Journey of a Thousand Storms Read online

  That night I lie on one of the mattresses and wonder at how kind the church was to give us some furniture. Later on I find out it was Jewish Care who contacted them.

  The following day Hossain and I go to the kind lady’s house. She lives in Turramurra, an attractive and expensive area of Sydney. She gives me a chair, a fan, a mini TV and a small fridge. I thank her sincerely and we manage to squeeze everything into Hossain’s car. On our way back I notice a shop that belongs to St Vincent de Paul.

  ‘They sell secondhand stuff,’ Hossain says. ‘It’s all very cheap.’

  I go inside and buy a beautiful black, shiny, antique typewriter for five dollars. We squeeze it between the other stuff and rush home. I start using it that same night – and so my writing career in Australia begins.

  On day seven, when I have no money left, my first Centrelink payment is deposited into my bank account. I feel enormously relieved, but I want to find a job as soon as possible. Hossain intro­duces me to Jamal, an acquaintance of his who has a mirror shop in Sydney’s pleasant North Shore area. He needs a labourer.

  ‘What can you do?’ asks Jamal.

  ‘Everything – carpentry, mechanics, labouring, tailoring, plumbing, electronics.’

  I start immediately, earning fifty dollars a day. Jamal also tells me he has a car for sale, a 1986 Holden station wagon for five hundred dollars. I haven’t got that much cash but Jamal agrees to accept instalments over three months. I haven’t been behind the wheel for more than a year so when I drive home I’m thrilled, even though this old Holden is not quite as nice as my luxury Peugeot in Iran. When I arrive back I don’t knock on the door; I honk the horn instead. Azita and the girls climb into the car excitedly and we go for a ride. Three hours later, though, the car breaks down and we have to pay a mechanic to jumpstart it so we can return home.

  The next day, when I try to pay for petrol, there’s no money in my bank account. I’m shocked and embarrassed. The kind man at the petrol station agrees for me to come back and pay later, as it’s only twenty dollars. It takes me just a few seconds to guess that Hossain has robbed me. When we came back from my job interview with Jamal, Hossain asked to borrow my EFTPOS card to buy cigarettes, saying he’d forgotten to bring his wallet. I could not refuse him because of our cultural background, so I gave him my PIN and stayed in his car while he cheated me. He knew very well how to deceive an Iranian newcomer.

  Neither Jamal nor I see Hossain again. I presume he’s gone to a different Centrelink to prey on another newly arrived Iranian. What he’s done doesn’t make me angry. It just saddens me profoundly.

  We start to feel settled and life falls into a routine but I don’t want to work at Jamal’s shop forever. I aspire to use my real expertise in medicine and authorship. My biggest passion in life, writing, is still intact but there’s absolutely no hope I’ll be able to write professionally in English. I try to improve my language skills by watching SBS and reading the subtitles. I also start typing up my story, working late at night. When Azita discovers me at the typewriter and I tell her what I’m doing, she’s horrified.

  ‘No! No way are you doing that. If you write our story I’ll divorce you and go straight back to Iran with the kids. We’ve had enough.’ Azita already knows that under Australian law she is free to divorce me, unlike Iranian law.

  ‘But I have to show people what we’ve been through. It’s not just about us – thousands have been jailed and tortured and executed by the regime,’ I point out.

  ‘I said no.’ And she slams the door.

  I have only two options: forget about writing or do it in secret. But I can’t forget about writing. It wasn’t Azita who was kidnapped and barbarically tortured and forced to cooperate with an evil system. So I write only when she’s asleep, and lie to her when she finds me out of bed at night. I can’t stay silent and let the Islamic killing machine continue to function. I don’t care about the dangers – I’ve seen what’s behind Iran’s veil and have to reveal it to the world.

  As I’m leaving Jamal’s shop one day, my mobile phone rings. There’s no caller ID so I assume it’s my mother. We speak once a month and although our conversations are always coded, because her phone is tapped, it’s reassuring just to hear her voice.

