The Imaginary Bus: Khalo Who Foresaw His Own Death in a Dream — Volume One
Everyone looked at one another. Lena’s position was more or less clear: the way she sat and watched us suggested she had plenty to say, the kind of things that might keep her talking for another two stops.
The monarchist had turned towards the window. He studied the street outside as though London’s architecture had suddenly become a matter of life and death.
I caught his eye in the mirror. ‘Some people have developed an intense interest in London town planning today.’
He did not move. The newcomer laughed. Lena had noticed too, and she was not inclined to let him off so easily.
She shifted in her seat. ‘Very well. In the interests of equality between women and men, I propose that the woman in red put her book aside and tell her story this time.’
‘How democratic!’ I said.
‘Why?’
‘You decided who should speak, then called it equality.’
The newcomer burst out laughing.
‘If this is democracy, I’m already worried about what your dictatorship will be like.’
The woman in red closed her book gently. Her usual mischievous smile lifted the corner of her mouth and made a small dimple in her cheek. I had yet to decide whether the dimple came from shyness, mischief or a mixture of both.
‘That smile is dangerous. When you smile like that, I never know whether you’re about to tell us a memory or plot against one of us.’
‘If you keep talking, my first plot will concern the driver.’
The donkey brayed.
‘See? You have an opposition movement already.’
She put the book aside, though her hand rested on its cover for a few seconds.
‘My story is different from yours.’
‘Good. If it’s like mine, the reader will shut the book.’
She smiled. ‘When I left Iran, I was not escaping prison. Nobody was pursuing me. I had got married.’
‘The case sounds suspicious already.’
She looked at me. ‘Am I telling this or are you?’
‘Please continue, madam in red.’
‘Before I married, I had a life of my own in Tehran. I lived in my parents’ home, but that didn’t mean I had no independence. I had my friends and my own comings and goings. I knew the city, spoke my own language, had family nearby. For ordinary tasks I never had to ask what people said here, how things were done there, how to fill in a form or which road to take.’
She paused. ‘Then I married and moved to another country.’
‘What was hardest at first?’ Lena asked.
‘If I say loneliness, I give the easy answer. I was lonely, but there was more to it.’ She thought for a moment. ‘When you move because of marriage, many people assume you cannot have a problem because your spouse is there. “You’re not alone. You have a home, a life. What’s wrong?”’
She took her hand off the book. ‘What’s wrong is that suddenly your whole new life may have to pass through one person.’
Lena watched carefully.
‘They know the language better, the laws, the bank, the offices. If you cannot find somewhere, you ask them. A letter arrives that you do not understand and you show it to them. Someone calls and speaks too quickly, so you pass them the phone. Gradually you may realise that the woman who had her own identity in Tehran is depending on another person for the simplest things in this new place.’
‘That dependence must hurt when it wasn’t something you chose,’ I said.
‘It does. Very much.’ She gave a brief smile. ‘My first memory is of a simple shopping trip.’
‘At last, the incident!’
‘There was no incident. That is the point. One day I decided to shop on my own. Nothing major, just a few ordinary household things. I more or less knew the way and had money with me. What could be easier? I left the house and reached the shop. Everything went well until I got to the till. The cashier asked me something. I didn’t understand. She repeated it. I still didn’t understand. There was a queue behind me and I felt everyone staring.’
‘Probably nobody was,’ I said.
‘I later realised that was probably true. At the time, I felt the whole shop was waiting to see why this woman couldn’t answer. The cashier asked again. I tried the few words I knew. She didn’t understand me; I didn’t understand her. We finally settled it with gestures. I paid, took my things and left.’
‘The shopping revolution had triumphed!’
She looked at me, then laughed herself. ‘Mock me, but outside the shop I felt strange.’
‘How?’
‘Ashamed and angry.’
‘With the cashier?’
‘No. With myself.’
That silenced me.
