The Imaginary Bus: Khalo Who Foresaw His Own Death in a Dream — Volume One
The bus rolled on gently.
The London rain was no longer the downpour of a few minutes ago. It had become that persistent drizzle which seems too slight to warrant an umbrella, yet leaves you soaked after ten minutes.
The previous conversation still lingered somewhere among the seats. Nobody was eager to pick it up at once, but it had not really ended either.
I glanced in the mirror. The donkey had his head against the window and was looking out. He seemed terribly downcast, perhaps because of my jokes at his expense. But I loved him for how hard he worked; the teasing came from affection.
Still watching him in the mirror, I said, ‘Hard-working donkey, if my jokes upset you, tell me and I’ll stop.’
He turned towards me for a moment. There was something forlorn in his gaze. I thought I saw a tear run from the corner of his eye. As I watched, he suddenly brayed. I realised I had stopped paying any attention to the road. In any case, if there had been any hurt feelings, I thought we had settled them.
‘Why are you so quiet?’ I went on.
His ears twitched.
‘Thinking about migration, are you?’
He gave a short bray.
The woman in red laughed. ‘Perhaps he’s wondering whether he’s a migrant or an exile.’
‘An important distinction. We’ll have to establish whether he boarded this bus of his own free will or somebody drove him out of his stable.’
Laughter rang through the bus. The donkey turned and gave me a look suggesting that I had insulted not merely him but the entire donkey population of the world.
‘All right, don’t be cross. We’ll examine your case separately. If we can prove you were expelled from the stable for political reasons, we’ll officially recognise you as an exile.’
The newcomer laughed. Then, after a few moments, she asked, ‘What is the difference between a migrant and an exile?’
Nobody answered immediately. Not even me. It was a simple question without a simple answer.
The woman in red, who had been quiet until then, snapped shut the book in her hands. ‘It matters. Some people claim to be exiles so they can lord it over migrants.’ She fell silent, angry.
Lena rested her hands on her knees. ‘Perhaps we should begin by accepting that there isn’t always a neat line between them.’
‘So there’s no difference?’ the newcomer asked.
‘There ought to be,’ said the woman in red.
‘There is,’ Lena replied. ‘But people’s lives don’t always follow our tidy definitions.’
The monarchist, silent until now, raised his head. He glanced at Lena and me, then looked at the two sisters in surprise. Lena noticed and began carefully.
‘One person leaves home to study, another to work. One wants a better life. Another is escaping poverty, war or prison. Someone else can no longer stay because of what they believe. Another person might not know exactly why they left; they only know they could no longer live there.’
‘And some think they’re going away for two years,’ the woman in red said, ‘then realise thirty years later that they still haven’t gone back.’
‘Some still have the key to a house that might no longer exist,’ I said, ‘thirty years later.’
Nobody laughed. I had no idea why I had said it.
I had never had a home of my own, not for as long as I could remember. I didn’t believe in that private aspect of a home: private property. When Maryam and I lived together, she was even more opposed to owning anything than I was, and our circle saw that as a strength. So where had this business about a key come from?
Perhaps some sentences escape before they can ask your permission. A terrible habit. Fortunately the newcomer came to my rescue.
‘Where does exile begin, then?’ she asked.
I thought for a moment. ‘Perhaps where leaving becomes more than a change of geography.’
Lena looked at me.
‘Migration can be a choice. It can also be something less than a free choice. People leave for work, education, their children’s future, a thousand reasons. But exile usually carries something that isn’t printed on an airline ticket.’
‘What?’
‘The right to return without fear.’
A brief silence fell. Even the donkey stopped braying.
‘We mustn’t make that an absolute rule either,’ Lena said. ‘A migrant can feel the pain of separation. Migrants too can lose their homes, their language, their families. Years later they might have nowhere to return to.’
‘You’re right.’
‘Then perhaps the difference isn’t how much it hurts,’ said the woman in red.
‘Exactly,’ Lena said. ‘You can’t weigh one person’s suffering against another’s.’
The monarchist joined in for the first time. ‘I’ve never thought of myself as a migrant or an exile.’
We all turned towards him. Even the donkey.
‘But believe me, I don’t know what I am: exile, migrant, fugitive from my homeland, or whatever other label the government chooses to stick on me.’
‘After the events of 28 Mordad,’ I said, ‘people who were forced to flee were called “traitors who fled their homeland” by the leader of the day!’
The woman in red shot me a surprised sideways glance. The newcomer turned to the man. ‘Why?’
He paused. ‘Because when I left Iran, I thought I’d be away for only a few months.’
‘Why did you leave that paradise you’re always talking about?’ I asked.
He glared at me and went quiet. Nobody else spoke. Then he continued.
‘I took a few changes of clothes. I even left some of my things behind, thinking I would need them when I returned.’ A brief smile.
‘Why did you leave?’ the woman in red asked.
Instead of answering directly, he said, ‘When you think you’ll be back in a few months, there’s so much you don’t bring.’
‘And then?’ Lena asked.
‘A few months became a year. A year became several years. Eventually I stopped counting.’
‘Do you still have anything from that house?’ asked the woman in red.
He looked out of the window for a moment. ‘A key.’
Without meaning to, I eased my foot off the accelerator. The bus slowed.
‘The locks have probably been changed several times. Perhaps the door isn’t even there any more. But I kept the key.’
The donkey suddenly brayed. I turned. ‘Have you got one too?’
The woman in red burst out laughing, and the heaviness in the bus lifted a little.
‘If you’ve got the key to the stable, hand it over. You can’t keep public property in exile for forty years.’
Even the monarchist laughed: briefly, but genuinely.
‘Perhaps that key tells us something important about exile,’ Lena said.
