The Imaginary Bus: Khalo Who Foresaw His Own Death in a Dream — Volume One
‘But you didn’t tell us what part art played in history,’ said the woman in red, a mischievous note in her voice. ‘Perhaps once we understand that, we can better answer the question of why, if ordinary people really make history, their names are always buried under those of kings, generals and the rich.’
As usual, everyone looked at Lena.
‘The woman in red has a hand in art herself,’ the newcomer said.
Lena turned to her. ‘Comrade, you’re an artist. It’s your turn now.’
The woman in red blushed a little; a few drops of sweat appeared on her forehead. ‘You know I don’t have your knowledge. You begin, and I’ll join in as someone of the generation born in the 1360s.’
I noticed the monarchist was about to say something. I turned. ‘Before Lena starts, anyone with a view is welcome to join in.’ I looked more pointedly at him.
‘I have a hand in art too,’ he said. ‘Let me speak after the woman in red.’
‘You can begin, if you like,’ Lena offered.
‘No, after her.’
Lena drank a little more water, cleared her throat and said, ‘Very well. We’ll discuss art’s place in history, though I don’t mean a roll call of painters, poets, musicians and writers. I want to see how art is linked to people’s material lives, power, class, resistance and collective memory.’
The donkey gave a short bray.
‘We haven’t even begun. Please don’t request a live performance yet,’ I told him.
‘Perhaps he wants to know whether his voice counts as music or social protest,’ said the newcomer.
‘Depends who sold the tickets.’
The woman in red laughed.
‘Art is nearly as old as humanity itself,’ Lena said. ‘Before people had states, kings, armies or writing, they drew images, sang, danced, told stories and decorated objects.’
‘How do we know they sang? They didn’t have tape recorders,’ said the monarchist.
‘Their voices weren’t recorded. But early instruments, images associated with dance and communal rituals, and the survival of oral traditions tell us that music and shared movement were part of human life.’
‘Perhaps the first song was made when somebody dropped a huge stone on their foot,’ I said.
‘And the first arts critic said, “Keep it down; the child’s asleep,”’ said the woman in red.
The donkey brayed.
‘That performance can’t be turned down. The artist insists on the independence of his voice.’
‘Cave paintings weren’t necessarily just decoration,’ Lena continued. ‘They might have been connected to hunting, communal rites, teaching, fear, hope or people’s relationship with nature. We cannot be sure what every image meant, but we know people wanted to record their experience in a form outside their own bodies.’
‘Art was a kind of memory?’ the newcomer asked.
‘Yes. Before writing, images, sound, movement and spoken stories carried a group’s memory. Through art, people could pass on what they had seen, feared, desired or lost.’
‘Perhaps the first artist was someone who didn’t want a hunt, a death or a love to be forgotten,’ said the woman in red.
‘Exactly. From the beginning, art wasn’t only beauty. It was a struggle against forgetting.’
I shifted my hands on the wheel. ‘So we made art to stand against death right from the start?’
‘Perhaps that is part of it. People know they will die, but try to leave their voice, likeness, story or a mark made by their hands behind them.’
‘Every work of art says, in some way, “I was here,”’ the woman in red said softly.
The donkey gave a short bray.
‘He says, “I’m here now. No need to wait for history.”’
Lena smiled. ‘In early societies, art was often communal. Songs, dances and stories did not necessarily have a named owner. One person made something and later generations changed it. The work belonged to shared memory, not to one person’s private property.’
‘No copyright?’ asked the monarchist.
‘No. If someone sang another tribe’s tune, there was no solicitor’s letter,’ I said.
‘Perhaps they came round with a club,’ said the newcomer.
‘An early form of copyright law.’
‘As classes, states and religious institutions took shape, art’s position changed,’ Lena said. ‘Rulers discovered that images, architecture, poetry, music and ceremonies could make power look magnificent, natural and sacred.’
‘Is there anything wrong with building a beautiful palace?’ asked the monarchist.
‘Its beauty is a separate issue. We must ask who built it, where its cost came from, and why the ruler’s name survived while those of thousands of workers, builders, stonecutters and artists were forgotten.’
