In third and final extract from Najis: A Memoir, Sydney-based writer Robert Douman reflects on the challenges his family faced during those first few months after their arrival in Melbourne—the paradisiacal image of Australia begins to fall apart.
By the time Daryavoush and Blandina come home from work, it is already dark. Daryavoush has been working in a tyre-making factory, melting resin and rubber in a great hot vat and then pouring the molten liquid into moulds. He complains to Blandina about the chemicals giving him a terrible headache.
Both are too tired to shower. It is too late to cook, but they are too hungry to sleep. Each of them has just enough energy to open the front door, stumble to the kitchen, pull out a chair and drop into it.
After a week of toil, Blandina and Daryavoush bring home their pay packets and throw them onto the kitchen table. Her contribution for the week is thirty-five dollars and his is fifty. They sit and just stare at the money, reflecting on what they have done to earn it. Daryavoush begins to rub his temples, a prelude to the nightly venting of his many grievances.
‘This is a job for khmareh,’ he says, donkeys.
In Tehran, Daryavoush had an assistant who did all the labouring work, including preparing his bed. He is not used to taking orders or doing undignified work.
Every night he grumbles, ‘Why are we staying here? This place is worse than Hell.’
‘Do you think I like my job?’ Blandina says. ‘I’m a factory worker. The sound of a thousand conveyor belts whir in my ears, even when I sleep. Always “paster, paster, paster” and “no estop”. And the new language! I can’t even tell them that I’m confused or that my wrists are throbbing. Worst of all, I miss Esther.’
‘Then why are we here? Let’s go back home!’
‘You know why. You know it’s for…’
The children! Blandina jumps up and runs to the bedroom to see if they are there. That short gap between getting off her chair and seeing their little faces in bed is the scariest part of her day—the fear that while she has been at work, some horrible accident has occurred.
Every night, she thinks about how they are too little to be looking after themselves like this, that she should have arranged things differently. Why did she not stay home for the first few months to help them settle in, instead of being motivated by spite against Daryavoush and the need to ‘get ahead’?
She eases her conscience by telling herself that Rohbert is mature for his age. In Tehran, he would get up by himself, pack his lunch and set off to catch the school bus. Blandina would wake up in a panic and race down to the bus stop. If he was not there, she would ask Ali-Ogkhoh, the shop owner, if Rohbert had caught the bus. Ali-Ogkhoh would roar with laughter, ‘You’re his mother and you ask me?’
Now they are here in this little room, in a faraway world, and Rohbert is looking after himself and his little sister again. Blandina pats his face and his eyes barely open.
‘Yemi?’ he asks.
‘Have you had dinner?’ But how could they have? She has not cooked anything, and there is nothing in the fridge.
Rohbert manages to nod once before sleep overpowers him again.
Blandina returns to the kitchen. There are two plates in the sink with remnants of soggy bread and milk. On the counter lies a pierced but unopened can of plain beans. The scratches on the lid suggest they have tried to open it but failed.
Tears well up in Blandina’s eyes. Each scratch on the tin seems like a cry for help—a reminder that she is a bad mother for sending her children to bed without a proper meal.
She wants to turn to Daryavoush and tell him that he is right, that she has been stupid and stubborn. She wants to go to the airport and return to Tehran on the next flight. She is too scared to wait until tomorrow for fear that she will lose this desperate desire and will have to relive this horrible night for the rest of her life.
But when Blandina turns to look at Daryavoush, he is asleep in his chair. She stops and thinks if she should wake him up and tell him.
She recalls Esther’s face pleading with her not to leave. The memory drains what little energy Blandina has left, so she goes to bed.
She wakes up in the morning to see Rohbert and Joquelin – both sound asleep, faces buried in their pillows – and is reminded of why she came to Australia in the first place.
Blandina will probably come home tonight, again feeling guilty for allowing her children to struggle. But even though they are young, they are smart and resilient. Now it is up to her to match their strength. She is willing to endure a future of cauliflowers and pies if it means her children’s futures are without them.
Blandina plants a soft kiss on each of their heads—a promise to them that she will go forward and never weaken again by considering returning to Tehran.
Blandina drags herself out of bed, still so tired that she does not know how she is going to manage the day. Soon, she and Daryavoush leave the house for work.
