anything.

  It was late in the afternoon when we arrived home.

  Sometimes in the movies they arrange a flat or house to look like a pigsty, with takeaway containers piled up and clothes strewn all around. This was what I came back to. The house stank of stale smoke. There were dead cockroaches and spiders on the floor. A thick layer of dust coated everything except the couch, where Reza had obviously spent most of the last two weeks. Not only was all our crockery dirty, but it was all over the house – hardly a dish had found its way to the kitchen sink. And on top of all that it was, being mid-summer, stiflingly hot and stuffy.

  I said nothing.

  Ali needed changing so I put a clean nappy on him. I desperately needed a shower but first I needed to cook – and before that I needed to do some washing up and some cleaning. Ali cried so I fed him and put him down to sleep then got on with my jobs.

  I cleaned for three hours before falling into bed.

  The whole time, Reza sat and watched television.

  Over the coming days, when I was not feeding or bathing Ali, I cleaned. Ali became sick, running a high temperature, so I walked him to the doctor. Then he wouldn’t sleep, so I took him for long walks in his pram. The summer heat was unrelenting. I cleaned some more.

  Reza sat and watched television.

  It took a week before I got the house back to where it had started – it was nowhere near perfect but at least it was liveable again. If Reza said anything during this time, it was to complain about me getting in his way – that is, between him and his television.

  I continued to say nothing. I didn’t know what I could say. In my heart I was bleeding.

  I had long accepted that Reza was never going to be a ‘picture book’ husband. He would not be like the father of my school friend Shahnaz. But I had held out hope that marriage . . . then fatherhood . . . might soften him a little. And in the hospital I had caught the faintest glimpse of a softer side.

  But now the veil fell away, and there was nothing there. Nothing. No feelings. Certainly no love. And no hope.

  But what could I do? This man was my husband. My role was to support him, and now to also support my child . . . our child.

  I was so tired.

  After a few days I started to think about the future. I had planned to return to Integer after some maternity leave, as my wages were our only source of income. However, I had not thought about how Ali would be cared for during the day. Back in Iran it was not something I would need to have thought about – perhaps this is why I hadn’t considered it? There I would have had my mother for support, or one of my sisters, or my aunts. Here I had Reza, who was showing no signs at all that he was capable of – or interested in – looking after a young child, and no inclination at all to look for work.

  I decided I had no choice but to resign f
rom my job. I would get some money as a payout. Then we would need to apply for unemployment benefit. It would not be much but we’d have no choice but to survive on it. Thankfully at this time social security was relatively easy to obtain, even for non-residents like ourselves and for people like me who knew nothing about the system.

  Staying at home instead of going to work, I soon understood how Reza had been using his time. Every day he would sleep until at least one o’clock in the afternoon, sometimes three. When awake, he wore long pyjama pants and a singlet. Nothing else. Most of the day he sat in front of the television and smoked. Once a day, for about 15 minutes, Reza would exercise: standing upright, holding his arms out to his sides and then repeatedly pumping his forearms up into a classic bodybuilder pose and back. He did not use any weights, but somehow this single exercise, along with a diet of mostly salad and very few baked goods, was enough to keep him in shape. Reza was someone who managed to retain a broad chest and well-defined physique without really trying, and he was always proud of this. He often had me take photos of him in his strong man pose.

  Sometimes he would put on tracksuit pants and go out; I finally understood that he was going to the TAB, the betting shop. It was the only place he went. He would come home to be fed and to watch more television, not coming to bed until the early hours of the morning. He was completely oblivious to both me and his son.

  I was constantly weak and tired. But what could I do? This man was my husband.

  As the months came and went, we lived as basic a life as we could. Having no rent to pay provided some relief given I no longer had a salary. But every week was a struggle. There never seemed to be enough money. The best I could do was get used to being a mother and caring for my beautiful son, and come to terms with the laziness of my husband.

  ~

  A few days after I’d come home from hospital in January, Jack Sutton had been to see us. He wanted to see Ali and give his congratulations, and he wanted to discuss an idea for our proposed business, which was yet to get off the ground. He liked to involve me in these meetings because my English was better than Reza’s; Reza could understand English but his spoken language was not sufficient to demonstrate that he understood what Jack was talking about. Jack wanted to pay for Reza to go to Dubai and find some potential buyers for the exported products.

  Some weeks later, Reza left for Dubai. It was like a holiday, having the house to myself for a week. When he returned it was ‘with his hands longer than his feet’, as the Persian saying goes. In other words, he came back with nothing in the way of business opportunities. This disappointed Jack, but it didn’t seem to put him off trying again.

  ‘Iran – that is where you should go next,’ he said. ‘That is the place you know best.’

  A few months later Jack had a new idea: not only should Reza go to Iran, but all three of us – Reza, myself and Ali. I would get to see my family and show them our baby, and Reza could find some importers for Jack. Again, Jack would pay.

  10

  The bottom

  I cried when I saw my mother. She cried when she saw me, and cried some more when she saw Ali. Reza and my father shook hands without expression.

  It was now nearly four years since the revolution, and the feel of Tehran had shifted. The draconian rule of the Khomeini regime had squeezed much of the life out of the city and, I imagined, the rest of the country. It felt darker somehow; there was a sense of anxiety and hopelessness in the air.

