In this first extract from Najis: A Memoir, Sydney-based writer Robert Douman recalls his family’s experience of emigrating to Australia from Iran. He remembers their arrival in Melbourne and the first impressions of their new home halfway across the world.
Prologue
I’m running along the flat roofs of the houses on my street, holding aloft a little stick carved in the shape of an aeroplane. There are small windows drawn on the sides of my plane and I roar to imitate the sound of jets as I duck underneath my grandmother’s washing lines. I weave through the carpets laid for sleeping outside and jump over my uncle’s backgammon set, the board left open and the game unfinished.
As I leap over the neighbour’s samovar, the jets on my plane fire up and catapult me into the sky. I crawl inside my aeroplane before I get too high. Looking back down, I yell out to my grandmother framed inside her tiny kitchen window, absorbed in chopping herbs into fine green specs for the pot waiting nearby.
‘Nunu, I won’t be home for dinner!’
Heading towards the belt of thick smog covering the city, I watch as everything below shrinks. My school is now no bigger than a stick of chewing gum that I buy from Ali-Ogkhoh’s corner shop. His shop is shrinking into a grain of rice, lost amongst all the other grains in the big, dirty hessian sack called Tehran.
The clouds open a small hole for me to get through. As I fly towards the sun, I know I’m leaving behind the past and heading into the future.
I look through the window at the strange land below. A beautiful brown boy with big almond eyes is riding an elephant. He makes the beast stand on its hind legs and blow its trumpet for me. We wave and smile at one another.
The clouds close behind me and when they reopen again, a chain of never-ending snow-capped mountains appear. There are people scaling a winding track to the peaks. Up ahead, along these heavenly outcrops, there’s a tent perched on an icy ledge. Inside the tent is a little boy who looks just like me, probably eight years old too. He’s shivering to death. Even though help won’t arrive in time, I try to say something to encourage him to hold on – that the rescuers are close – but the words won’t come out of my open mouth.
My plane continues to climb over the mountains, then descends on the other side. It banks to the right and we head south. The land here is mostly cascading green platforms, like stairs built for giant feet. People, hidden under wide hats with pointy tops, are planting crops on these platforms. They’re too busy to wave back.
Further south, I arrive at the great land of my destination.
It’s exactly the way I had imagined it a million times in my dreams—perdesa, paradise, Australia. There’s a huge stone table in the middle of the country, hosting people from every corner to come and join the feast. Kangaroos and emus are arriving with panniers filled with chocolates, pomegranates and figs to add to the already exorbitant bounty. There’s a place left open for me at the table and the guests are waving at me to come and join them. Rivers around the country are bending and redirecting their flow to form love hearts for me, fish are jumping out of the water, and sunflowers are blooming, following my trajectory across the sky.
My friends down below are telling me that everything here is free and plentiful. You just have to think about something you want and it will magically appear before you. There’s no school, no beatings and no-one ever gets angry—you can do whatever you want, whenever you want.
Suddenly, a cold, synthetic voice from above distracts me. It’s a language I’ve never heard before, and it seems to be controlling my aeroplane, causing it to make a loud thud, shake vigorously and then descend.
My left shoulder begins to ache as if it’s being crushed in a vice. I struggle but can only manage to open my eyes into slits, sufficient enough to see my father’s menacing face pressed up against mine. He’s growling something through clenched teeth while squeezing and shaking my shoulder.
‘Gho! Mheri, Gho!’ Assyrian for, Get up! I said, get up!
Arrival
Rohbert, Melbourne, 1969
I peel my face from the sticky seat and sit upright, examining my surroundings.
The rest of the plane is neat and orderly compared to our encampment at the rear. Our multi-coloured patchwork village blankets, pillows and clothes are sprawled all over the place. I catch the stewardess sneering sideways at us.
In my half-dazed state, I observe my father and mother fussing over our belongings, folding and stacking them neatly into piles, and then tying them up with ropes. My little sister’s drowsy head flops down onto one of these roped heaps, like she is sleeping on a golden cloud.
We’ve been flying for almost an eternity. There was a stopover in some grim, humid country. We didn’t have dinner that night because we didn’t understand the instructions to come downstairs to eat at the allotted time. The following morning, while my stomach growled in protest, I asked my parents why they didn’t understand the instructions.