‘They called it such-and-such king’s palace, not the palace of the workers who built it,’ said the woman in red.
‘Exactly. Power appropriated more than the fruit of their work. It appropriated their names and their memory.’
I glanced at the monarchist. ‘The king might never have lifted a brick, yet the building went down in his name.’
‘He ordered it built.’
‘If I order a hospital built but contribute no money or bricks and do no work on it, does it become my hospital?’
‘Depends whether you have a crown,’ said the newcomer.
The donkey brayed.
‘He proposes naming it after whoever carried the bricks.’
‘Many great works of history were created by unnamed people working together,’ Lena said. ‘Temples, palaces, walls, carpets, sculptures, books and musical instruments were made by people whose names mostly went unrecorded.’
‘Being unnamed doesn’t mean they didn’t matter,’ said the woman in red. ‘Sometimes it means power prevented their names from surviving.’
‘Yes. Official history tends to preserve the name of the owner, patron or ruler more readily than that of the person who made the work with their hands.’
‘Without royal patronage, a great deal of art would never have existed,’ said the monarchist.
‘Court patronage did matter,’ Lena said. ‘Artists needed food, tools, time and safety. A court could provide those things. But its support was not unconditional. Usually the artist had to make something suited to the patron’s tastes, reputation and interests.’
‘So the artist ate, but wasn’t entirely free,’ said the newcomer.
‘Exactly. An artist could use the court’s resources to make something extraordinary. They might also be obliged to show a ruler as grander, handsomer, braver and fairer than he was.’
‘Old-fashioned Photoshop,’ I said.
‘Without a button for removing wrinkles,’ said the woman in red.
‘In those days they removed the king’s wrinkles by royal decree.’
Even the monarchist laughed.
‘Court poets sometimes wrote odes praising kings,’ Lena continued. ‘Some of the works have literary value. But we should also ask what image of power the poetry served.’
‘Didn’t a poet have the right to praise a king he liked?’ the monarchist asked.
‘Of course. The question isn’t whether praise should be banned. It is whether a different poet who criticised the same king also had safety, bread and the right to speak.’
‘Art is free only when both praise and criticism can be heard,’ said the woman in red.
‘Exactly. If a thousand poems praising a ruler survive while his critics’ poems were burned, or their authors killed or exiled, we cannot conclude from what remains that everyone adored him.’
‘An archive’s silence doesn’t always mean the people consented. Perhaps the dissenting voices were thrown out of it.’
‘That is one of art history’s problems,’ Lena said. ‘We tend to see what power was able to preserve. A stone palace survives for centuries, while the song a woman sang in a field can die with the last person who remembers it.’
‘The art of the less powerful was more vulnerable to being forgotten,’ the newcomer said.
‘Yes. Ordinary people always made art: lullabies, stories, proverbs, work songs, dances, embroidery, pottery, carpets, clothes, funeral traditions, humour and local theatre. But because much of it was spoken, everyday or communal, its makers’ names were less often recorded.’
‘Some people say ordinary people have no culture,’ said the woman in red, ‘though those very people grew up listening to their lullabies.’
‘And sat on their carpets giving lectures about their lack of culture,’ I said.
The donkey brayed loudly.
‘Yes, and your family carried the lecturers’ equipment.’
‘People’s art wasn’t only entertainment,’ Lena said. ‘It made work more bearable, passed on experience, brought people together in grief and sometimes became a language of protest that power could not easily silence.’
‘How can a song threaten power?’ asked the monarchist.
‘It can make something people feel separately into an experience they share. Someone who believes their pain is only their own problem hears it in a poem or song and realises they are not alone.’
‘That “not alone” is precisely what power fears,’ said the woman in red.
‘Yes. Art can turn scattered fears into shared awareness.’
‘One person sings under their breath, a second joins in, and suddenly the government discovers a choir,’ I said.
‘If the donkey joins, they’ll declare a state of emergency,’ said the newcomer.
He brayed.