  ‘Salam, Kooshyar jan,’ a man says. I can’t identify him, though he sounds familiar.

  ‘Salam. Who is this?’ I ask in Farsi.

  After a long pause the voice says, ‘It’s me, Haji Heydar.’ I’m taken aback: I haven’t heard from him in almost two years. But I’ve known him for much longer than that. When I was nine my mother secretly arranged a sigha and became his temporary wife. In an Islamic version of prostitution, a woman can be married to a man for an agreed period of time, ranging from a few hours to several years, the terms being agreed by both parties. This kind of deal is quite common and entirely legal; married men can organise as many sigha as they want. All they have to do is pay a fee, which in my mother’s case was ten dollars a fortnight. To feed us, my mother gave her body to this man, a devout bourgeois Muslim with a wife and family. Now, Haji Heydar stays with his wife full-time and has stopped visiting my mother.

  ‘I’m not very well,’ he tells me. ‘I had a second heart attack, and the doctors say I don’t have much time left.’

  I find it difficult to sympathise with this man. He’d come to our house every lunchtime and sit on our one fancy chair to eat his kebab with special bread and gulp his juice, while my mother, Koorosh and I sat on the floor and ate eggs and stale bread. As soon as I left Iran he ditched my mother and didn’t return her phone calls asking for help.

  ‘Kooshyar, I know we’ll never see each other again so I’ve called you to say something very important.’ Haji takes a deep breath. ‘I want you to forgive me.’

  I realise how hard it is for a proud and powerful man like Haji Heydar to say these words. But I also know that as a devout Muslim he wants to enter paradise, and he won’t be able to unless he’s pardoned by the people he wronged. I wonder how large Haji’s telephone bill will be this month after he’s asked everyone for forgiveness.

  ‘Haji, there’s nothing to forgive. I don’t have any hard feelings against you. I wish you the best,’ I murmur, struggling to mean what I say. Nevertheless one thing has altered inside my heart. I feel less hatred for Haji than I do for the system that enabled his behaviour.

  ‘May Allah protect you, son,’ he says and hangs up – afraid, no doubt, I might change my mind if he says anything else. There was no love between Haji and my mother. She satisfied him sexually and thereby boosted his ego, but she hated him. Haji let her collect his breadcrumbs to feed her malnourished boys. I loved and admired my mother for everything she gave me. How could I not? But Haji owned her. That’s also why I went to medical school, asides from my promise to my mother to help the people in the slums: I had to become a doctor to buy her back, to make sure she no longer needed to depend on this evil man who was using her as his sex slave. And I did.

  This is the last time I hear from Haji Heydar. A month later he suffers a cardiac arrest in hospital and dies. By this time I’ve truly forgiven him, realising that it’s more important to focus on making Iran a more equal and tolerant civilisation than harbour vengeful thoughts about people like him.

  Working for Jamal turns out to be awful. When he discovers I was a doctor in Iran he becomes condescending and refuses to believe I was financially comfortable there. I seem to be paying for him being degraded by the rich and successful back home. I try hard to prove to him I don’t care about people’s social position or their financial status and tell him about growing up in poverty, but nothing makes him be friendlier towards me.

  Not long after I’ve started there, I learn that the lowest labourers’ wage should be seventy dollars for an eight-hour day. I work eleven- or twelve-hour days, sometimes more, for just fifty dollars. A week later the car breaks down again and the mechanic tells me it’s worth less than a hundred dollars. I have to leave it with him for a mon
th while I save seven hundred dollars to get it fixed. Jamal even blames me for the car’s failure.

  ‘You don’t know how to drive a car like this. It’s probably the first time you’ve even owned a car.’ I don’t bother correcting him. The minds of men like Jamal and Ibtehal are trapped inside a pingpong ball, with only a pinhole to see the real world.

  I decide to focus on qualifying as a doctor in Australia. When I contact the Australian Medical Council they tell me I’ll have to sit an English exam first, then a written exam, and then a clinical exam. Each takes place six to twelve months after the previous one, which means that even if I pass all of them on the first try, I won’t get a medical licence for at least two years. When I do, I’ll then have to work another twelve months as an intern in a public hospital outside Sydney on a minimal salary.