Suddenly, a dread comes over me that perhaps my dream about the boy on the icy ledge was a warning. I picture the rescuers arriving at the ledge to find me and my sister dead beside the tent, our eyes frozen open, staring accusingly at our parents. The rescuers would yell and my parents would look confused, not understanding them.
I miss Nunu.
Father is in my ear again, telling me to move it, so I stand up with my belongings, still weary on my legs, and walk towards the front of the plane. The closer I get to the open door, the brighter the incoming sunlight and growing warmth on my face and hands.
Paradise has an alluring singing voice and it’s willing me towards it. My body is so light that I float over the threshold and land on the wheeled platform.
Perdesahasn’t revealed itself yet. My eyes are still adjusting to the natural bright light, and I wonder whether my Australian welcome party is at the end of this staircase. Regardless, I raise my hand and wave to them like the Shah, but a sharp prod in my back cuts my celebrations short. It’s that impatient goat again.
So here we are, the last ones to leave the plane, fully laden with bedding in our arms and walking between lines on the grey tarmac, towards the distant buildings.
Two tall men, brick walls in uniform, are marching towards us. We’re still a little dazed but quickly realise that they’re officials. One of them has short red hair set off against his white skin, pale as paper. He stands before us like a gatekeeper, making it clear that in order to enter perdesa, we have to pass his test without having even left the tarmac. The mouth on his stern face opens, and again, that strange alien language comes out. It’s directed at my father, Daryavoush, the head of the family.
Daryavoush clearly has no idea what they’re saying, so I wait, giggling inside, to see what he’ll do. After a little while, when they realise he’s not going to respond, they repeat the words louder with some added frustration. The effect doesn’t seem to make things any clearer for Daryavoush. However, something jumps out at me in that jumble of words: name. My brain has woken up enough to remember some of the English I learned in Grade 2 at Mar Matmariam, Saint Mary’s, Catholic School in Tehran.
Quickly standing to attention, my arms firmly pressed to my sides, I raise my head and speak in a confident, loud voice.
‘My name is Rohbert.’
Everyone is shocked, but no-one more than me. They all turn around and stare. The red-haired giant kneels in front of me. I’m about to run and hide behind my mother, until a faint smile forms on his face.
‘What’s your name?’ he asks, talking slowly and quietly.
‘My name is Rohbert.’
‘Good boy, Robert.’
I want to correct his pronunciation, but now he’s now pointing at Daryavoush.
‘What’s his name?’
‘Mhara, moyleh shemokh?’ I translate for my father.
Daryavoush removes his silinder, his treasured English-style woollen hat, and solemnly presses it to his chest. His bald head is a beacon of humility as he ignores me and reports directly to the official.
‘Daryavoush Doman Badilbo.’
The man grins at his companion, ‘Did he say, “Do-a-man with a dildo?”’
The other man is not impressed, tapping his truncheon into his open palm and staring at Daryavoush with piercing cold eyes. Why’s he so angry? Is perdesafull? Is there no room for us? Perhaps their king doesn’t know we’ve come a long way and will be loyal subjects.
The red-haired man finally finishes laughing and turns to me, asking again for my father’s name. I repeat it.
‘And how do you spell that?’
English spelling has always confused me – why do they spell cat with a ‘C’ but kite with a ‘K’? – so, I say his name as slowly as I can.
‘Dar-ya-voush. Do-man. Ba-dil-bo.’
He’s struggling with the spelling, looking at his friend and shaking his head. Then I go through the same exercise for my mother and sister.
‘B-lan-di-na,’ I say, pointing at Yemi.
Then my little sister, ‘Jo-que-lin,’ who frowns at them.
I sneak a peek at my family while the official is busy writing in his book.
‘How do you know what he’s saying?’ asks my mother, her head pitched forward as if she doesn’t recognise me.
Before I can answer, Daryavoush tries to crush my enthusiasm. ‘The little sotonah,’ devil, ‘is going to ruin everything.’