School
Rohbert, Melbourne, 1969
In the morning, Joquelin and I find that our parents aren’t home. It seems that no matter how hard we try, we will never wake up early enough to see our mother.
Today is our first day of school. We get dressed; I help Joquelin put on her shoes, and we head off on the twenty-minute walk.
When we arrive, the headmaster leads us to our classrooms.
Joquelin cries because he wants to put us in separate classes.
‘Can I sit next to you, just today?’ she asks.
‘No, I have to go with the older kids.’
I look at the headmaster and want to explain to him, but I don’t have the words. ‘He won’t allow it. I promise to come and get you later and take you home.’
She gives the headmaster a pleading look. Perhaps he understands because he prompts me to just walk away. As I leave, I don’t want to look back and see Joquelin’s sad face, but I know it’s there all the same.
I enter my class and walk up to the teacher. Not knowing the rules, I give him a small bow. All the children laugh. The teacher puts his arm around me protectively, surprising me by his level of friendliness.
‘This is Robert,’ he says to the class. ‘He’s from Iran.’
The only words I recognise are my name and home country, though pronounced wrong. Everyone is staring at me. Maybe they’ve never seen anyone from Iran before.
The classroom is very bright because an entire wall is lined with windows. Outside is a perfect blue sky, just like in a John Wayne movie.
No sooner do I sit down than I remember I need to go to the toilet. My school in Tehran was so strict that I’d be severely punished, as I so often was, for moving without permission. But the pain is overwhelming, and I don’t know how to ask, so I just get up and walk out of the room.
On my way out, I can see the other children laugh and whisper to one another. I have a little giggle to myself for my patanooytah, cheekiness.
When I return to class, the teacher gives me a stern look and then raises his hand to indicate that this is what I must do in the future. I imitate Joquelin’s confused ayneh khlyeh, sweet eyes, for him.
At the end of the day, I find my sister waiting outside her classroom exactly where I left her. She’s by herself, frowning and staring at her shoes—Yemi calls her Booktah, Doll, because she’s so quiet and cute. I tell her it’s time to go home, but she’s angry and won’t look up at me. I take her hand and lead her away, explaining that school is difficult at first, but soon she’ll make friends and start enjoying it.
I remember my first day at school in Tehran, thinking it was going to be all fun and games with new friends. But it was the opposite. Teachers yelled at us if we talked or moved even an inch; if we disobeyed, we were sent to the ‘coffin’.
Joquelin and I continue to walk in silence for a while along a wide street with tank-sized cars driving past. Trees line both sides of the road, forming a leafy green umbrella overhead.
I try to make my sister laugh by reading a nearby advertisement: ‘Coca-Cola—It’s the real thing!’
She looks up at me curiously, so I put on my John Wayne accent. ‘Toblerone—Somebody thinks you’re special when you’re offered Toblerone.’ She doesn’t understand, but laughs anyway.
We stop at a poster showing a man with an orange handkerchief tied around his neck, putting chocolate into a blonde woman’s mouth. ‘Bounty—far and away the most exciting find in chocolate treats,’ I say. Joquelin laughs and runs to the next poster, waiting for me to catch up and read it.
‘Lucky Strike Cigarettes—do you inhale? Certainly, it’s toasted!’ We stop and stare at this poster for a long time. There’s a woman with long bare legs lying down on an incline. A man is propped up beside her, leaning in, but his face is obscured by her exhaled smoke.
Joquelin drags me to a big wall with graffiti and waits to hear my funny voices. It reads, ‘Stop the War’.
My grandparents used to tell me about our wars with the Turkish, the worst being Riaktit Arbasar, Fleeing of ‘14. Nunu would cry, saying she lost a lot of family. I wonder who the Australians are at war with. Maybe the Turkish are coming this way now, to kill all the Christians?
I wish I could bring Nunu and all the Christians in Iran here to Australia.
***
Our parents are usually never home for dinner. On school nights, there’s never any cooked food in the house. Yemi’s too tired to cook, and besides, she struggles to find the ingredients and spices she needs.
Instead, she has filled our pantry with an endless supply of canned, plain mosheh, beans. They’re nowhere near as tasty as Iranian mosheh, but they’re easy to identify on the shelves.