  But our time was spent mostly with family, so we didn’t really notice a lot of this. We were invited to many parties, though mostly Reza did not come. I assumed that he spent this time calling people and trying to do business on behalf of Jack Sutton, though mostly he just seemed to eat and sleep. He rarely left the house and when he did he never told me where he was going.

  Members of Reza’s family came to see us more than once, showing as much joy over Ali as anyone else.

  All the conversation during this visit was general and light-hearted. In the almost three months we spent in Iran, I never raised any concerns about my marriage with a single soul. It wasn’t a topic I was ready to raise with myself, let alone with my mother or anyone else in my family. Yes, I was not happy, but I didn’t see happiness as a priority. My mother hadn’t been happy in her marriage; my father was ignorant and abusive. Why should my marriage be any different? Ali was my priority now, along with building a family life with my husband. In any case, there had not been so much yelling or swearing lately; a lack of yelling and swearing was what I now understood as being as close to love and kindness as I would get from this man. And Reza was no longer unemployed – he was working for Jack. (I ignored the fact that I had seen no evidence of this ‘work’.)

  Perhaps if someone else had noticed – if someone had commented to me that I seemed unhappy and was not the optimistic person I used to be – then maybe I might have opened up. But no one did. As happens so often, mundane conversation provided a cover that no one felt the need to lift. Or perhaps they simply put my tiredness down to new motherhood; much of my time was spent breastfeeding Ali and looking after him. In the end I rationalised that any problems Reza and I had were for us to sort out, and this was not the place to do that.

  Eventually I said to Reza that we must leave. The weight of us staying with my mother, especially with a new baby around, was too much on her shoulders. I was also conscious of the efforts my sisters were making to look after Ali. As well, Iran was expensive – the Iran–Iraq war was still being fought at this time. And finally, no matter how long we stayed it was clear that Reza was not going to succeed in finding business for Jack.

  With many more tears, we said goodbye in early January. Persians like to give gifts to people about to travel – we call it dam-e rahi, or ‘gifts for the road’ – and we left with numerous gifts from my family of handicrafts and jewellery. There were miniature framed artworks of marquetry – khatam-kari – comprising tiny pieces of ivory, brass and coloured wood inlaid into a timber base to form colourful designs. We also received small carpets, a jewellery box inlaid with lovely gemstones, a chocolate box covered in a turquoise design and a small, gold-plated samovar. These gifts were probably the most valuable items we now owned.

  ~

  Despite all the problems we had had in obtaining visas after we were married, we now found ourselves in exactly the same position yet again. Neither Reza nor I had permission to re-enter Australia. Before leaving Australia we had applied for and received new individual passports from the Iranian embassy in Canberra, and those noted our domicile as Australia. Ali, being an infant, was added to his father’s passport. In our naivety we had believed that all this would be sufficient evidence to allow our entry back into Australia. But of course it wasn’t. We still needed Australian visas.

  Instead of flying straight home to Melbourne, we once again flew to Bangkok, where we expected to be able to work things out quickly as we had last time. It was not so easy.

  On our first approach to the Australian embassy in Bangkok, our visa requests were rejected straightaway. Reza made contact with Jack Sutton – after all, we were travelling on his behalf – and he said he would contact the department and see what he could do. In the meantime we would have to wait in Bangkok.

  With hardly any money, we found a room in a very cheap, third-class hotel in the central city area. The hotel entrance was down a narrow laneway, behind the main street. The rooms were tiny – hardly enough room for a double bed – and quite worn. The air-conditioning struggled in the stifling heat of the dry season. Cockroaches were regular visitors.

  Soon we had almost no money and no choice but to eat food provided by the hotel, adding the costs to our account. Reza said Jack would help settle the bill. But the food was of dire quality – once I found cockroaches in a dish and there were many of them in the kitchen downstairs, including in the refrigerator – and both Ali and I soon became ill. While I worried about the future, Reza looked after himself. Mostly this meant sitting
in our room and smoking. What he was smoking I do not know but it had a different smell to his usual cigarettes – to this day I wonder whether it was hashish. On one occasion he stood and satisfied himself in front of me while I lay on the bed. I closed my eyes and tried to block out the image.

  As time went on I became more and more concerned about Ali. Like me, he was losing weight, but he did not seem to get better. While I continued to breastfeed him I was sure I wasn’t providing him with enough. Meanwhile the heat and humidity clung to us day and night. The hotel stopped providing food and said that if we didn’t pay we would need to leave; our diet now was reduced to bread and barbecued corn bought from street vendors. As repeated trips to the embassy gave us the same result – nothing – my patience became as stick thin as I was myself.

  ‘What is the situation?’ I finally asked Reza one day as he sprawled in his chair. ‘Dreaming will not solve anything. What are you going to do?’

  ‘What can I do?’ he said.

  ‘If you don’t care about me that is fine. But what about Ali? He is your son. In this hot climate with all this infected food, he will always be sick.’

  ‘That is not in my control,’ Reza snapped. ‘Don’t you understand? That is not in my control. Nagging or crying won’t make any difference. Jack will fix things. We just need to wait.’

  He stood up and came towards me. ‘Just remember who got you into Australia the first time. It was my passport and my visa. You can shut up.’