But I don’t understand all of the official’s questions. I pretend I do, and then I give a yes or no answer depending on which one comes into my head first. Any wrong reply is met with a raised red eyebrow—my guide to change my answer.
The official dates the document and puts the pen in Daryavoush’s hand. Daryavoush signs in Farsi, baffling the officials with its squiggly appearance.
We follow the immigration officials like ploughs through a rocky field, painstakingly slow, to the arrivals hall. Our sponsor, Esokh Davoud Ardishai, is waiting there for us with a woman. He says she’s a friend, an Iraqi-Assyrian named Lubah. She looks pcheltoh, wrong, my Nunu’s word for a woman who seems confused about her gender. Lubah has the short plump body that many Assyrian women grow into, but she’s wearing a man’s shirt that has dirt stains on it. I’ve never seen her before, or him for that matter, although he grew up in the same village as my mother, Ardishai, in the northwest corner of Iran.
Esokh arrived in Australia a year ago. I’m struck by his good looks, his height, dark wavy hair and square jaw, but most of all, his deep voice. We give each other the customary hug and kiss on each cheek.
‘Azizee, roboh khedyavan ghut Khazinokhen,’ he says. My darlings, I am very happy to see you.
The people are wearing strange clothes. In this advanced country, the men are walking around in shorts and dompyeh, cheap flimsy sandals, instead of suit pants, long-sleeved collared shirts and covered shoes. Shorts are unthinkable in Tehran, except when worn by little boys, and dompyeh are only for the very poor.
The women are wearing low-cut tops and exposing their long tanned legs. Yemi is embarrassed and looks away.
As I listen to a group of people nearby – all pale with thin strands of straw for hair and shiny blue marble eyes, just like in the cinemas – I try hard to concentrate on what they’re saying, but realise that Australians sound different to John Wayne and Will Robinson—more strangled.
Beyond them is a shop selling sunglasses.
Back in Tehran, my friend Reza had stolen a pair and we all envied him because they made him look like an American movie star. He was so careful with them that he wouldn’t allow anyone to try them on, not even for a second, not even for a handful of lollies. Reza was the only boy in our suburb to have sunglasses. He claimed he was the only boy in Iran who had a pair.
This shop in the airport has hundreds of them, row upon row, all neatly stacked and each pair more beautiful than the last. There’s a price on the carousel, something you don’t see in Tehran. I remember our local shop owner, Ali-Ogkhoh, and his pricing system, ‘The price always depends on how much money the customer has in his pockets.’
Whenever I walked into his shop, I’d look around, pretending not to be interested in anything. I’d always be careful not to carry more than one toman with me, and if I happened to have more, I’d hide it in my shoes because he always made me turn my pockets inside out.
How does the bartering system work here?
Suddenly, I realise that the adults are staring at me. My mother has been impressing them with my English skills in getting us through customs.
‘Bas majanokh, babi,’ says Esokh. Well done, my father. Babi is a term of endearment that raises someone to the height of a respected and loved father. Daryavoush used to call me that when I was young.
‘Baseema.’ Thank you.
‘Tay kha mendi b Englis babi.’ Esokh is pleading for me to say something in English.
‘My name is Rohbert.’
He laughs loudly and claps his hands.
Yemi puts her arm around my neck, proud of her son.
I turn to look at Daryavoush, this man who refers to himself as my babi. I didn’t see much of him in Tehran because he was always away for work driving his truck. When I did see him once or twice a month, it was like seeing Babi Noel, Father Christmas, bearing sacks of exotic gifts and delicious treats for everyone. The time he’d spend with us before leaving on his next job was all too brief. I never really got to know him as I have now over the last few weeks. Babi Noel has transformed into a short tempered tyrant.
Daryavoush notices that I’m staring at him, so I turn away.
The adults say that we should go home now. As we walk past a shop with lots of colourful magazines, I bump into a woman carrying a baby. The baby lets out a deafening scream that jogs my memory about something that has been bothering me from the moment we landed. Now I know what’s missing: noise!
At the airport in Tehran, we were jostled, pulled, begged and screamed at for money from every conceivable side. Here, it’s deadly quiet. Where are the ladies with the cooking pots, boiling up against the walls, selling bowls of soup and rice? Where are the assorted juices, the enticing smell of barbeque kebabs and the rich aroma of spices?