The other night, Esokh was telling us about an Assyrian man who had been eating canned dog food without knowing it for years because he couldn’t read the label. We laughed at the time, but such mistakes are a real possibility now.
I’m sure that even Australian dogs wouldn’t eat these mosheh, but I check the label for the word ‘Dog’ just to be sure.
In the end it doesn’t matter. Like every other night, I can’t operate the can opener, so we make our usual dinner.
I pour milk into two shallow plates, add two teaspoons of sugar, then soak pieces of Vienna bread into the sweetened liquid.
Before I’ve even pushed the plate in front of Joquelin, she’s already crying.
I put on a smile and sing her a jingle about our tasty meal, like we’re in a commercial. My clowning around distracts her long enough to get a few spoonfuls into her mouth, but I can’t hide the reality of what we’re eating.
Unable to accept that Yemi has to be at work, Joquelin cries until she is so exhausted that she falls asleep at the table. I force a few spoonfuls of the sloppy, milky bread into my own mouth before carrying her off to bed. I try to stay awake to see my mother, but I’m also exhausted and eventually drift into a deep sleep.
In the morning, Yemi’s side of the bedding is ruffled, but she’s not here. I’m angry with myself for not waking up when she got home.
In the kitchen, I miss her even more when I see the remains of her dinner in the sink and the empty can of kidney beans in the bin. This is what they eat every night for dinner and every day for lunch at work.
The Assyrian word for hell is Geehana.
***
My mother wants to celebrate our first month of schooling in Australia; she’s going to cook our favourite Assyrian meal, dolmet dorpeh, and invite Esokh for dinner. First, Esokh has to take us on a long bus ride to a vegetable market to buy the ingredients.
He says, ‘The difference is that in Tehran, the bazaar vendors decide what you buy, but here we’ll choose for ourselves.’
‘It means they’re pushy in Tehran,’ my mother explains to me. ‘Aunty Kristina was always coming home with bags of bizarre things she didn’t need.’
We buy rice, plain yogurt, bunches of fresh coriander and dill, leeks, spring onions, several big heads of garlic, tomato paste, and cooking onions. We also get minced beef, but struggle to find brined vine leaves. Eventually, in a Greek delicatessen, we find a few jars hidden in a back corner. The vendor imports them for a few Greek customers and charges, according to Yemi, ‘Mooh beeyohyeleh,’ whatever he wants.
At home, Yemi begins by making the topping sauce—an oily mixture of caramelised onions and tomato paste. For the filling, she uses another pot to fry onions and minced meat. When they brown, she adds the finely chopped leeks, spring onions, herbs and garlic into the pot. She adds the rice, then seasons and mixes everything together.
As she turns down the heat, she says, ‘It’s time to fill the vine leaves now, azizee,’ darling. ‘Watch me.’
Yemi spreads open a vine leaf, takes a spoon full of the mixture and puts it into the centre. She folds the edges of the leaf to the middle, hiding the contents inside.
Sitting with us at the table, Joquelin claps her hands and says, ‘It looks like a tiny green pillow!’
Yemi starts on the next vine leaf; I follow but can see that mine is sloppy and loose.
‘You put just enough mixture inside so the leaf closes properly, not too much and not too little,’ Yemi says. Gradually, we build layers of dolmet dorpeh in the pot.
‘Did Nunu teach you how to make them, Yemi?’ I ask.
Slowly, her face crumbles and a tear runs down her cheek, dripping into the pot from the point of her chin. ‘I bet you were a lot better at it than me when Nunu was teaching you,’ I say, trying to comfort her.
‘No, I was worse,’ she says, both smiling and crying. ‘She used to get frustrated with me.’
Joquelin and I watch her laugh, then cry some more, then laugh and cry again until we fill the pot with our little green pillows. Yemi finishes by adding water up to the last layer of dolmeh and turns up the heat to boil.
‘Go and fetch Esokh,’ she says, laying out the plates on the table.
When I get to Esokh’s house, he’s so excited that he picks me up, throws me over his shoulder, and runs to our house.
Back at home, the thick fragrance and sight of the steaming pot stop him suddenly.
‘I haven’t had dolmet dorpeh since…since my dear mother cooked them for me before we parted,’ Esokh says, hiding his tears.