  ‘I’m not going to do this. It’s ridiculous!’ I say to Azita. I under­stand the need for exams, but why over such a long period? On top of this, there are no training courses and we’re not allowed to go to a hospital or clinic and observe the way doctors practise here, so it’s likely that by the time I sit the final exam I’ll have lost a lot of my knowledge and skills. How can I study dozens of huge medical textbooks when I have to work at Jamal’s shop to survive? It seems to me they’d rather refugees install mirrors in toilets than practise medicine. And yet they say in the news all the time they need doctors and nurses.

  The next day Jamal notices my frustration and asks me what’s going on. When I tell him about how difficult it is to practise medicine here, his reaction is predictable. ‘I’ve met many doctors and engineers from Iran in Sydney – they all drive cabs here.’ He grins at me. ‘You’re lucky you have this job. You have no idea how many guys wanted to work for me. I decided to give the job to you because you have a family to feed. I felt sorry for your kids.’

  I say nothing to Jamal, remembering my father’s advice: ‘The best response to idiots is silence.’

  I go home, hold my Star of David and vow to become a doctor in Australia, even if it takes ten years. I want to become a proud citizen of this country and support those who need help. This time, I will practise medicine to buy back my self and my pride, and the dignity of my family.

  I ring my father that night. I miss him and need to hear his voice. When we finish our short conversation he asks me how the weather is in Germany. His oldest son from his first wife was one of Iran’s top students and went to Germany on a scholarship, so if anyone leaves the country my father thinks they must be in Germany. His universe is very simple, just like his bus: there’s Iran, there’s the sun, there’s the moon, and there’s Germany. I don’t try to explain that I’m in Australia. Then he says, ‘God be with you, Koorosh.’ I’m not surprised he calls me by my brother’s name, but it makes me wonder if he cares about me at all. I’ve never been able to work it out.

  Fifty dollars a day doesn’t cover the costs of a family of four so I start doing deliveries for a pizza shop near home as well. I work there from seven till ten-thirty, and make around thirty dollars a night.

  Now, after working in the mirror shop during the day and the pizza shop in the evening, I come home and study and then, well after midnight, keep writing my story. Years of loveless marriage have made me an expert in concealment; I could launch a missile from our kitchen without Azita suspecting anything. I have no hope that my manuscript will be published. I write a page and tear it up – it’s no good. Though I was a respected writer and translator in Iran, English is not my mother tongue and writing in a foreign language is like painting with no arms. I’m only smudging the canvas now, but I won’t give up. I refuse to give up.

  Newsha has started at Parramatta North Public School. Her first few months are heartbreaking. She doesn’t understand what people are saying, and they can’t understand her. Every day she comes home crying and we keep encouraging her to continue trying to find friends, to understand the teacher, to speak with others. After three months, amazingly, she starts speaking English. It’s unbelievable how fast children can learn a language. After one year her English far surpasses mine, and when I try to speak it she laughs and corrects me. I feel delightfully mocked – nothing is more pleasant in life than your child surprising you with her intelligence.

  Six months pass and we’re sitting at home watching the news when Asef calls. In the last few months whenever we’ve spoken he’s been deeply depressed, struggling to remain hopeful. Now, though, he’s full of excitement.

  ‘Guess what? We got the fax!’ Finally, after more than two years, the UNHCR has accepted his case. I tell him to request to be sent to Australia, and he agrees. ‘That would be amazing! I’ll keep my fingers crossed.’

  I ask him about Dariush, and he’s silent for a moment. Then he tells me that the UNHCR rejected Dariush’s case and he’s disappeared. There were rumours that after losing all hope he wrote a letter, held his daughter close to his chest and jumped into the river. The Turkish police seem to have covered up the story but a friend of Dariush’s, who has the letter, is appealing to the UN. I’m speechless, utterly devastated. The joy at Asef’s great news disappears like a crystal dropped into quicksand. I think, Who is responsible for this? Why do such things happen?