It’s even quieter outside.
In Lubah’s car, with my eyes glued to the passenger window, I’m amazed at what I don’t see: traffic jams with incessant horns, drivers screaming at one another with their heads poking out of their windows, black choking fumes and screeching tyres. In Tehran, you have to dodge tightly-packed cars that speed up when they see you trying to weave between them to cross the road.
Whenever Lubah makes a left or right-hand turn, we all break out into laughter because Daryavoush tenses up and leaps across to grab the steering wheel.
‘Mokhletah Khatee, sorry sister, I can get used to all of it, but I’ll never get used to driving on the wrong side of the road,’ Daryavoush says.
Now that we’re leaving the highway and heading into the suburbs, the place is quieter still. The green grass of the parks is a welcome change to the dry, grey sand and stone of the parks in Tehran. The houses with lovely curtains and gardens are full of colour compared to the tightly-grouped concrete blocks of Tehran.
We drive past a big advertising poster on the side of a brick building. It shows a woman in a bright yellow dress, leaning out a window. She’s smiling, parading her teeth and bright red lips. She’s tossing her long blonde hair up in the air with one hand and trying to touch the sky with the other. Staring at her fleshy armpits and the dress so tight that it reveals the curves of her breasts and small waist, I consider pointing it out to my mother, but instead find myself sitting back and studying Yemi’s style.
Yemi is a woman too, but not a poster-woman. She’s a mother-woman. She doesn’t wear makeup, her sweater is new, but loose fitting, just like her navy-blue slacks and covered shoes. The most notable thing about her is the huge gold medallion around her neck showing Mary holding baby Jesus. No, I can’t imagine they’d put Yemi’s picture on that building.
Further along, I see a group of young people waiting for a bus. They’re talking, women as well as men mixing together. My face is pressed up against the car window to see if the men will pinch the girls and hurt them, like they did on crowded buses in Tehran. But these girls aren’t scared. One of them even puts her arm around a man’s neck, trying to kiss him. I’m about to point her out to my mother when the crazy girl notices that I’m staring at her. She smiles and waves, but shyness overwhelms me and I quickly retreat into my seat.
Finally, we arrive at our home in the suburb of Carlton. Lubah drops us off outside Esokh’s single-storey brick house, double beeps and leaves.
‘I don’t own the house. I’m just renting the front room,’ he says.
We’re surprised, expecting him to be wealthy by now, living in the West. I attempt to open the front metal gate, so we can enter our new home, but freeze in my tracks at his urgent tone. ‘Forgive me, but the landlord’s home and he’s particular about guests. But please, you’re welcome to drop by anytime you need something.’
I bow my head, respectfully apologising.
On the drive here, I was hoping that we’d be living together under one roof. In Tehran, we’d all been living in Nunu’s house where there was always something fun happening. Here, I was beginning to think of Esokh as my Australian uncle.
Esokh continues despite his blushes, ‘Follow me and I’ll show you where you’ll be living.’
As we follow him down the road, our luggage in tow, I want to catch up to him and suggest that he should leave his terrible landlord and move in with us in our new home, maybe even share a room with me.
By the time I reach Esokh, about fifty metres down the road, the adults have stopped at the front of a similar, but far more decrepit terrace.
Our collective heart sinks as we observe this very narrow house. The paint seems to be yellowing like urine stains and peeling away before our eyes. The gutters have dropped and are hanging loosely from the roof and there’s a mountain of empty beer bottles leaning against the front wall.
Esokh knocks on the door. It swings open to reveal a beast-man. His nose has been punched and pressed to his left cheek, his eyes are set so wide apart that he can almost see inside his earholes, and most frighteningly, there are thick red stains in his wild beard and on the front of his shirt. Did this towering bear eat his last tenant?
‘What you want?’ are the first words out of that grizzly mouth.
Esokh tells us that the man is Yugoslavian before turning back to him.
‘Hello. You remember I’ve rented the room?’
‘Yes. Ven you come? Now?’
‘It’s not for me. It’s for this family.’