‘Save choir practice for later.’
‘Writing allowed some literature and history to be recorded,’ Lena continued. ‘But not everyone could read or had the means to write. Scribes, priests, courtiers and a small number of other groups could record events.’
‘So whoever did the writing could decide what remained of history?’ asked the newcomer.
‘To a great extent. Though writers were not always free. A scribe might have to record a ruler’s victories while being forbidden to write of defeats, public hunger or rebellions.’
‘Perhaps the first censor sat beside the first writer,’ I said.
‘And said, “Delete this part. It harms the unity of the tribe,”’ the woman in red added.
‘You make everything political,’ said the monarchist.
‘If a ruler orders what is written and what is deleted, what shall we call it? Cooking?’ asked the woman in red.
‘Cooking is political too,’ I said, ‘especially when one person eats and another washes their plate.’
‘Art isn’t always directly political,’ Lena said. ‘A love song may simply be about longing. A painting may show nature. A story may speak of loneliness. But those works are made within particular societies and shaped by their language, resources and experience.’
‘No art is independent, then?’ asked the monarchist.
‘An artist can have relative independence. They can resist what power or the market wants and challenge the values of their age. But they don’t live outside history. Paint, paper, a printer, a venue, a publisher, education and the time to work are all connected to social conditions.’
‘Even who gets the chance to become an artist is a social question,’ said the woman in red.
‘Exactly. A child in a wealthy family may have tools, teaching and time, while a child with the same talent has to work from adolescence.’
‘Then history says one was a genius and the other never existed.’
‘Talent needs the social opportunity to flourish. Millions of potential poets, musicians, painters and writers may have lived and died without the chance to show what they could do.’
‘Especially women,’ said the newcomer.
‘Yes. In many societies women were long denied education, financial independence, a public role and the right to sign their work. Some of their art lived in the home, in fabric, lullabies, stories and crafts, but was often treated as “women’s work”, not art.’
‘If a man made an intricate pattern on a palace wall, he was an artist,’ said the woman in red. ‘If a woman made a pattern just as intricate on a carpet or cloth, she was merely doing her duty.’
‘Many of those women didn’t even leave their names on the work they laboured over for years,’ Lena said.
The newcomer stroked Coco’s head. ‘Perhaps that’s why so many lullabies are sad. A woman could sing something she was forbidden to say anywhere else.’
We were silent for a moment.
‘A lullaby isn’t only to put a child to sleep,’ said the woman in red. ‘Sometimes it is a mother’s confession when she herself has never had the chance to rest.’
I looked at the road. The rain had eased.
‘Some voices are so quiet official history cannot hear them.’
‘Yet those voices raised generations,’ Lena said.
‘As printing spread, more poetry, stories, images and ideas could be published. Art and literature gradually moved beyond the complete control of courts and religious institutions. Books and newspapers reached wider audiences.’
‘And the market replaced the court,’ said the monarchist.
‘To some extent. Artists might be freed from direct dependence on a king, only to depend on publishers, buyers and the market. A new freedom arose alongside a new kind of pressure.’
‘First you had to make something the king liked,’ said the woman in red. ‘Then you had to make something that would sell.’
‘Today it has to please the algorithm.’
The donkey brayed.
‘The algorithm liked that one,’ said the newcomer.
Lena laughed. ‘In times of revolution, art played an important role in bringing people together. Posters, anthems, theatre, cartoons, poems and newspapers could communicate political messages to people who might never read a philosophy book.’
‘So art became propaganda,’ said the monarchist.
‘Sometimes. Not all revolutionary art is great art, just as not all court art is worthless. We must distinguish an artwork’s artistic merit from its political role, even if they aren’t completely separable.’
‘Art can liberate people, and it can deceive them,’ said the woman in red.
‘Exactly. The same force used against injustice can also glorify a war, a leader, a race or an empire.’
‘So art is a knife that can cut bread or a person’s throat,’ I said.
‘A useful image, provided we remember art is more than a tool,’ Lena said. ‘Sometimes a work goes beyond its maker’s intention and acquires a new meaning.’