‘What?’ asked the newcomer.
‘Sometimes a person leaves a country, but the country takes years to leave the person.’
I looked in the mirror. I liked that. I said nothing.
‘It isn’t only the soil,’ Lena went on. ‘You bring your language, memories, habits, favourite foods, fears, jokes, music, failures, even your old quarrels.’
‘Especially the old quarrels. We Iranians are experts at excess baggage.’
The woman in red glanced at her sister with a little smile. Her sister returned a rather irritated look.
‘Some people even bring their enemies along,’ I added.
It was the monarchist’s turn to glare at me. ‘They usually go in the hand luggage,’ I said, ‘in case the suitcase gets lost.’
The bus laughed again.
‘You’re joking,’ the monarchist said, ‘but that really is how it works. You arrive here and discover you’re still arguing with people you haven’t seen for forty years.’
‘We’ll have to report that to immigration. Imaginary enemies aren’t allowed in without a visa.’
Lena laughed, then grew serious. ‘Perhaps this is one of exile’s difficulties. Time doesn’t move at the same speed in both places.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked the newcomer.
‘You grow older here. You change; you learn. The society you left changes too. But the picture in your mind may still date from the day you went away.’
‘Doesn’t time move there?’ asked the woman in red.
The man said nothing. Lena continued.
‘You can spend years talking about a country that now exists partly in your memory alone.’
That landed harder than her earlier words.
‘Come now, madam!’ the monarchist said. ‘The land is still the same land, and that’s that!’
He looked at Lena. I expected a longer objection. Instead he asked, ‘Are you saying an exile has no right to talk about his country?’
‘Of course he has. What I mean is that distance isn’t measured only in miles. It can be measured in years. We all have to take care not to mistake memory for the present.’
He nodded. Not quite in agreement or disagreement. He had heard her. Sometimes being heard matters more than a hundred expressions of agreement.
‘There’s something else,’ said the woman in red. ‘A migrant usually tries to find a place in the new society. An exile has to do that too, but part of them may always be looking backwards.’
‘Like a driver who spends the whole journey watching the rear-view mirror,’ I said.
‘Dangerous,’ said the newcomer.
‘Very. Especially with a donkey sitting behind you.’
He protested at once.
‘See? He won’t even let us make a philosophical point.’
Laughter returned. But I kept thinking about the driver and the mirror. Perhaps exile could be like that. The road lay ahead, but your eyes kept searching behind you.
A house. A street. A mother. A friend. A comrade who was gone. A book left behind. A photograph you couldn’t take. A grave you couldn’t stand beside. Graves without stones, in a cemetery you couldn’t even visit freely. Comrades whose burial places you had never learned. Or your own youth, which you imagined was still walking through a street in that city.
The woman in red looked stunned.
‘You mean you have friends who were killed, and you don’t even know where they’re buried?’ the newcomer asked.
Tears ran down her cheeks. The monarchist stood bewildered in the middle of the bus.
As if she had read my mind, Lena said, ‘Perhaps that’s why the real question isn’t whether someone is a migrant or an exile.’
‘What is it, then?’ I asked.
‘What they do with these two lives.’
‘Two lives?’ said the newcomer.
‘The life left there, and the one built here.’
‘Sometimes neither is complete,’ the monarchist said.
‘Yes. But perhaps we don’t have to destroy one for the sake of the other.’
‘Can you hold on to the past and still live here?’ asked the woman in red.
‘If you can’t, exile becomes a waiting room.’
I turned. ‘A waiting room?’
‘Yes. You live for forty years, but inside your head you’re still waiting for the day your “real life” begins.’
I fell silent. Those words found an unexpected place in me. The monarchist was quiet too.
‘And if that day never comes?’ the newcomer asked.
Lena did not answer.
‘Then you might discover you’ve spent forty years sitting at the station while any number of trains have come and gone,’ I said.
The donkey brayed.
‘Yes, you’re the exception. You haven’t even bought a ticket.’
Everyone laughed. The monarchist reached into his jacket pocket and brought something out. A small key. He held it between two fingers.
‘This is it.’
‘The key?’ asked the newcomer.
He nodded. There was nothing remarkable about it, just an old piece of metal. Yet suddenly our whole discussion had taken shape. Migration and exile were no longer two words. They were a key to a door that might no longer exist.
Lena looked at it. ‘Keep it.’
‘Why?’
‘Not because you must use it to open that door one day. Because it reminds you where you came from.’ She paused. ‘Just don’t let it stop you opening other doors.’
He said nothing and put it back in his pocket. I looked towards the road. The light turned green, I touched the accelerator, and the bus moved off. In the mirror, the donkey was still staring at the man’s pocket.
‘Get any thought of stealing that key out of your head.’
He brayed.
‘It’s no use to you. Whether it opens that house or not, it won’t open the stable.’
‘Perhaps the donkey had a home he had to leave too,’ said the woman in red.
For a few seconds, I had no answer. In the mirror, he was no longer looking at us. He had turned back towards the window.
Outside, London slipped quietly past in the rain. Houses passed us one by one. For the first time I wondered whether the real question was who counted as a migrant and who as an exile. Perhaps the harder question was how many years you had to live somewhere before you could call it home. And if you did, would that betray the home you had left?
I said nothing. Some questions should not be answered straight away. They need to stay on the bus for a while, sit beside people, gaze through the window and travel with us to the next stop.
There will most definitely be more…
Naser Kamali
London, on a bus without a number, bound for home.
Translator’s notes
- 28 Mordad: The date in the Iranian solar calendar associated with the 1953 coup against Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh.
- Exile and refugee status: The characters are discussing lived experience and social labels here, rather than making legal findings about anyone’s status.
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