The Imaginary Bus: Khalo Who Foresaw His Own Death in a Dream — Volume One
The monarchist set down his water bottle. ‘I’ve given you a very brief account of my life in Iran and a little of my time abroad. If I’m to go on, I have two conditions.’
I watched him in the mirror. ‘Go ahead.’
‘First, Khalo mustn’t heckle me in the middle of my story.’
The woman in red laughed. ‘A demanding condition,’ said Lena.
‘Perhaps the most demanding we’ve heard on this bus,’ the newcomer added.
‘Agreed,’ I said.
He looked doubtful. ‘Just like that?’
‘Just like that.’
‘You promise?’
‘I promise.’
The woman in red gave her mischievous smile.
‘Second,’ the man said, ‘if I tell you something and say it is personal, promise it will be buried here.’
Nobody laughed this time.
‘Agreed,’ Lena said. The woman in red and her sister nodded.
‘Nothing leaves this bus,’ I said.
He glanced at the donkey. ‘What about him?’
I pressed my lips together and looked at the woman in red.
‘Well done. You’re still resisting,’ she said.
He laughed. ‘I’ll begin, then.’ He shifted in his seat.
‘You can’t sum up the lives of Iranian students in London in those years in a single sentence. We came from one country, but sometimes lived in several different Londons. One evening a handful of Iranian students might gather in a small room, perched on the floor, chairs and edge of a bed, arguing about politics. Leaflets on the table, tea close by, one cigarette after another. One spoke, another interrupted. One said the struggle must take this course; another said no, that political line was wrong. Sometimes I wondered how the Iranian government was still standing when they had overthrown it three times in a little London room!’
The woman in red laughed. So did I, but I said nothing.
He pointed a finger at me. ‘That’s better.’
‘Some students who opposed the Shah genuinely devoted their lives to politics. Some were involved with the Confederation or other student opposition activity: meetings, leaflets, demonstrations, collecting funds, endless discussions. At times politics took all their free hours.
‘What interests me today is that they weren’t one uniform group. Two opponents of the government could argue for an hour over one word. One accused the other of being too far to the right. The second said the first had gone too far left. A third declared that neither understood the real problem.’
‘So they didn’t argue only with the Shah?’ the newcomer asked.
‘Far from it. Sometimes I thought that even if Iran’s government had no other opponents, they would find enough reasons to quarrel among themselves.’
Lena smiled. ‘I can’t entirely refute that.’
‘A few streets away, another group of Iranian students might be living in a different world altogether. As the weekend approached, their main questions weren’t about Iranian politics: Where are we going tonight? Which disco? Who has a car? Who has met someone new? Who’s coming? Who has money? Music, clothes, dancing, girlfriends, boyfriends, parties. For them London wasn’t a political city. It was a great city where young people could try things they had perhaps never experienced before.’
He paused. ‘Some went to casinos too.’
‘And you?’ asked the newcomer at once.
‘I’m discussing the sociology of Iranian students.’
Lena burst out laughing.
‘That wasn’t an answer,’ said the woman in red.
‘Wasn’t I meant to tell my story?’ he asked with a laugh.
I was fit to burst. A remark reached the tip of my tongue, but the woman in red caught my eye in the mirror and raised a finger. I swallowed it.
‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘For some, casinos were entertainment. For others, a thrill. For a few, unfortunately, they became more than a pastime. There was another group too: not interested in endless political arguments, but not especially drawn to discos and casinos either. Their plan was simple. Finish studying, get the qualification, go back to Iran. One studied engineering, another medicine, another management or a technical subject. University in the morning, library in the afternoon, study at night. Even if they went out at the weekend, they did not want their lives in pieces on Monday morning.’
‘Were the three groups separate?’ asked the newcomer.
‘No. That’s exactly the mistake we mustn’t make. They had no hard borders. A politically active student might go dancing on Saturday night. Someone who said they had nothing to do with politics might argue until three in the morning when news came from Iran. Someone might attend one political meeting from curiosity and never go back. Real lives aren’t so tidy.’