My mother lays eight dolmeh on his plate, spreads a layer of plain yogurt over them and a generous serving of the topping sauce to finish.
We eat until our stomachs ache.
***
It’s late when we finish. My mother puts Joquelin to bed and tells me that we’re going to call Nunu. Esokh gives us the country code and walks us to the red telephone box down the street. Before he leaves, he tells me to put all the coins on the silver shelf nearby.
‘When the phone makes a buzzing noise, add more coins or you’ll be disconnected,’ he says.
I place my fingers into the holes of the metal wheel and spin it to ring Nunu’s number.
After four rings, I hear a frail voice on the other end.
‘Shlama-lokhoon.’ Greetings.
My mother snatches the phone out of my hand. ‘Esther?’
‘Blandina? Aten evat, bratee?’ Is it you,daughter?
Yemi chokes—that question sends her into a desperate state, and a waterfall of tears stream down her face. I take the phone back and respond on her behalf.
‘Hee Nunu. Akhnun evakh,’ I say. Yes Nunu. It’s us.
Now Nunu chokes up, so I give the phone back to my mother. They’re both holding the receiver tightly to their ears, listening to each other sniffle and weep.
‘Say something, Yemi,’ I warn her as the phone buzzes.
She opens her mouth and tries to force words out, but it’s useless. I hold up the coins, asking if I should put them in the phone. She nods, so I put in another twenty-cent coin. For the next few added minutes, all they do is cry softly into the phone. When the phone buzzes again, Yemi manages to squeak out, ‘I’ll call you again next week.’
I can only hear faint sobs in reply until the line is automatically disconnected. On the way home, I expect Yemi to be angry with herself for not talking, but she’s not.
Joquelin and I are knocking on the front door of our home after school. We don’t have a set of keys, so we have to rely on the Yugoslav to open it for us, and that depends on his mood. To our surprise, the door opens almost immediately. The giant Yugoslav has a strange expression on his face, more than usual. He stands aside for us to enter.
Joquelin walks inside, but I hesitate for a minute. He normally growls ‘Annoying little Arabs’ when he sees us. Why didn’t he do that today?
When I try to enter, he pushes me back and slams the door in my face. I knock on the door, but he won’t open it. I bang on it as hard as I can, becoming hysterical.
‘Joquelin, open the door! Can you hear me? Open the door!’
I keep banging and yelling until my fists hurt. Eventually, I run to Esokh’s house.
‘What’s wrong, Babi?’ he asks me.
‘That crazy khmara,’ donkey, ‘has taken Joquelin.’
‘What?’
I take Esokh’s arm and drag him to our house, telling him along the way everything that happened.
He and I are banging on our door when my mother walks through the front gate. I’m about to run and hug her until I remember Joquelin.
‘What’s wrong Rohbert?’
I explain to her frantically, ‘He’s taken Joquelin into the house and won’t open the door!’
Yemi quickly takes out her key and we all go inside. I find Joquelin curled up in one of Yemi’s dresses, sleeping in our cupboard. We ask her if she’s alright, but she won’t say anything, so my mother picks her up and holds her tight.
‘Did you annoy him? Is that why he did this?’ Esokh asks me.
‘No! He’s cruel. Sometimes he doesn’t open the door for us at all. Today he opened it and this is what he did.’
Esokh looks curiously at my mother.
‘It’s true, he’s a mean-spirited man,’ Yemi confirms.
Esokh knocks on the Yugoslav’s bedroom door.
When it opens, the Yugoslav barks, ‘Go away, stupid Arab.’
‘Why are you being horrible to this family, these children?’ asks Esokh.
The Yugoslav stands over him in a threatening manner.
My mother comes to Esokh’s defence and begins yelling at the Yugoslav in Assyrian. She shakes her finger in his face. To our surprise, the giant takes a step back.
Esokh encourages my mother to carry on, telling her in Assyrian, ‘This is a country for women.’ And so, with the few English words she knows combined with lots of arm-waving and even more Assyrian, she tells the Yugoslav not to frighten Joquelin and me again and to open the door for us in the future. When he tries to stand up to her by making fun of her English, she takes off her shoe, stands on the tips of her toes, and reaches up to slap the monster in the face with it.
‘Beetar-beeyat! Heyvon!’ she yells, Rude! Animal!
