The Imaginary Bus: Khalo Who Foresaw His Own Death in a Dream — Volume One
The bus set off again.
The rain had eased, but the road was still wet and London’s lights stretched across the tarmac.
The monarchist sat directly opposite the donkey.
I didn’t know why he had chosen that seat among so many empty ones.
Perhaps he thought the donkey was a good listener.
Which he was.
At least he didn’t interrupt people. He only brayed now and then, and, to be fair, that was clearer than some political analyses.
The man straightened his coat collar.
— There’s still one thing I don’t understand.
— Only one? I asked from the driver’s seat.
The woman in red laughed.
Lena smiled too.
— Why did you have a revolution in the first place?
The donkey raised his head.
— Your question has caught the attention of the bus’s political department.
The man glanced at him.
— I’m serious.
— So am I. But when you ask ‘why did you have a revolution?’ nearly half a century later, you make it sound as if millions of people woke up one morning, ate breakfast and said, ‘Nothing else to do today. Let’s have a revolution.’
Lena laughed.
— The country was developing, the man said.
Lena grew serious.
— Developing for whom? By what measure?
He turned towards her.
— A society isn’t only buildings, roads and factories. You have to look at relations of power, political freedom, the distribution of wealth, the lives of workers and peasants, the repression of opponents and divisions within society.
— So there was nothing positive at all?
— Nobody said that, I replied. — If we’re serious about history, it isn’t wholly black or wholly white. The point is that development in one part of society does not automatically resolve that society’s contradictions.
The donkey brayed.
— You stay out of uneven development for now. I’ll arrange a separate class for you later.
The woman in red laughed.
The man smiled too, but only briefly.
— But you’ve seen what came of the revolution.
— This is exactly where you and I differ. You take what followed it and use that to put the revolution itself on trial.
— Can you really separate the two?
— Not completely. But they aren’t the same thing either.
— A revolution is a social process, Lena said. — The forces that start it, the classes and groups that join it, and the force that eventually takes charge of its leadership and machinery of power are not necessarily one and the same.
The man turned to me.
— So you still think the revolution was right?
— If you’re waiting to hear me say that people were wrong to rise up against despotism, don’t wait.
He was quiet for a few moments.
— I can criticise what we ourselves did. I can discuss the mistakes made by left-wing groups, their weak analyses, their divisions, their misjudgement of the balance of forces and a thousand other things. But criticising the mistakes of revolutionary forces is one thing. Regretting the struggle against despotism is another.
— And the central question, Lena said softly, — is how a force that wasn’t the whole revolution managed to establish itself as the revolution’s representative.
— Well, the people chose them, said the man.
— I don’t see it as simply as that.
— How do you see it?
Lena leant forwards a little.
— From a Marxist perspective, we would have to examine the class balance and the international context as well. The Iranian Revolution didn’t happen in a vacuum. It was the Cold War. Global capitalism had its interests. Iran’s bourgeoisie wasn’t a single, united group. Some of its sections had come into conflict with the Shah, but that didn’t mean they wanted radical social change or the working class to take power. Religious forces also had extensive social and organisational networks.
— So it’s the foreigners’ fault again?
— No. That’s precisely the simplification I’m arguing against.
I watched her in the mirror.
Lena continued:
— No foreign power can bring millions onto the streets out of nothing. The roots of the revolution lay within society itself. Its contradictions were real. The dissatisfaction was real. The repression was real. But that doesn’t mean the world’s powerful states were indifferent to which force would emerge from the crisis.
— This is where my own analysis comes in, I said. — I think global capitalism faced, on the one hand, a regime in a deepening crisis and, on the other, a movement whose limits nobody could predict. For the great capitalist powers, a radical revolution in which the left and the workers gained the upper hand would have been no small matter.
— So you think foreigners chose the revolution’s leaders?
— No, not in that simple way. History isn’t made by a single telephone call from Washington or London. I’m talking about a set of interests and contradictions: global powers, sections of the domestic bourgeoisie, organised religious forces and, on the other side, revolutionary forces that faced powerful enemies as well as their own weaknesses and mistakes.
— A revolution is where social forces meet and clash, said Lena. — Whoever is better organised, has more resources and can shift the balance of power in its favour at a moment of crisis has a better chance of controlling what comes next.
— That’s your analysis, the man said.
— Exactly. Ours. We’re not going to carve it in stone and tell anyone who disagrees to get off the bus.
The donkey brayed.
I looked at him.
— Especially you. You haven’t paid for a ticket in the first place.
This time everyone laughed.
The monarchist laughed too.
Then he said:
— But in the end, you left Iran.
My hands tightened on the wheel.
— No.
