The Imaginary Bus: Khalo Who Foresaw His Own Death in a Dream — Volume One
A heavy silence had settled over the bus, and nobody dared disturb it. The monarchist’s words about Saeed Soltanpour still seemed to hang among the seats. Even the donkey, for once, was quiet.
In the end, that generation born in the Iranian 1360s came to our rescue. The woman in red gave me a mischievous look and asked with a gesture, ‘What will you give me if I get us out of this?’
I looked at her. ‘You really are a child of the 1360s.’
Her wicked smile widened, and the little dimple appeared in her cheek.
‘Anything you want,’ I said. ‘Just do something to break this silence.’
She had plainly been waiting for permission. She jumped straight in, turning to the monarchist. ‘For all that, our dear friend hasn’t quite finished his story.’
He raised his head, taken aback.
‘You never told us what you did when the money from Iran stopped coming. You couldn’t live on memories, poetry and university alone. You needed money, didn’t you?’
He opened his mouth, but she gave him no chance.
‘And that leader of yours, the one who fled and, according to the stories, couldn’t find a country that would have him—did he send you any help, or just a lot of hot air?’
The atmosphere broke at once. The monarchist stared at her, uncertain whether to take offence or laugh. Lena laughed. ‘We’ll come to that as well.’
The newcomer did not laugh. She shot her sister a sharp look. ‘Would they have thought you’d lost your voice if you’d kept quiet?’
The woman in red raised her eyebrows. Nobody backed her up. Even I, who had offered her anything a moment before to end the silence, realised I had made a dangerous bargain.
Lena said calmly, ‘Your turn will come soon enough.’
‘My turn?’
‘Yes, yours.’
‘But I’ve spoken.’
‘Whenever your turn comes, you throw in a remark and then hide behind your laughter.’
The woman in red pressed a hand to her chest. ‘Me?’
‘Yes, you personally,’ said Lena.
‘At last someone has told her,’ said the newcomer.
The woman in red turned to her sister. ‘You too?’
‘Me especially.’
The donkey brayed.
‘An absolute majority,’ I announced.
She glared at me. ‘You be quiet. This is all your fault. You said you’d give me anything.’
‘I made a mistake. I signed the contract without reading it.’
This time the monarchist laughed too. The weight of the last few minutes had lifted, though his memory had not lost its force.
‘Joking aside,’ Lena said, ‘if we leave out the last part, your question is a fair one.’
‘Which last part?’ asked the woman in red.
‘The part you didn’t need to say,’ her sister replied.
‘I very much needed to say it.’
‘You didn’t.’
‘I did.’
Lena put up a hand. ‘Enough, both of you.’ She turned to the monarchist. ‘The real question is: when the money from Iran stopped and large numbers of Iranian students abroad ran into financial trouble, what happened to their everyday lives?’
‘I’ve told you about myself.’
‘Yes, about yourself. But the woman in red has raised something else. You weren’t alone. There were many students, and each had to find a way through.’
He thought for a moment. ‘There were different ways.’
‘For instance?’
‘Some found work. Some lived off their savings. Some families still managed to send a little. Others cut their spending drastically. Some had to abandon their studies.’
‘And the casino?’ asked the woman in red.
He looked at her. ‘Have you got a personal grudge against that casino?’
‘No. I just don’t want this vital piece of history to be lost.’
We all laughed.
‘For those without money,’ he said, ‘the casino was probably the first place they stopped going.’
She nodded with satisfaction. ‘At last, a historical document.’
Lena laughed. ‘Please don’t call it a historical document yet.’
‘But something really did change,’ the man said.
We waited.
‘Some of the distances between students grew smaller.’
‘What distances?’ asked Lena.
‘The ones I’ve been talking about. One had more money, another less. One worked; another had no idea what a student job was. One thought of nothing but politics; another, only his studies; another, having fun.’
He paused. ‘When things got hard, a lot of people had to learn skills they’d never needed before.’
‘Such as?’ asked the newcomer.
‘Living on very little.’ He laughed at himself. ‘It sounds simple, but it’s a whole education.’
‘Did they give you a degree?’ I asked.
He looked at me. ‘No. But if you failed, you went without supper.’
Laughter filled the bus.
‘You’re turning into a Khalo yourself,’ I told him.
‘Dangerous,’ said the woman in red. ‘Give it a few more episodes and even the donkey will be a monarchist.’
The donkey brayed on cue.
‘See?’ said the man. ‘He objects.’
‘Our donkey declared himself neutral from the start,’ I said.
‘I doubt anyone on this bus has stayed truly neutral,’ Lena said.
The laughter died down.
‘There was something else,’ the monarchist continued. ‘Those politically active students whose lives had seemed so strange to me were less thrown by hardship.’
‘Why?’ asked Lena.