He steps back, eyes bulging, and says, ‘No, mayka, no.’
But she doesn’t stop; instead, she steps forward to slap him on the back of his head and neck until he escapes back into his room and shuts the door.
Esokh and I stare at her, him smiling proudly and me with my mouth left hanging open. She gives the Yugoslav’s door one last slap and yells through it, ‘No! Okay? No!’
She puts her shoe back on and marches back into the kitchen.
A few hours later, I go to sleep with a big smile on my face, still unable to believe what I’d seen. My little mother accomplished what Esokh and Daryavoush couldn’t.
***
The very next night, Daryavoush comes into our bedroom and urgently tries to wake me up.
‘Boy, where is your mother? Has she been home?’
I’m still drowsy as I stumble out to the kitchen and look around. ‘Where’s Yemi?’ I ask.
‘Did you not hear me? She has not come home from work!’
‘Why?’
‘How should I know? Stop asking stupid questions and go tell Esokh. She’s probably lost on the streets.’
I tiptoe over to the Yugoslav’s bedroom and put my ear to his door, listening for my mother. Daryavoush stamps his foot hard, making me jump. I run barefoot to Esokh’s house.
It’s very late and the street is dead quiet. I wake Esokh by knocking on his bedroom window, then explain to him that Yemi is missing.
‘You go home, I’ll find her,’ he says.
‘Do you think the Yugoslav has—’
‘No I don’t. Go home, you’re freezing.’
‘But she hit him so many times.’
He doesn’t wait to tell me again before taking off down the street.
An hour later, Esokh walks into our house with my mother.
Daryavoush stands, causing the chair to slide back and screech painfully on the floor. ‘Where have you been, woman?’
I give her a big hug and realise she’s shaking. When I look up at her, she hides behind a nervous smile.
After a hot cup of tea, Yemi explains what happened.
‘I was working when the boss came and said something to me. He waited for a reply but I didn’t understand, so I smiled and tried to go back to work. Ohmoh lah, levah preeqa,’ but no, he wasn’t finished. ‘This time he said it a little louder and with hand gestures. I thought he was asking me to sit down, but then he pointed to the exit and shook his head. I was looking around for Lubah, but he stopped me and repeated it a third time. I thought, “Pshemet Meshykhah, moyleh marah?”’ In Jesus’s name, what is he saying?
Joquelin and I laugh.
Yemi drinks a little more tea, glancing at Daryavoush now and again. ‘He was starting to look angry and I was embarrassed, so I just said, “Yes”. It seemed to work because he calmed down a little. Then he said something else and again I agreed. So from then on, every time he paused, I just nodded and said, “Yes”.’
Daryavoush finally sits down, but still has that stern look on his face.
Yemi continues, ‘He finally left me in peace. I didn’t think any more of it until the end of the day. I went to clock out and change my clothes, but he stopped me and pointed me back to my post.’
‘Did your boss use the word “overtime”?’ asks Esokh.
‘Yes, he said it many times. “Ova-ty,” “ova-ty,” what does it mean?’
Esokh laughs and then explains to us.
‘Ghtmoh breesshe,’ Ashes on my head, ‘I didn’t understand “ova-ty”.’
Joquelin laughs and says, ‘Lah, Yemi, it’s “ova-time”.’
‘Basemta bratee,’ Thank you daughter, ‘Anyway, I thought to myself, I may as well keep working, we need the money. But when I got out of the factory, it was dark and I didn’t know which way to go.’
We all laugh, but I notice that Daryavoush is shaking his head and looking away.
‘I found her sitting on the doorstep of the factory, just waiting,’ adds Esokh.
Daryavoush seizes the opportunity to attack Esokh. ‘I don’t know what you’re thinking, Babi. My wife has never opened the door with her arse, yet you encourage her to work in this foreign land, amongst strangers, and risk her life!’
My mother quickly takes Joquelin and me into the bedroom, insisting it’s too late for us to be up, but I know it’s to avoid seeing a fight. As she tucks me in I ask, ‘Yemi, is it possible to open a door with your arse?’
‘It means I’ve never done it tough before, that I don’t know what hard work is,’ she says, stroking my face.
‘Is that true?’
‘I thought I could manage, raised on a farm, working like a son beside Hartoon.’