He looked at me in surprise.
— The word matters here. I didn’t migrate.
The woman in red fell silent.
Lena was no longer smiling either.
— I was driven into exile.
— What’s the difference? You still came abroad.
I eased my foot off the accelerator.
— There’s a great deal of difference.
The rain was striking the window more heavily again.
— A migrant might leave for work, for education, for their child’s future, for love, for a better life. Of course migration can be hard, painful and full of separation too. I don’t make light of a migrant’s pain.
I paused.
— But exile is another story.
The man listened.
— A person in exile might buy their own ticket, pack their own suitcase and board the plane themselves. But someone else made the real decision for them much earlier.
— So it looks like a choice to leave, said the woman in red quietly, — but the conditions that forced the departure weren’t chosen.
— Exactly.
— A migrant can usually say, ‘I left,’ said Lena. — Someone in exile may have to say, ‘I was driven out.’
Silence settled over us.
Even the donkey was quiet.
— Well, well. He’s finally learnt when not to bray.
The man laughed, but I continued:
— You might spend thirty or forty years in another country. Have a home, work, make friends, become part of your new society. Even love that country. None of that contradicts being in exile.
— So will you be in exile for the rest of your life?
— Exile isn’t determined by a calendar.
For a few seconds, there was only the sound of the bus engine.
Then I said:
— Exile begins when politics comes into your home, stands at the door and tells you: either stop being who you are, or you don’t belong here.
— And sometimes it takes away your right to return safely as well, Lena said quietly.
The man looked out of the window.
— I’ve been here for more than thirty years myself.
— A migrant or a person in exile?
He hesitated.
— I don’t know.
— Good.
— What’s good about that?
— For the first time since you got on, you’ve said, ‘I don’t know.’
The woman in red laughed.
So did Lena.
The donkey brayed as though he had finally issued the meeting’s concluding resolution.
The man rested a hand on the back of the seat.
— You turn everything into a joke.
— No, comrade. Some things have been so serious that if we don’t sometimes laugh at them, we’ll have to cry all the way.
This time nobody laughed.
The bus passed an Iranian shop.
The man craned his neck to read the Persian writing on its window.
I saw him in the mirror.
— See?
— What?
— You’ve been here more than thirty years, but the sight of Persian writing still turns your head without your even thinking about it.
He smiled.
— I can’t help it.
— There’s a lot about exile you can’t help.
A few moments later he said:
— Perhaps we each brought a different Iran with us.
This time I said nothing.
Lena was silent too.
The woman in red looked outside.
Only the donkey moved his ears.
I watched them in the mirror.
The monarchist, Lena, the woman in red, Coco and the donkey.
We were sitting together on one bus, each carrying a different past.
One carried the Iran of the past in his mind.
Another, the revolution.
Another, its defeats.
Another, its hopes.
And some of us, like me, still carried a key in our pocket that might never open a door again, yet could not bear to throw it away.
Suddenly the man asked:
— If you could go back to fifty-seven, would you still make a revolution?
I met his eyes in the mirror.
I smiled.
— Hold on to that question.
— What for?
— The next stop.
The donkey brayed.
— Don’t answer for me. I don’t even know where you were in fifty-seven.
Laughter spread through the bus again.
The red bus travelled on beneath the London rain.
But the man’s question stayed there, right in the middle of it.
Between past and present.
Between the revolution and what followed it.
Between migration and exile.
Between a person who had left his country and one who, after all these years, still did not know whether he had truly left it or whether it had once been pulled from beneath his feet.
For further historical reading and examination
The political and historical views in this part are voiced by the story’s characters. Readers wishing to explore the 1979 revolution, its social and class forces and the international context may consult:
- Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) — U.S. Department of State. The official collection of United States foreign-policy documents from the Carter administration. Volume X of the 1977–1980 series, Iran: Revolution, January 1977–November 1979, covers documents from the revolutionary period and, at the time this part was written, was still being reviewed and prepared for publication.
- Jimmy Carter Presidential Library. An archive of documents, correspondence and records from Carter’s administration concerning U.S. foreign policy and Iran in the years leading up to and following the revolution.
- Wilson Center Digital Archive. An international archive of Cold War documents relevant to the wider context of relations between global powers during the Iranian Revolution.
- Ervand Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions. A study of modern Iranian history, social classes, political movements, the Pahlavi state and the social and political background to the revolution.
Listing these sources does not mean endorsing every view expressed by the characters. They are offered so readers can investigate the history independently.
To be continued…
Naser Kamali
London, my small, cosy room.
Translator's notes
- Fifty-seven: The characters mean the Iranian year 1357, corresponding to 1978–79, when the revolution took place.
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