He continued. ‘Sometimes these worlds met. Two political students began an argument at a party. Music was playing and everyone else was dancing while they stood against a wall debating Iran’s future. Half an hour later one of them was on the dance floor.’
‘The revolution closed for the duration of the song?’ asked the woman in red.
‘More or less.’
The donkey brayed. We all looked at him. I stayed quiet.
‘Are you feeling all right, Khalo?’ the man asked.
‘I’m beginning to worry.’
Laughter filled the bus. Then he became more serious.
‘There was something I didn’t understand in those days. Some students worked as well as studying, at weekends, in the evenings, sometimes at night. In a restaurant, a shop, whatever they could find. They arrived in class tired. I sometimes asked why they put themselves through it. To me, working alongside a degree seemed a strange choice.’
‘Because you didn’t need to?’ Lena asked.
‘Exactly. It’s easier to admit now than it was then. When you have money, other people’s difficulties can look simple from a distance. You may even offer them advice: “Why don’t you study harder? Why work so much? Why are you tired?” You’ve never had to choose between hours of paid work and hours with your books.’
He paused. ‘I learnt later.’
Nobody asked how. We knew he would tell us.
After looking out of the window for a while, he said, ‘The money from Iran stopped coming.’
That was all. No introduction or explanation. One sentence: the money did not come any more.
‘At first I thought it was temporary. A few weeks, perhaps a month. Everything was in turmoil; it would settle. I had some money and began to spend it. The first month I wasn’t very worried. The second I made a few calculations. By the third, the numbers began speaking to me.’
‘What did they say?’ asked the newcomer.
He gave a wry smile. ‘“Sir, your old life is over.” I sat down for the first time and wrote out my costs: rent, food, travel, books, university. Before, I knew the prices of many things without feeling them. Those are two different things. You can know what a meal costs. Once money is scarce, the number becomes a decision. Shall I eat? Eat less? Buy this book or borrow it? Walk or take the bus? Go out this week or stay in?’
‘Money stopped being a number and became a choice,’ said Lena.
‘Yes. Little choices that filled the day. Once I stood before a shop window looking at something I would previously have bought without thinking. I saw the price, did the arithmetic and walked away. Perhaps that sounds trivial to many people. To me it mattered. For the first time I understood that “I won’t buy it” is not the same as “I can’t buy it”.’
The woman in red watched him quietly.
‘Gradually the pleasures went. First the things that weren’t necessary; then other expenses. I looked for work I could do around my studies. The same students I’d watched, wondering why they made themselves so tired, were now before my eyes. Only this time I was one of them.’
‘Was it hard?’ Lena asked.
He laughed. ‘Much harder than I expected. Class in the morning, then work, the journey back, the books. Sometimes I read the same page three times without knowing what it said. Not because it was difficult. My eyes were open; my brain was asleep.’
‘Did you carry on?’ asked the newcomer.
‘For a while. I tried. I kept telling myself it would come right. Bear it a little longer, work a little more, spend a little less. But eventually the sums simply would not add up.’
He paused. ‘I had to leave university.’
The silence in the bus was different now. Not the sorrow of a love story or the weight of political argument. Something simpler and perhaps more bitter: a man recalling the day he could no longer afford to study.
‘I walked a long way on the day I decided to set university aside for the time being. I didn’t want to go home. I felt that if I went in and closed the door, the decision would become real. So I walked with no destination. Finally I sat down, and for the first time I truly felt I had failed.’
‘Did you tell anyone?’ the woman in red asked softly.
‘Not everyone. I hid it from some people. If they asked how university was going, I changed the subject. If they asked about my studies, I answered briefly. I didn’t want to say I couldn’t carry on.’
‘Why?’ Lena asked.
He was quiet for a while. ‘Shame.’ He said it softly. ‘I’d always imagined poverty and money problems happened to other people. Then I discovered a bank account doesn’t ask about your political opinions. When it’s empty, it’s empty.’
Lena lowered her head without analysing him.