‘Would you tell us one of your village stories?’ Joquelin begs her.
I’m on the verge of sleep when Daryavoush storms in.
‘Come out here, woman,’ he says.
‘What is it? They were almost asleep.’
‘To hell with that, he’s saying that he sent you many letters warning you not to come.’
I grab her hand to stop her from leaving, but she reassures me that everything will be fine.
‘Go to sleep, broonie. Close your eyes, booktee,’ my doll, ‘you have school tomorrow.’
I cuddle my sister to sleep, but every now and then I’m jolted awake when Daryavoush raises his voice and slams his fist on the table. Immediately, Esokh and Yemi remind him to lower his voice. At times he does and other times he raises it even more.
I remember reading Esokh’s letters for my mother in Tehran, and then writing back to him with her replies. She made me promise not to tell anyone. It felt like we were doing something wrong; now she’s in trouble for keeping it a secret. Maybe I will be too.
***
As my English improves, I understand that my schoolfriends want to know more about me, in particular where I’m from. Surprisingly, no-one has ever heard of Iran.
The only people that look remotely like my family are the greengrocer and the milk bar owner. The next time I go shopping for my mother, I ask the greengrocer, ‘What country are you from?’
He raises his red, bulbous head out of a pile of tomatoes, twirls his thick moustache and says, with his strongest possible accent, ‘I, Khreek!’
I’m so impressed with his pride that I repeat it back to him.
He laughs and pats me on the back. ‘Nai, from Athina.’ Then he gives me a cucumber as a reward—for what, I’m not sure.
I take a big bite and leave, asking myself where ‘Khreek’ could be, repeating it with his impressive accent in my head.
At the milk bar, I ask the owner the same question. He brings his face so close to mine that I’m afraid he’s going to kiss me. Then, he suddenly throws his arms up in the air and yells, ‘Mamma mia! Mamma mia!’
I think I’ve offended him somehow, but then, he calms down just as quickly.
‘Mi? Italiano!’ he says, raising his finger up like an exclamation mark for emphasis.
He knits his brow. ‘Kapeesh?’
I stay silent and stare at him, dumbfounded. A second later, he pulls away in disgust.
‘Pfft, ignorante!’
As I leave his shop, I decide that the next time people ask me where I’m from, I’ll copy the enthusiasm of the Khreek and the arrogance of the Italiano. I won’t be embarrassed at being different. ‘Ana even Suray!’ I’ll say. I’m Assyrian. But if people haven’t heard of Iran, what are the chances they’ve heard of Assyrians?
Then I think to myself, the Khreek and Italiano didn’t worry about such things—they’re not changing their ways to suit the ‘ignorante’ of the world.
The following day at school, I’m sitting with my friends on the playground. While eating lunch, Dezzie, Fatso, Donie and Dougie are talking about and mimicking strange characters from a TV show called TheAddams Family. Maxie is eating a flat white square with yellow blobs of butter and black paste oozing out; Reggie is biting into a cake filled with hot meat and brown sauce. I look at my lunch which is hiding inside the brown paper bag beside me. I’m worried about opening it, fearing it might be something these Addamses would eat.
But my grumbling stomach can’t wait any longer, so I open my noisy bag and take out half a Vienna loaf and a tomato. My friends all stop and stare at me as I bite off a section of bread and chew it down with a bite of my big juicy tomato.
Dezzie laughs and says, ‘Mate, that’s a tomato not an apple! You gotta slice it up and put it in the bread,’ miming closing the bread with his hands.
The other boys laugh. I give Dezzie a smile but don’t really see what difference it makes. ‘Nah, that’s just the way I-ties eat tomatoes,’ says Dougie.
‘Robbie’s not an I-tie. Look at him, a spittin’ image of the fat grocer,’ says Donie, whose nickname is Bradman—he loves a game called cricket which takes a whole week to finish.
They start arguing with each other about my nationality, throwing West Indian, Russian, Chinese, Yank, and Kiwi into the mix. When one of them suggests a ‘Pommy bastard’, they all roll around on the ground, laughing.
‘Have you heard of Iran?’ I ask.