‘I thought, “In Tehran you managed so much on your own. Now one simple question at a till has left you flustered?”’
‘So it wasn’t only about language,’ Lena said softly.
‘No. It was about how I saw myself. I thought of myself as a woman capable of running her life. Migration kept putting me in situations where I felt I was no longer that woman. When I got home I said nothing. I put the shopping on the table. But the next day I went out again.’
‘To the same shop?’ asked the newcomer.
‘The same shop.’
‘Why?’
Her mischievous smile returned. ‘I refused to let that cashier go down as the victor in the history of my life!’
The bus laughed. Even the monarchist turned briefly from the window.
‘He’s tired of London architecture at last,’ I said.
He turned back, but I had seen his smile.
‘This time I practised a few sentences before I went. I bought my things and reached the till. I still didn’t understand half what the cashier said, but I didn’t panic. I asked her to repeat it, to say it more slowly.’ She shrugged. ‘I bought my shopping and went home.’
‘That’s all?’
‘That’s all.’
‘And that’s the memory?’
‘Khalo, some migrant victories are so small that people laugh when you tell them.’
‘But they aren’t small to the person living through them,’ Lena said.
The woman in red nodded. ‘Exactly.’
‘Years passed. I worked, learnt the language and the place better, went into business and succeeded. I was no longer the woman at the till.’
‘So the story is over?’
‘No. There’s the second suitcase.’
‘Which one?’
‘London.’
The bus grew quiet again.
‘For reasons whose every detail I needn’t explain here, that life too ran into difficulties. Personal matters and circumstances led me to make another big decision. This time the destination was London.’
‘You began all over again.’
‘Yes, but this time it was different.’
‘How?’ Lena asked.
‘When I first moved, parts of my identity were still taking shape. I had married, moved abroad and was learning to live in a new place. When I came to London, I was no longer that woman. I’d lived for years, worked, succeeded in business, solved problems, earned money, made decisions, made mistakes, failed and got up again. Now I had to take all that experience into a city that did not know me.’
‘Language wasn’t the only problem this time,’ said the newcomer.
‘Not at all. This time the problem was that you knew who you were, but the city didn’t.’
That caught my attention. ‘Say that again.’
‘You know who you are, but the city doesn’t.’
I fell silent.
‘When I arrived in London, nothing was written on my forehead to tell the city that I’d run a business, done well, gained experience and learnt to fend for myself. To London I was simply a newly arrived woman. Perhaps that is one of the hardest things about a second migration. The first time you are still making yourself. The second time you may have to prove all over again what you have already made.’
‘What’s your London memory?’ Lena asked.
She thought, then smiled. ‘A rainy day.’
‘Rain? In London? Extraordinary!’
‘Shut up, Khalo.’
Everyone laughed.
‘I hadn’t been here long. I had a business appointment, something to do with starting work again and building new contacts. I left the house neat and tidy, properly dressed, documents ready. I’d checked the address several times.’
‘Everything under control so far.’
‘Wait. I came out of the station and it began to rain. Not the romantic rain in films. Real London rain — the sort where the wind decides your umbrella must join the conversation. I opened it. The wind caught it. It turned inside out.’
The newcomer burst out laughing.
‘There I was on the pavement with an inverted umbrella, my bag of documents, hair that bore no resemblance to how it had looked ten minutes earlier, and an appointment I could not be late for.’
‘Your famous composure was in danger!’
The little dimple appeared again. ‘Temporarily.’
The donkey brayed.
‘He confirms it.’
The monarchist suddenly turned round. ‘Let the donkey speak for himself.’
For a second the bus went quiet. Then everyone laughed.
‘You’re alive! I thought you’d migrated through the window.’
He said nothing, but did not turn completely back towards the glass.
‘I folded the umbrella. It was no use. I ran, reached the building soaked and out of breath, and went inside. The woman at the desk looked at me and said, “Dreadful weather, isn’t it?”’
‘And you?’