‘How?’ asked the monarchist.
‘A government might commission a film, anthem or building to display its strength. Later generations could see that same work as evidence of its fear and propaganda. The patron cannot always control what a work will mean.’
‘Art can testify against its own owner,’ said the newcomer.
‘Yes. A palace wall displays more than the king’s splendour. It also shows how far apart his life and his people’s were.’
‘Especially if people are queuing for bread outside,’ I said.
‘Industrialisation ushered art into another era,’ Lena said. ‘Photography, recorded sound, cinema, then radio and television allowed a single work to reach millions at once. You no longer needed to stand beside a musician to hear their music.’
‘As audiences grew, control became more concentrated,’ said the woman in red.
‘Yes. Whoever owned the printing press, studio, broadcasting network or media outlet could decide whose voice was heard and which artist went unnoticed.’
‘If people don’t like a work, they won’t buy it,’ said the monarchist.
‘People do choose,’ Lena said, ‘but they don’t choose in a vacuum. Advertising, capital, media access and endless repetition can shape taste. If one song is played a thousand times and another never gets heard even once, it’s hard to call that a completely free contest.’
‘Like a race where one person takes the bus and another goes on foot, and then we say the one who arrived first is more popular.’
The donkey brayed.
‘No, we haven’t arranged a separate vehicle for you.’
The woman in red looked at Lena. ‘May I come in now?’
Lena smiled. ‘I’ve been waiting for this moment.’
The woman in red took a deep breath. She was still a little flushed, but her initial anxiety had gone.
‘I was born in the 1360s in Iran. I opened my eyes to war, queues, news of executions and schools full of slogans. The walls spoke to us before we had learnt to read.’
‘You said you were born two years after the Pahlavi government fell,’ said the monarchist.
‘Yes. I hadn’t seen what came before, but every day I saw the consequences of the struggle over that past. Homes were full of conflicting stories. One person defended the revolution; another regretted it; one stayed silent; another spoke softly out of fear.’
Lena listened without interrupting.
‘Art wasn’t only something our generation saw in museums. It was on walls, in school exercise books, on cassette tapes, posters, book covers and clothes, even in the way people walked. The government wanted to use art to make a generation in its own image, but that generation found other ways to look and listen.’
‘Like the tapes passed from hand to hand in secret,’ said the newcomer.
‘Yes. A cassette could be more dangerous than a hundred banned books. A voice from somewhere else entered your room and told you the world wasn’t limited to what television showed.’
‘And you always kept a pen beside the player to wind the tape back in if it got stuck,’ I said.
The newcomer laughed. ‘Only our generation would understand that.’
‘Before the digital age, we were cassette surgeons.’
The donkey made a sound.
‘If you chewed a tape, even a pen wouldn’t put it right.’
‘For me, art was a way to feel that there was still something inside a person the government couldn’t possess completely,’ the woman in red said. ‘They might prescribe what you wore, censor a book, force an instrument into hiding or stop a film being screened. They still couldn’t lock up your imagination altogether.’
‘Because art isn’t merely an outward product,’ Lena said. ‘It is the ability to imagine something different from what exists.’
‘Exactly. When you paint, you don’t only show what is. Sometimes you make what could be.’
‘What kind of art do you make?’ the monarchist asked.
She paused. ‘I paint. I draw sometimes too. But for years I didn’t show anyone my work.’
‘She barely showed me,’ the newcomer said.
‘Why hide it?’ Lena asked.
‘Perhaps I thought it wasn’t good enough. Perhaps because a woman artist is judged by more than the government and the market. Her family, society, men and even other women pass judgement too.’
‘Male artists are judged as well,’ said the monarchist.
‘Yes. But if a man shuts himself in a room for hours to paint, people usually say he’s an artist. If a woman does the same, they ask who’s going to make dinner.’
‘Or they tell her to look after her life first and play artist later,’ said the newcomer.
‘So many women hide their work before anyone else even tries to censor it.’
‘Censorship doesn’t always begin in a government office,’ Lena said. ‘Sometimes it moves into an artist’s head.’