As they shake their heads and go back to eating their lunches, I start to realise that I can’t be like the Khreek and the Italiano, telling my friends to take it or leave it. I like them and don’t want them to stop being my friends. Besides, no-one’s perfect—I don’t know where Khreek and Italiano countries are, and I’m sure neither the greengrocer nor milk bar owner knows everything there is to know.
The next day, Dezzie’s older brother – a skinny boy everyone calls Bluey – joins our group for lunch. I think he’s in Grade 6. He sits beside me and carefully studies me. I feel a little uneasy, so I open my bread to show him the sliced tomato inside. He has a look but doesn’t really seem to care.
‘My brother says you don’t know where you’re from,’ Bluey says.
‘I don’t want to talk about that stuff anymore,’ I reply.
‘Why not? Tryna hide something?’
‘Hey, leave him alone will ya,’ says Fatso.
Bluey gives me a gentle tap on the back. ‘Look mate, I’m just tryna help you out. I reckon you’re confused, that’s all. Anyone can see you’re a salami-muncher.’
The other kids snicker.
I’m grateful that he’s trying to help, but I’ve never heard of a salami-muncher before. I stare up at him, about to ask what that is, but notice a strange look come over his face.
‘Don’t worry mate, I’ve got it! I know exactly what you are.’
Bluey helps me up to my feet, puts his arm around my shoulders and leads me around the playground. I look up at his bony face; he smiles at me like an older brother would. The playground is full of kids and they’re mostly standing together in small groups. As we walk around from group to group, he introduces me to them as his ‘little wog mate.’
The kids look at me, first in confusion, as if expecting me to do or say something. Then, they chuckle. I want to ask them what that word means, but soon they’re too busy roaring with laughter.
I wonder if ‘wog’ is the English word for Assyrian?
They shake my hand and pat me on the back. Together, we go to the next group of kids. Everyone wants to put their arms around my shoulder and lead me around.
Whether friend or total stranger, without even being asked, I’m immediately introduced as their ‘little wog mate’.
The reaction is always the same: immediate laughter, slapping on my back, arms around my shoulders and ruffling my hair. I feel like a celebrity and a hero at my school. No-one else is introduced as a little ‘wog mate,’ just me.
That evening, while walking with my parents, we meet Esokh and his friend, an Australian man I’ve never seen before. He hears us speaking in Assyrian and asks Esokh where we’re all from. My ears immediately perk up and I take the opportunity to answer his question.
‘I’m a little wog mate.’ Then I walk over and stand beside my parents. ‘My mother is a scrubber and my father is a drop-kick. We’re all wog mates.’
The stranger’s face begins to tremble and turn red until he can’t contain himself any longer, and he bursts out with fits of uncontrollable laughter.
I don’t know why, but his particular reaction makes me feel a little unsure. He seems embarrassed—the kids at school weren’t.
I turn my back to him and face my family, expecting them to be smiling proudly that their smart son has done it again. But instead of pride, they look confused. Is it because Esokh is horrified? Daryavoush asks me sternly what I just said. Before I can answer, Esokh kneels in front of me and whispers in Assyrian.
‘Where did you hear that word?’
‘Which one? “Wog mate”?’
Again, the Australian man lets slip a little chuckle at hearing that word, but immediately leaves, saying something about an overdue exam.
‘What does it mean?’ my mother asks.
Esokh gives me the opportunity to tell her. I stop and look curiously at him, suddenly realising that I never found out what it means. Everyone is waiting.
‘It’s the word they use to describe me at school. At first I thought…but then…I’m sure it means “friend from a special country”?’
I wait for Esokh to agree with me, but his expression doesn’t change. If anything, there’s now pity added on top. He straightens up.
‘It’s a very bad word.’ he says firmly. ‘Don’t ever say it again, okay?’
For the very first time, I’m angry with him.
‘But mate is their word for azizee.’ I say. ‘So “wog” must be a nice word too? No one says azizee ekhreh,’ darling shit.
Meanwhile, Daryavoush is taking off his belt, preparing to give me a beating right here and now.
Esokh steps in and tells him it’s not my fault—that I don’t know what I’m saying. Then he whispers the translation in Farsi to Daryavoush and Yemi. This word I have heard before—najis.
Persian children have taunted me using that word. Once, when I touched an apple in a grocery store, the owner threatened to beat me, saying that my ‘najis hands’ had soiled his fruit.