‘Perhaps some already lived more simply. Some worked. Many belonged to organised groups and had learnt to make do with little.’ He added quickly, ‘I don’t mean all of them. I don’t want to paint another romantic picture.’
Lena nodded. ‘Quite right.’
‘What amazed me, though, was how well many of those same students did in their studies.’
‘Does it still puzzle you?’ I asked.
‘Not the way it did then.’
‘What did you think then?’
He laughed. ‘I thought you could be a student or a revolutionary, but not both. I couldn’t see how someone went to class in the morning, attended a meeting in the afternoon, read leaflets at night and still sat an exam the next day.’
‘Perhaps they never slept,’ said the woman in red.
‘Sometimes that really was the case,’ Lena replied.
He glanced at her. ‘How can you be so sure?’
Lena smiled. ‘I told you my turn would come.’
‘Aha!’ the woman in red cried.
Lena gave her a look. ‘No “aha”. This is his story for now.’
‘Before, I saw a lot of them only through their beliefs,’ the man continued.
Left-wing.
Against the Shah.
A member of this group.
A supporter of that organisation.
But once my own circumstances changed, I began to see other things. Someone would work until late, turn up in class the next morning and go to a political event that afternoon. I wondered where on earth they got the energy.
‘Perhaps from their convictions,’ said the newcomer.
‘Perhaps.’ He paused. ‘Or perhaps from being young.’
‘I’m more inclined to believe that one,’ I said. ‘When you’re young, you can make a revolution on two hours’ sleep, go to work, fall in love and still be in class the next morning. These days, if we lose two hours’ sleep, we spend three days looking for our glasses while they’re on our heads.’
Everyone laughed.
‘At last you’ve said something non-political we can all agree on,’ said the woman in red.
‘Age is the one political system nobody can overthrow,’ I said.
‘Please don’t start a new debate,’ Lena said.
We laughed again.
This time the monarchist was quiet for longer. Then he said, ‘But do you know what mattered most to me?’
Nobody answered.
‘I gradually met, face to face, people I had only ever seen through a label.’
The woman in red stopped joking.
‘Meeting Saeed was one of those moments. I didn’t become a leftist overnight afterwards. A great many of my beliefs didn’t change at all. But when people said, “They’re all violent and heartless,” I could no longer accept it as I once had. I had met one of those “them”. I had shaken his hand. He had embraced me. I had heard his voice and seen the light in his eyes. Once a real person enters the picture, some stereotypes become much harder to keep.’
‘Experience sometimes gets ahead of argument,’ Lena said softly.
He nodded. ‘Perhaps.’
‘Can I ask the real question, then?’ said the woman in red.
‘No!’ her sister said at once.
We all burst out laughing.
‘I haven’t even asked it yet!’
‘The moment you say “the real question”, we know we have to stop you.’
This time the monarchist himself said, ‘Let her ask.’
The woman in red gave her sister a triumphant look, then turned to him. ‘If that meeting affected you so deeply, why are you still a monarchist?’
Silence returned to the bus. But it was different from the silence at the start of the episode. That one had come from grief. This one came from expectation.
‘See?’ the newcomer muttered.
‘He said I could ask,’ the woman in red replied.
Lena said nothing. I decided that, for once, I would not be the cockerel crowing at the wrong time.
The monarchist clasped his hands and thought for a few seconds.
‘Because meeting one person can change how you see that person, and even many of your judgements, without changing your entire political outlook at once.’
The woman in red waited.
‘I saw other things later. Other things happened. Some beliefs grew weaker, some stronger. Some I left behind. Some I still hold. But a life isn’t an exercise book where you rub out one sentence and write another in its place.’
Lena smiled. ‘I agree with that.’
‘If I’m to answer your question fully,’ he said, ‘I may have to tell you things I haven’t told you yet.’
‘Will you?’ she asked.
He looked at her. He was neither upset nor bewildered now. A small smile appeared. ‘Perhaps, if you don’t throw the leader, the money and the casino into the middle of my story again.’
She gave him her mischievous grin. ‘I promise nothing.’
The donkey brayed.
‘And he is our witness,’ I said, ‘that no promise was made.’
Laughter filled the bus again. Beneath it, the woman’s question remained. This time nobody could laugh it away. The monarchist seemed to know that too. When the laughter faded, he did not turn to the window. He leaned his head against the back of his seat and closed his eyes, as though searching through the years for the place where his answer ought to begin.
To be continued.
Naser Kamali
Translator’s notes
- Iranian 1360s: This Solar Hijri decade broadly corresponds to the 1980s in the Gregorian calendar.
- Khalo: An affectionate form of ‘uncle’, also the narrator’s name or nickname. ‘Turning into a Khalo’ means acquiring his habit of cracking jokes.
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