‘Yes. Perhaps the hardest censor is the voice inside saying you have no right to be taken seriously.’
Nobody spoke for a moment. Not even the monarchist.
‘Most of the people I paint have faces you can’t see in full,’ the woman in red went on. ‘Part of the face is always in shadow.’
‘Why?’ I asked.
She looked at me. ‘Perhaps my generation learnt not to show its whole face. We had one face at home, another at school, another in the street and yet another among friends.’
‘So your pictures aren’t only personal,’ Lena said. ‘They carry part of your generation’s historical experience.’
‘Perhaps. But I don’t think about historical materialism while I paint.’
‘Rest easy. Historical materialism is probably thinking about you while you paint,’ I said.
The donkey brayed.
‘He didn’t understand that either,’ said the newcomer.
‘I’m still working it out myself.’
Laughter filled the bus.
‘An artist need not keep a social theory before them while making a work,’ Lena said. ‘The experience of an age enters through language, colour, the body, memory and fear.’
‘Sometimes art shows something before you can explain it,’ said the woman in red.
‘Yes. Philosophy can need dozens of pages to develop an idea, while an image, a scene or a song can make you feel the same conflict in seconds.’
I looked at the monarchist. ‘Your turn. You said you had a hand in art.’
He shifted in his seat. ‘I practise calligraphy.’
‘Really?’ the newcomer asked.
‘Yes. Nastaliq script. Not as much in recent years, though.’
‘Why didn’t you tell us?’ asked the woman in red.
‘Nobody asked.’
‘Forty parts you’ve been talking, and at last you’ve told us something important about yourself,’ I said.
‘I don’t talk only about politics.’
The donkey brayed.
‘The minutes say you’ve mostly talked about monarchy.’
This time he smiled.
‘What has calligraphy taught you?’ Lena asked.
He looked at his hands. ‘Patience. If you hurry, the line goes wrong. If you press too hard, the pen breaks or the ink spreads. You must know when to let your hand move and when to hold it still.’
‘That’s beautiful,’ said the woman in red. ‘If only you exercised as much care in politics.’
He laughed. ‘In calligraphy, a letter has a shape before it has a meaning. Sometimes you write a word again and again before it finally becomes what you can see in your mind.’
‘What do you write most often?’ Lena asked.
‘Mostly poems by Hafez and Saadi. Sometimes Ferdowsi.’
‘Which king’s name have you written?’ asked the woman in red.
‘None of them.’
‘Dangerous,’ I said. ‘They might cancel your membership.’
Everyone laughed.
‘I defend monarchy,’ he continued, ‘but it doesn’t mean I only write a king’s name. Art is another place.’
‘Perhaps your experience shows we cannot sum a person up in a label,’ Lena said. ‘Someone may defend a political order I oppose, yet find in art a human experience through which we can talk.’
‘That doesn’t erase our political differences,’ said the woman in red.
‘Nor should it. Art shouldn’t conceal the truth of those differences. It can let us see the person behind them.’
‘When I write in calligraphy, I don’t think about the Shah,’ the monarchist said.
‘The third advance has occurred,’ I announced.
‘Which advance?’ asked the newcomer.
‘He’s finally left the king alone for a few minutes.’
The donkey brayed so loudly that even the monarchist laughed aloud.
‘Perhaps one day we’ll display his calligraphy on the bus,’ said the woman in red.
‘A travelling exhibition. Admission: a handful of hay for the artistic director.’
The donkey pricked up his ears.
‘Your conversation has brought out something important,’ Lena said. ‘Art isn’t solely the product of a ruling class or solely a weapon of those below it. It is a field of struggle. Power wants to possess it, the market wants to sell it, people want to live with it, and artists try to rescue something of their own experience through it.’
‘A work can mean several things at once?’ asked the newcomer.
‘Yes. A poem can evoke love for one person, prison for another, protest for someone else. Once made, a work enters the lives of people with different experiences.’
‘We still haven’t answered the last question from the previous part,’ said the woman in red. ‘Why are ordinary people’s names buried under those of kings and the powerful?’