In Iran, they treated me like a leper for being najis; here, they laugh and put their arms around my shoulders. Now I realise those boys at school were making fun of me, parading me around like a clown. I think about how stupid I was for trusting them.
I look up at my parents to help clarify the mess in my head, but their expressions say it all. My mother is blabbering, ‘But…they can’t call us that. We’re all the same here…the same God.’
Daryavoush is staring blankly down the street. ‘Halfway across the world and it’s as if they’re standing right here, laughing in my face,’ he says.
Esokh opens his mouth, desperately trying to say something to comfort them, but can’t find the words. His face begins to crumble from the weight of his thoughts. Eventually, he hangs his head and disappears down the road.
Everything becomes perfectly still in perdesa. There’s no sound or movement, not even a breeze. We’re all alone.
My parents’ souls drain from their bodies and hollow their cheeks—a milky substance that seeps into the cracks of the pavement. As it works its way deep into the earth, I hear a rumbling sound; echoes and pungent odours rise.
The ground beneath our feet begins to shake; leaves fall off trees, their trunks melting into brown pools; grass everywhere turns yellow and dies.
Joquelin begins to cry, hugging our unresponsive mother’s leg, pleading to be picked up.
The quake intensifies, causing brick houses to shudder and collapse; roads rip open, wide fissures swallow cars and telegraph poles, their wires shooting sparks.
I take Joquelin’s hand and run, looking for a place to hide.
The greengrocer and milk bar owner close their doors and wave us away. My schoolfriends crawl from under their houses, push us aside and run into a nearby church. Joquelin and I knock on the giant doors, but immediately hear them being locked. The church’s steeple breaks loose and hangs on its side—like Jesus on the cross.
The violent tremors swallow the building and everything else into bottomless craters.
With nowhere to go, Joquelin and I run back to our lifeless parents, staring into an abyss of their own. A strong backdraught tries to suck Joquelin and me in. We lose our balance and are about to fall in when Daryavoush suddenly grabs our collars and pulls us back to safety.
‘It’s time to go home,’ he says.
***
I lie awake for most of the night asking myself why people hate Assyrians. Persians hate us because we’re Christian; I don’t know why Australians hate us. Maybe because we eat tomatoes like apples.
I whisper to my mother who’s lying beside me, to see if she’s awake.
She doesn’t answer, but Daryavoush stirs in his sleep.
Just when I’m about to roll back over, I hear my mother’s soft, velvety voice. ‘We came here expecting to fit in, thinking that life was going to be easier. But it’s not. In some ways, it’s even harder.’
‘Why don’t we have our own country?’ I ask.
‘Brooni, we just have to accept that broken people are not confined to one place, or one race or one religion.’
‘Who’s broken?’
‘Those Australians and Persians that are mean. They’ve been abused in their own community for being too fat, too short, too poor, alone, childless, leh parqey,’ the list goes on and on. ‘Sadly, they believe it and suffer inside like a mountain of sumuh,’ poison. ‘When they open their mouths, all that comes out is that anger and sumuh against anyone different. They use words like wog and najis.’
‘What should we do when we’re called those names?’ I ask.
‘To remember that our abusers are broken too. We should love ourselves instead—our bones and flesh, the clothes we drape over them, our way of thinking and speaking. Shomtokh-lah orkha,’ Webreak the cycle, ‘by not believing those labels. Then hopefully everyone will see differences as just that, differences.’
I prop myself up on my elbow. ‘If I was God, I’d make everyone blind so they can’t see differences.’
‘Lah broonie, if you were God, you would make people see with their lebeh,’ hearts. ‘Beauty is what our lebeh feel when we’re in the company of someone kind.’
I look over at Daryavoush and study the lines of his cruel face. We are a family and yet he treats us so badly, controlling his wife like a possession and his children like pests. Has he been called lots of horrible names by broken people?
In the morning, I try to piece together my mother’s words from last night, but I’m distracted by the empty bedding beside me. My parents have already gone to work and for once it makes me happy to see that they’re not here. It means they haven’t given up.
I hope they’ll get over this disappointment, but I know that none of us will ever regain the excitement we felt when we landed in Australia.
My grandfather’s words come to mind: ‘Through hardship, you learn what kind of a man you are.’ I think that means that we need setbacks too.
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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