The Yugoslav looks us up and down. He has a different accent to the Australians, but he looks more like them than us, so I assume his country must be very close by.
‘Hello,’ he says, looking at me and my mother.
I don’t respond, awestruck.
‘They don’t speak English,’ says Esokh, with a nervous grin.
‘Where they come?’
‘Iran.’
The Yugoslav turns and walks back into the house, muttering, ‘Arabs.’
Esokh tries to tell him that we’re not Arabs, but the Yugoslav has gone. He turns to us, looking even more embarrassed. ‘Don’t worry, he’ll warm to you.’
We follow Esokh into the house. As we walk down the hallway, even the floorboards seem to have taken sides with the Yugoslav and object to our presence with their unbearable creaking. The noise is so loud you’d think a herd of cows was trampling on them. We arrive at what looks like a dungeon with cupboards.
‘You’ll be sharing this kitchen with him.’
The corners of the ceiling are covered with black mould, like alien spores waiting to jump on my head at any moment. I can’t breathe; the spores have sucked the air out of the room. There’s a dripping tap, almost like it’s crying for the surrounding cabinets and their vomit-green laminate. Shoved up against the wall is an old table with a misshapen brick under one of its legs to make it level.
There’s an adjoining room—a shoebox with a broken door. I pray that that’s not where we’ll be sleeping tonight. It reminds me of the little room they’d lock me in at school when I was naughty. The coffin, we used to call it. The teachers told us that the devil lived in there. When I found out we were going to Australia, leaving the coffin behind made everything else worthwhile. Little did I know that I‘d be sleeping in one in perdesa.
My mother’s voice is weak and faltering, but she’s determined to deliver the customary expression of gratitude to Esokh. ‘Avit roboh baseema. Kheeshet oll roboh zahmat.’ A mountain of gratitude. You’ve gone to a lot of trouble.
Is she making a joke?
‘I know it’s not much, but it’s a start. Rent is very expensive,’ replies Esokh.
Custom dictates that we share a cup of tea to celebrate the occasion. Yemi looks around the kitchen for a pot to boil some water and soon realises that she doesn’t even have that. For some reason, this is what hits her the hardest. She collapses into one of the rickety chairs.
Esokh immediately runs home to get a pot and a few other essential things.
I search the cupboards for a glass to give my mother some water, but find nothing.
Daryavoush picks up our bundle of bedding from the floor, trying to brush off the dust and dirt marks. He shakes his head, ‘Aha ila khoreega?’ This is the West?
‘What have I done?’ my mother whispers under her breath.
I don’t know what they were expecting, but certainly something better than our cramped little room in my grandmother’s home in Tehran. Now I wonder if the others are also thinking when the next flight back to Tehran is.
Fatigue and depression are taking their toll, we find ourselves slowly drifting into the coffin. Daryavoush doesn’t have the energy to clean the floor before laying down our bedding, so he uses one of our older blankets as an underlay.
Immediately, we fall into a deep sleep without eating any dinner. Daryavoush is pressed up against the wall, Yemi is lying beside him, I’m next with my face buried in her side, and little Joquelin is wedged up against the other wall.
In the morning, while laying out some breakfast things and a loaf of bread on the table, Esokh tells us that he knocked on the door last night with some dinner. He notices that Joquelin and I are staring at the loaf, leavened, crispy and hard on the outside, and soft in the centre. From the expression on their faces, I can tell that my parents prefer our own flatbread, but they say nothing to Esokh. He calls this bread Vienna and says it costs twenty cents.
As we tear off pieces of crust, top it with butter – instead of goat’s cheese – and wash it down with hot tea, the table begins to slant forward. When we look underneath, I notice that the supporting brick has split in two. Joquelin runs into the bedroom and brings back the Persian biscuit tin that we’ve been using to store our passports and family photos in. She slides the tin under the misshapen leg, and Yemi gives her a small smile.
Is this really our new home?
Enjoying the story? There’s more to come!
Part 2 available soon
Robert Douman is a Sydney based writer of Assyrian heritage. He was a chemical engineer, world traveler, football player and hopefully, one day, will be a full time writer.
All illustrations and images are the copyright of Chayin Tengkanokkul and Grattan Street Press.
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