‘I began to laugh. Not at her. At myself. Years earlier, in another country, I’d been ashamed at a till because I couldn’t understand a simple question. Here I was in London, arriving at a business meeting with a broken umbrella and wet clothes, and I was no longer afraid of such things.’
‘How did the meeting go?’
‘Well.’
‘Did you get the work?’
She paused. ‘Whatever happened with that particular opportunity matters less to this memory than what happened next. It was still raining when I came out. I had no umbrella, so I walked in the rain. Suddenly I thought, “You’re beginning again.” Not from zero. That matters. Beginning again, but not from zero.’
‘A great difference,’ Lena said quietly.
‘Enormous. When migrants begin again, they aren’t zero. They may have little in their bank account or a smaller circle of friends. Their qualification might not be valued as highly here, and nobody may recognise their employment history. But they themselves have not become zero. They still have experience, failures, skills. Even their mistakes are a resource if they don’t repeat them.’
She paused, her voice gentler. ‘London was not only a place for work and a fresh start for me.’
The newcomer looked at her. Lena said nothing. I watched in the mirror. For a moment the woman in red looked down at the closed book on her lap.
‘Perhaps in London… I fell in love too.’
This time nobody laughed. Not even me. She said ‘perhaps’ in a way that left me unsure whether she doubted the love or was simply cautious about saying it aloud.
‘Perhaps?’ asked the newcomer.
The woman in red gave her faint, mischievous smile. ‘Some things are spoiled if you explain them completely.’
‘At last, a sentence even I can’t mock.’
‘Don’t be too quick.’
We laughed.
‘I don’t know whether to say I fell in love or, for the first time, saw love in another way. Perhaps I merely thought I had found it. But the important thing was that this time love would not take the place of my independence.’
‘What do you mean?’ Lena asked gently.
‘When you’re young, you can mistake love for becoming one person. You imagine that two people in love must have the same wishes, take the same path and sometimes even share a single personality. But I was no longer that young woman who had left Tehran with a suitcase. Life had taught me that two people can be close without one disappearing into the other. If there was love this time, I wouldn’t make myself smaller to keep it. I wouldn’t let my entire life pass through one person again. I wouldn’t set aside the independence I’d worked so hard to rebuild in exchange for being loved.’
The bus grew quiet enough for the engine to be heard more clearly.
‘London was more than a second migration, then,’ I said.
‘Yes.’ She thought. ‘For me, London was a small personal revolution.’
‘Revolution?’
‘Don’t worry, Khalo. This one won’t topple a government.’
The donkey brayed.
‘He seems disappointed.’
A little laughter passed through the bus.
‘My revolution wasn’t against a government. It was against parts of myself I had thought unchangeable: fear of being alone, the idea that beginning again meant failure, the notion that success could be measured only by money and business, and perhaps even the belief that love meant leaning so hard on somebody else that you could no longer stand without them.’
‘Love was part of growing more sure of yourself,’ Lena said.
‘Perhaps.’ That ‘perhaps’ again. The dimple returned. ‘Perhaps I found love. Perhaps love helped me find myself more clearly. I still don’t know which is truer.’
‘Leave that alone,’ I said. ‘Let it stay as it is.’
‘Why?’ asked the newcomer.
‘Some answers stop being stories if you make them too certain.’
The woman in red looked at me without a word for a moment. ‘Perhaps that’s the first sensible thing you’ve said.’
‘Please record the date and time.’
Lena laughed.
‘What I do know,’ the woman in red said, ‘is that I wasn’t the same woman when I came to London as when I left Tehran. And I’m no longer the woman who first came to London either. Each stage took something and gave me something: marriage, the first migration, loneliness, dependence, work, success, difficulties, another migration, London, and perhaps love. They changed me. I don’t claim to have all the answers now. Perhaps I’m just a little more mature.’
‘A little?’
She laughed. ‘Don’t get cheeky.’