‘Perhaps the hardest part wasn’t having no money. It was the crack in the picture I had of myself. I thought I was independent because I lived alone in London. My family were thousands of miles away and I took care of my own affairs. When the money stopped, I saw how much of my independence had rested on funds coming from those same thousands of miles away.’
‘That must have hurt,’ said the newcomer.
‘It did. Perhaps I needed to learn it, though. For a while I only worked. Life had grown smaller — not necessarily worse, just simpler. The question at weekends was no longer where to go, but how many hours of work I had.
‘Then something else happened. I learnt that the road back to education hadn’t closed for ever. There were courses and resources I could use without the costs I’d always assumed were necessary. Some education and public facilities were accessible. For someone whose studies had always been paid for by his family, that was a strange discovery: I could learn even when they could no longer afford to pay.’
‘Did you go back?’ Lena asked.
‘Yes. Not that day, and not easily. But I went back. Studying felt different. Before, a book on the table was simply a book. Now it was an opportunity. A class wasn’t merely a class, but a chance I had lost once and found again.’
‘Did those public resources change your outlook?’ the woman in red asked.
He thought. ‘They changed some things. I don’t claim I became a new man overnight. I didn’t. But I could no longer look at someone using free provision or public help quite as I might have done before. I had sat on their side of the desk.’
‘Experience had changed where you stood,’ said Lena.
‘Yes. Before, if someone said, “I can’t study without that support,” I might have thought, “Work harder.” Then I worked, got tired, studied, counted, cut back, and still couldn’t do it. I learnt that sometimes the trouble isn’t lack of effort. Sometimes the sums genuinely refuse to add up.’
A brief silence followed. Then he laughed. ‘There was one benefit, mind you.’
‘What?’ asked the newcomer.
‘I finally learnt what things cost!’
We all laughed, and the donkey brayed.
‘Why is he laughing?’ the man asked him.
I could restrain myself no longer. ‘He’s worked all his life and still hasn’t got a bank account.’
Laughter rang through the bus.
‘The first condition has officially expired,’ said the woman in red.
‘I kept it when it mattered.’
‘Fair enough,’ the man said with a laugh. Then he grew serious again.
‘If I had to take one thing from that period, it would be this. Before the money stopped, I thought independence meant living far from your family, in another country, without anyone watching over you. Going where you pleased, studying what you liked. Afterwards I realised economic independence is different. When you know that if no money arrives tomorrow you still have to keep living, you begin to learn what standing on your own feet means.’
‘And the students who worked and studied?’ Lena asked.
He smiled. ‘They no longer seemed strange.’
‘What about the politically active ones?’ asked the woman in red.
He laughed. ‘You aren’t going to turn me into a leftist at the end of every memory!’
We burst out laughing.
‘I didn’t ask,’ Lena said.
‘Your eyes did.’
She laughed too. The bus felt lighter again.
I watched him in the mirror. This time the monarchist was neither defending the Shah nor arguing about the revolution with Lena. He was speaking of something no political label could fully explain: the day the money ran out, the day he had to set aside his studies, the shame he hid for a while, the work he had to take, and the opportunity he found somewhere he had previously given little thought to.
Perhaps people do not always change through books and political arguments. Sometimes overdue rent teaches more about class than a hundred pages. Sometimes work after university shows you another kind of exhaustion. Sometimes access to free education turns an idea you have only heard about into an experience. And sometimes you must lose what you have always had to recognise what a privilege it was.
He picked up the water bottle and drank a little. ‘That’s all.’
‘Are you sure?’ Lena asked.
‘For tonight, yes.’
The woman in red gave her mischievous smile. ‘We still haven’t cleared up the casino.’
‘I said some people!’ he replied at once.
The donkey brayed.
‘We have a witness,’ I said.
Even the monarchist laughed aloud.
The bus moved through London: a city of struggle for some of those students, dancing and pleasure for others, books and degrees for others still. For this man, at one point in his life, it had become the place where he learnt that the distance between having and not having may be no more than the money that always arrived… until the day it did not.
To be continued.
Naser Kamali
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