  I search the streets every Friday night for abandoned goods. I find a broken iron and a dead microwave, and fix them at home. We go to the Salvation Army one day and they give us a used pram for Niloofar, as well as a cup of coffee and a sandwich.

  After seven months in Australia, Newsha and Niloofar finally have beds. I found them by the side of the road and repaired them, but we can’t afford proper mattresses so the girls still sleep on foam ones. Azita and I sleep on the floor until I collect some timber and make a bed. My carpentry skills haven’t improved since Çankiri but this time – thank God – I don’t catch influenza. The bed is very unstable but it’s better than nothing. We use it for two and a half years until I manage to buy a brand-new one.

  After eight months I pass my first exam, the occupational English test. Now I can apply to sit the written medical exam, a difficult test requiring eight years’ worth of knowledge to be squeezed into three hundred complicated questions. Many overseas doctors fail this exam the first or even the second time they take it, and it’s expensive: twelve hundred dollars. I have to wait for another eight months before I can do the test in Sydney.

  I’m beginning to see many possibilities for our new life, but Azita is not. Almost every time I come home from work I find her in tears. One night she is completely without hope.

  ‘I want to go back to Iran, Kooshyar,’ she says. ‘I can’t do this anymore. We’ve lost all our friends and family, our homeland, our identity, and now we have nothing. You’ll be a labourer and a pizza-delivery man forever. Everything we own is secondhand or broken. At least in Turkey we had hope – we thought we were going to a wonderful place – but look at us! We’re nobodies here.’

  I gently tell her she can’t go back to Iran, not now. We’re a family and we’ve stayed together; we survived Turkey so we can get through this. We’ll eventually find friends and have a better life. I don’t know how much I believe this myself but I’m trying to reassure her. At least as a doctor I know how to give hope, even if there is none, but my situation is not much better than Azita’s. Every morning I wake up with a splitting headache after terrible nightmares. I dream I’m in jail being tortured by the intelligence service, or I see myself being chased through the streets of Tehran by the secret police, and at the end I’m always killed. I never tell Azita about these nightmares and flashbacks. I have to pretend to be happy and hopeful because my family needs me – in this foreign, faraway country, I’m all they have.

  So I promise Azita that our future will be great. I promise I’ll pass the exams. I suggest she should study or find a job, hoping this will distract her and give her and our family some social life.

  Azita thinks about my words and a week later tells me she’s registered at TAFE to study hairdressing part-time. />
  ‘Are you sure about this?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes, I love hairdressing,’ she says excitedly. ‘It’s in my blood.’ She’s right: we know many Iranian women who became hairdressers and beauticians when they moved to Australia. I wonder if being free of harsh restrictions on their appearance stirs in these women an intense, impulsive love of beauty and style; some might even say they develop an obsession with it.

  Six months later Azita begins working as an apprentice at a salon owned by another Iranian woman. Mary is kind and treats Azita with respect, and soon we become friends with her and her husband, Ben. In England he did a PhD in textiles but he couldn’t find a job in that industry in Australia, so he manages their other hairdressing salon.

  By this time we’ve also become close with a lovely Iranian family: Saman, his wife Shohreh and their children. Their daughter goes to the same school as Newsha, though she is three years ahead of her. They’ve been living in Australia for more than ten years and share their experiences with us. We go to their house as often as possible – emotional isolation is the hardest part of our life here. Saman was originally an accountant but he’s working as a painter in Sydney because he couldn’t get his qualifications recognised. He confirms I’m being significantly underpaid by Jamal but unfortunately there’s no job available where Saman works.

  As the date for my written exam approaches, I stay up late every night studying after delivering pizzas. I’m always tired; Jamal is making me work more than usual. I’ve mastered mirror cutting, sandblasting, mirror tiling, framing and installation, and he wants to employ me permanently.

  ‘I want to open a new branch in Parramatta and get you to run it. Forget about medicine. I know you won’t pass the exams – this is not like Iran,’ he says to me.