‘For me, maturity means that I no longer need to tell myself such certain stories. I can say this decision was good and that one was a mistake. I loved this person; another hurt me. Here I succeeded; there I failed. I needn’t divide my entire life into two columns headed victory and defeat.’
‘May I?’ Lena asked.
‘May you what?’
‘Do the psychology.’
The woman in red looked at me.
‘I take no responsibility. You started this dictatorship yourself.’
Lena laughed. ‘There is an important difference between these two migrations. In the first, the new surroundings temporarily made some abilities she knew she possessed harder to use. Her language, social network, understanding of the rules and everyday tasks had all changed.’
‘She wasn’t less capable, but she felt it,’ said the newcomer.
‘Exactly. In the second migration she also carried all that earlier experience. London was therefore more than a threat; it held the possibility of rebuilding.’
‘As I said: beginning again, not from zero,’ said the woman in red.
Lena nodded. ‘Perhaps that gives the question of love its meaning too. A relationship built on dependence at one stage of life may, at another, be built on choice.’
‘Professor, take care not to turn love into a diagram too,’ I said.
She laughed. ‘I’m finished.’
The woman in red picked up her book.
‘No, no. One question remains,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘If you saw that woman at the shop till today, what would you tell her?’
The mischievous smile came back. She thought for a moment.
‘I’d tell her not to be ashamed. There is no shame in not understanding. Ask again. If you still don’t understand, ask once more. If someone is waiting behind you, let them wait. You haven’t become stupid. You’ve entered a world whose language and rules you haven’t learnt yet.’
She paused. ‘And I’d tell her that one day she won’t merely do her shopping by herself. She’ll rebuild her life herself. She’ll work and succeed. Perhaps she’ll pack another suitcase. Perhaps it will look like starting from zero again, though she isn’t zero. And perhaps one day in a rainy city she’ll fall in love again when she least expects it, or at least think she has found love. But this time, remember: you don’t have to lose yourself to love somebody else.’
Nobody spoke. I stayed quiet for a few seconds too.
‘And the London umbrella?’ I asked.
She laughed. ‘Don’t buy a cheap one.’
Everyone burst out laughing. The donkey brayed louder than them all.
‘At last, the first economic and scientific finding of this discussion.’
The woman in red opened her book.
‘Wait. We aren’t finished.’
‘What else do you want?’
I gestured towards the monarchist. ‘I want to know how long this gentleman intends to pretend that the view outside the bus is more interesting than what’s going on inside.’
Everyone looked at him. He looked first at me, then Lena, then the woman in red, and began to turn back towards the window.
‘No,’ said Lena.
He stopped.
‘See? The dictatorship has begun,’ I said.
‘Equality between women and men,’ Lena replied.
‘With psychology for a weapon!’
The woman in red gave her mischievous smile, and the little dimple returned. The monarchist sighed. For the first time I felt his long silence might conceal more than political stubbornness. Perhaps he had a memory he did not want to tell. Perhaps avoiding this game was part of the memory itself.
I kept my foot on the accelerator. The bus moved along the wet London street.
One suitcase had been packed in Tehran; another, years later, for London. Now I understood that each migration does not start a person from zero. Some things will not fit in a suitcase: the old language, failures, skills, fears, confidence, love, and the stubborn part of a person that says after every fall: I’ll begin again, but not from zero.
I glanced at the monarchist in the mirror. This time he was looking at me too.
‘Well?’
He said nothing. Lena smiled. The woman in red had opened her book, but I doubted she was reading. Perhaps her thoughts were still walking through that London rain beside a broken umbrella. Perhaps they were with a love she had found, or perhaps she was not yet ready to call it love.
I asked nothing more. Some memories need company up to a certain point; then you must let them go on their own way.
The next part seemed to be choosing itself. The monarchist was still quiet. But he was no longer looking outside.
To be continued.
Naser Kamali
London, in my uncle’s library in Barnet.
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