‘This whole discussion was a way towards that question,’ Lena said. ‘Art shows that ordinary people were more than history’s labour force. They made its imagination, beauty, language and memory. But those with power often controlled the means of recording, preserving and naming works.’
‘Are you saying all history is a lie?’ asked the monarchist.
‘No. Calling all history a lie would close off understanding again. Official history recorded some of what happened, but usually brought certain parts forward and dimmed or excluded others.’
‘Like a photograph with a king in the centre,’ I said, ‘where nobody asks who held the camera.’
‘Or who sewed his clothes, built the set, arranged the lighting and brought in the crowd,’ said the woman in red.
‘History written from above names those who held power. History from below tries to see the people at the edge of the frame, or left out of it altogether,’ Lena said.
‘Workers, women, peasants, enslaved people, migrants and prisoners,’ said the newcomer.
‘And children, minorities, craftspeople, nurses, servants, ordinary soldiers and millions more who lived, made things and died without their names being recorded.’
‘You can’t put everybody’s name in a book,’ said the monarchist.
‘True. The point isn’t to compile a list of every person. It’s to understand which forces actually made history, rather than reduce it to the will of a few “great” individuals.’
‘When we say a king built a road,’ I said, ‘we ought to remember he wasn’t out there beside it with a spade.’
‘When we say a general won a war,’ said the woman in red, ‘we should see the thousands of soldiers who don’t even get a footnote.’
‘The same applies to art,’ Lena said. ‘Hundreds of unnamed builders and workers may stand behind a famous architect. A large team works on a film. Behind a song stands the experience of a generation whose name may not appear on its sleeve.’
‘What about the individual artist?’ asked the monarchist. ‘Do you deny genius?’
‘No. Individuality, talent and creativity are real. But artists receive language, tools, stories and experience from society, and their work cannot reach an audience without others’ labour. Recognising the collective does not erase the individual.’
‘Just as recognising an individual shouldn’t make the collective invisible,’ said the woman in red.
Lena nodded.
The bus passed a wall covered with a large painting: coloured faces emerging from the grey lines of the city. I slowed down.
‘Who painted it?’ asked the newcomer.
The woman in red looked. ‘I can’t see a signature.’
‘Perhaps it’s the council’s,’ said the monarchist.
‘There we go,’ I said. ‘The first question is who owns the wall, not who painted it.’
‘Perhaps that wall is our discussion in miniature,’ Lena said. ‘We see the work but not its maker’s name. The missing name doesn’t make the work disappear.’
The donkey brayed softly.
‘Quite right. He’s carried loads for thousands of years without anybody putting up so much as a statue.’
‘Perhaps the first work in our travelling exhibition should be a portrait of the donkey,’ said the woman in red.
‘I’ll write his name in Nastaliq,’ said the monarchist.
‘And she can paint him,’ said the newcomer.
‘I’ll explain his place in the history of production,’ said Lena.
‘I’ll sell the tickets. Every artistic movement needs an economic manager,’ I said.
The donkey brayed loudly.
‘He objects,’ said the woman in red. ‘The proceeds must be shared equally.’
‘The exhibition hasn’t even opened and we’re already quarrelling over ownership of the means of production.’
Laughter filled the bus. Yet behind it the unsigned wall remained in my mind. Across history, millions of hands had built, carved, woven, written, played and painted, but many of their names had been recorded nowhere.
I put my foot on the accelerator again. The bus moved gently on. A new question took a seat beside the old one:
If art is humanity’s cry against forgetting, who decided which voices would be kept and which would fall silent for ever?
To be continued…
Naser Kamali
Translator’s notes
- The 1360s: In Iran’s solar calendar, this roughly corresponds to the 1980s in the Gregorian calendar. The speaker’s ‘generation’ refers to those born during that decade.
- Nastaliq: A flowing style of Persian calligraphy, long associated with poetry.
- Hafez, Saadi and Ferdowsi: Major Persian poets whose verses are often used in calligraphic works.
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